Welcome to a Hump Day (“Горб хүнү” in Tuvan): Wednesday, October 29, 2025, and National Cat Day. The first reader who sends me a good photo of their cat, along with a few words about it, will get the moggy’s photo put right in the space below. Hurry up!
. . . . .aaaand, we have a winner: Bob Woolley of Asheville, NC and his boss Lucy:
This is Lucy, on my bed a few days ago, aglow in morning light from my east window. She is 14 and the sweetest, funniest cat I’ve ever known. I recently had to get a set of pet stairs for her to use to get onto the bed, because with age she is losing her ability to jump. But she still acts as my alarm clock when she determines that it’s time for her breakfast, and insists that I get out of bed every night just after I’ve gotten in, because that’s her preferred play time.’
It’s also National Oatmeal Day and International Internet Day, explained here:
It was on today’s date in 1969 that the first electronic message was sent from one computer to another. ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, was the precursor to the internet. Funded by the US Department of Defense, the network used packet switching to connect four terminals: UCLA, Stanford, University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Charley Kline, a student programmer at UCLA, under the supervision of Professor Leonard Kleinrock, transmitted a message from the SDS Sigma 7 Host computer in UCLA’s computer science department to the SDS 940 Host computer, manned by Bill Duvall, at Stanford. Kline attempted to send the word “login,” but the connection crashed after the first two letters, and only “L” and “O” were sent. These letters became the first data sent over the first long-distance computer network.
Here’s a very fancy bowl of oatmeal I was served at an inn at the Kent Presents meetings in August, 2018. Newswoman Leslie Stahl was sitting at the next table, planning her onstage interview with Henry Kissinger later that day. Fruits (including fresh figs), nuts, maple syrup, and heavy cream—ow that’s what I call oatmeal!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 29 Wikipedia page.
Posting will be light today and tomorrow as I am in the midst of a fierce bout of insomnia. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, and average 3-4 hours per night otherwise. If you sleep well, be grateful.
Da Nooz:
*The Toronto Blue Jays tied the World Series at two games each with a 6-2 victory over the Dodgers, even with Ohtani as the starting pitcher.
*At this moment Hurricane Melissa is striking Jamaica with violence; look at these wind speeds! It’s the strongest hurricane on record to strike the country, and nearly a record for the Atlantic Ocean. I hope America kicks in substantial money to help Jamaicans recover, as it’s not a rich country and the damage will be severe. From the NYT:
The northern edge of Hurricane Melissa’s eye wall, bringing some of its most violent winds, produced flash flooding and storm surges as its pushed onto Jamaica’s southern coast on Tuesday morning. The hurricane neared landfall as a Category 5 storm, with 185 m.p.h. winds, just short of the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record.
The storm’s intensification — with sustained winds stronger than those of Hurricane Katrina at its peak — came with dire warnings from officials. “Jamaica, this is not the time to be brave,” said Desmond McKenzie, the minister coordinating disaster response. “Don’t bet against Melissa. It is a bet we can’t win.”
Forecasters for the U.S. National Weather Service made a similar warning to people in the hurricane’s path, saying that this was the “last chance to protect your life.”
More intense than the Category 5 strength of Katrina, which pummeled New Orleans in 2005, Melissa is now the fifth-strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic Ocean.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami predicted Melissa would make landfall — the moment the center of its eye reaches land — in the next few hours. But long before that, rain and wind were lashing building and soaking hillsides, raising the threat of deadly floods and devastating landslides.
Forecasters were predicting rains measured in feet, not inches, for Jamaica and other Caribbean nations this week. Despite their warnings about destructive winds, rain and floods, officials in Jamaica were worried that not enough people were heeding evacuation orders.
The winds in Melissa’s eye wall were so strong that they could cause “total structural failure” and widespread power and communication outages, the hurricane center said on Monday. At least three people have died in connection to preparations for the storm, and thirteen others were injured, officials said.
Here’s video of a U.S. Air Force flight into the eye of Melissa. Look at the walls around the eye! Click on “Watch on YouTube” if there’s no preview:
The storm struck Cuba this morning, still powerful. Many people were evacuated.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Cuba early Wednesday after leaving a swath of destruction in Jamaica, where most people were cut off from the internet and major airports remained closed.
Melissa hit Jamaica on Tuesday as one of the strongest Category 5 storms on record, at one stage packing 185 m.p.h. winds. It knocked out communications and power for large swaths of the island, making it difficult for the authorities to get reliable assessments of the damage. Photos and videos posted on social media showed damaged cars and debris from roofs blown off by the storm.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba had warned late Tuesday that it would be a “very difficult night” for the island, as the authorities there evacuated close to 750,000 people ahead of the storm’s arrival. The U.S. Navy has ordered personnel into shelters at its base at Guantánamo Bay. Those headed to shelters there were told to bring their own bedding and a three-day supply of ready-to-eat food and water.
Eastern Cuba could receive up to 20 inches of rain through Wednesday, with 25 inches expected in mountainous areas, forecasters said, warning of potentially catastrophic floods.
*Some (but not all) Israelis are peeved because Trump is calling a lot of the shots now that there’s a ceasefire.
“The Americans aren’t just involved. They’re leading it. Israel is merely participating,” said Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, a former air and missile defense commander in the Israeli military. “Anywhere in the world where the Americans deploy a joint task force, they push everyone else aside and take command, control and leadership of the operational activity. … No one is comfortable with it,” he said, referring to discontent in the Israeli military.
Longtime Israeli military correspondent Amos Harel, writing in the Haaretz newspaper, said Israeli “defense officials have the impression that American scrutiny of Israel has reached a point that usurps Israel’s military and diplomatic power.”
. . . The U.S. troops are playing a role in overseeing the urgently needed provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and the search for bodies of deceased Israeli hostages there. That role could expand as the ceasefire agreement moves to the next phase, which calls for the disarmament of Hamas, the further pullback of Israeli forces in Gaza, and the establishment of a transitional government and stabilization force in the enclave.
“For the first time, America has placed troops in Israel, to monitor the ceasefire,” said Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States. He added, “They’re monitoring us, and they’re restricting our movements.”
I can understand why some Israelis are frustrated, unable to conduct the war the way they want. On the other hand, they can’t do it because they need to keep amity with America, which means means weapons and U.S. support. The really tough part will come when Hamas has to disarm, which I still don’t think it will do; nor do I imagine the U.S. can help with that. After that, there needs to be an international peacekeeping force, and I can’t imagine who that will be, either. Finally, of course, there’s the Palestinian government to be set up, which seems nearly impossible at this time—at least a government that won’t promote terrorism against Israel.
*On the other hand, and this is breaking as I write this on Tuesday afternoon, Netanyahu has ordered new airstrikes on Gaza, and this would not have been done without U.S. approval.
Tension and fear spread across Gaza on Tuesday evening after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to launch immediate strikes on the enclave.
Witnesses in several areas of Gaza City and Khan Younis said people hurried home as news of the order circulated.
“The streets emptied as soon as they heard the Israeli threats,” Alaa Saleh, a teacher who is now working a taxi driver, told the BBC. “Everyone wanted to reach his tent or house before the planes arrived.”
Most shops closed their doors before nightfall, and the normally crowded markets fell silent. Local residents said armed Hamas fighters who had been manning checkpoints on several main roads were seen withdrawing shortly before sunset.
The renewed tension comes amid growing uncertainty surrounding the fragile truce and ongoing efforts to recover the bodies of Israeli captives believed to remain under the rubble or in tunnels.
Residents in Gaza described a mix of anxiety and exhaustion after months of sporadic violence and repeated Israeli warnings of renewed operations
The explanation comes from the Times of Israel:
The strikes come after Israeli officials vowed to respond to an attack on troops in south Gaza today and Hamas’s failure to return the bodies of hostages still held in the Strip.
. . .Defense Minister Israel Katz says Hamas will pay a “heavy price” for attacking IDF soldiers earlier today in southern Gaza’s Rafah and for the terror group’s violations of the deal under which it was supposed to return the bodies of remaining dead hostages held in the Strip.
“The attack on IDF soldiers in Gaza today by the Hamas terror organization crosses a glaring red line to which the IDF will respond with great force,” Katz says in a statement.
“Hamas will pay many times over for attacking the soldiers and for violating the agreement to return the fallen hostages,” he adds.
One gets the impression that Hamas does indeed have the bodies of the missing hostages, but is slow to turn them over. This time, however, they have no leverage to bargain with Israel, as Hamas promised earlier to turn them all over.
*The Dodgers beat the Blue Jays on Monday 6-5, in what was a tie for the longest game in World Series history: 17 innings and more than 6½ hours! And Ohtani once again put on a stellar exhibition—so much so that the Blue Jays had to give him four intentional walks. The Dodgers now won two games to Toronto’s one (for non-Americans, the first team to reach four wins takes the championship).
About 40% of the way through the marathon that tied the record for the longest game in World Series history, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider reached a decision.
The greatest baseball player on the planet would not be the reason his team lost on Monday night.
It didn’t matter how many outs there were or how many runners the Los Angeles Dodgers had on base. Under no circumstance would the Blue Jays allow Shohei Ohtani to deliver the decisive blow. He had already tormented them for two doubles and two homers. From that point on, Schneider decided, Ohtani would not see another strike—period.
Five times in a row, from the ninth inning to the 17th, the Blue Jays walked Ohtani. The first four were intentional, including three with the bags empty. The last one wasn’t, but might as well have been, with Ohtani seeing four straight balls well out of the strike zone.
By the time the contest ended six hours and 39 minutes after it began, he had reached base on each of the nine occasions he stepped up to bat—the latest of Ohtani’s achievements that sounds utterly impossible but actually happened. Before this, the previous postseason high was six.
In the end, the Dodgers did win. Freddie Freeman slammed a walk-off homer to lead off the bottom of the 18th, putting the finishing touch on one of the weirdest, wackiest, most mind-numbing contests ever staged in the Fall Classic. The Dodgers are now two victories away from claiming their second consecutive championship.
For that to happen, they will have to rely on somebody beside Ohtani. He might not get another pitch in the same ZIP Code as home plate.
Oh, and if that’s not enough, there’s this: Ohtani is set to be on the mound for Tuesday’s Game 4.
“Another one in the history books for Shohei,” shortstop Mookie Betts said afterward.
Here are six minutes of highlights. I tell you, this is one exciting Series. It doesn’t show the four intentional walks given Ohtani, though. I’m rooting for the Dodgers because with two fantastic Japanese imports on the team, it is more of a “world” series than ever before.
. . . and some stats from the AP’s story:
*And just in time for Halloween, the Oregon Zoo once again allowed its giant elephants to smash giant pumpkins (a tradition):
Some of the world’s largest land animals demolished some of the area’s largest pumpkins this morning during the Oregon Zoo’s 24th annual Squishing of the Squash.
“We gave our elephant family some extra-large pumpkins to stomp on and chomp on,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s Asian elephant area. “First they destroyed them, then they enjoyed them.”
The event is a lead-in to the zoo’s annual Howloween celebration, presented by The Oregonian/Here Is Oregon, which takes place later this month. Kids can show off their costumes and learn about wildlife in a fun and safe setting, Oct. 22–23 and Oct. 28–31.
The tradition dates back to 1999, when Hoffman’s Dairy Garden of Canby dropped off a prize-winning 828-pound pumpkin for the elephant family. Farmers often offered their overstock pumpkins for use in the zoo’s groundbreaking animal enrichment efforts — enhancing animals’ well-being with stimulating and challenging environments, objects and activities.
This year’s pumpkins — provided by Pacific Giant Vegetable Growers Club member Larry Nelson and his daughter, Amanda Gilmour — ranged from about 300 to 800 pounds
And from the AP:
To break open the gargantuan gourds, zookeepers present them to Tula-Tu’s adult relatives like her brother and father who weigh slightly over 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms). In a video from the zoo, they appear to delicately place one foot at the top, and gently press down. The pumpkins crack with a loud pop, sending rind and seeds flying.
Past years’ videos have shown midsized, young elephants putting both feet on top of the pumpkins but being too light — or lacking technique — so the giant vegetables don’t burst.
This year the adults elephants smashed the massive pumpkins in front of a cheering crowd of zoo visitors, and then the family of elephants ate the many tons of squash fragments.
Asian elephants like Tula-Tu and her family are considered highly endangered, according to Oregon Zoo officials. There is a fragmented population of around 40,000 to 50,000 such elephants in the wild in places ranging from India to Borneo, a Southeast Asian island straddling Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. But there have been successful conservation milestones in recent years, including in Cambodia.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej tries to keep Hili from killing birds:
Hili: Hunger awakens a murderous urge in me.
Andrzej: Come home, I’ve got rabbit pâté.
In Polish:
Hili: Głód budzi we mnie chęć mordu.
Ja: Chodź do domu, mam pasztet z królika.
*******************
From Jesus of the Day:
From The Language Nerds:
From Cats That Have Had Enough of Your Shit:
Masih is happy because tomorrow she’ll be in court as her would-be assassins are sentenced. A delightful woman!
Good morning my friends!
I’m recording this from the Hudson River bike path, energy’s wild, New York vibes strong, with the wind, the water, and freedom at my side.
Check the message and feel the hope …Big day tomorrow. A day that reminds me why we fight, why we love, and why… pic.twitter.com/xW4n43R2mn— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 28, 2025
From Luana: a pamphlet with recipes for Democratic victories. You can find the document here, and at least look at the figures.
It’s time to renew the Democratic Party.
Introducing DECIDING TO WIN: the most comprehensive account yet of where Democrats went wrong, and what we need to do to win again.
With a year of research and tons of new data, by @laurenhpope, @liamkerr, and me.
Link and 🧵 below. pic.twitter.com/GJ16Kr3TWG
— Simon Bazelon (@simon_bazelon) October 27, 2025
Riley Gaines is, sadly, a Republican, but AOC seems pretty mean-spirited here (Gaines finished fifth in the women’s 200-yard freestyle final at the N.C.A.A. Division I competition in 2022).
Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth. https://t.co/gkiEyZ8JGX
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 27, 2025
From Malcolm; does somebody want to fill me in here? Who is it and how did it change basketball?
The jump that changed basketball forever.pic.twitter.com/XZvB8cEpY5
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 16, 2025
Larry Summers (former Harvard President) calls out Harvard’s hypocrisy, but a present Harvard Dean tries to stop him from finishing his remarks. Oy!
Larry Summers calls out the “Wall of Resistance” at Harvard:
“I do not believe that if the doctrines of the Ku Klux Klan were proposed for installation in the science center, that that would be permitted and…enabled by those who lead us in this community. I believe what we are… https://t.co/Mkw6eEgCZy
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 23, 2025
One I posted on The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed to death immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. She was seven years old. Had she lived, she would have turned 91 yesterday.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T10:47:55.856Z
Two from Dr. Cobb. I found the exact information on the game for him–my contribution to the Crick bio! (Box scores are forever.) Matthew added, “Ppl on Bsky v excited by last night’s match that went on forever, so I was obliged to post about Crick’s experience and your explanation.” He hasn’t learned that Americans don’t call baseball games “matches.”
For all the baseball fiends out there, in June 1954 Crick went to a baseball match, as described in my forthcoming biography (apologies, you can expect a lot more of this kind of thing in the next few weeks…)
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-10-28T08:47:39.745Z
I missed the anniversary yesterday, but Matthew and I are huge fans of Krazy Kat (click if you want to go to the original post):
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo. -Bill Mauldin, editorial cartoonist (29 Oct 1921-2003)
Counter-revolutionaries enable human flourishing by making sure the harvest gets in and the lights stay on, protecting society from the excesses of revolution by nipping it in the bud. Imagine how Russia would have thrived had the counter-revolution by the Whites and the Mensheviks succeeded and hanged the Bolsheviks. Hardly any revolutions make people better off, except for the commissars. Benjamin Franklin’s gang of wise men were very very fortunate, both in winning and in making something worth keeping.
I have watched much of the World Series this week and while surely amazed by Otahni’s technical accomplishments, I am equally struck by what appears to be his joy in the game as camera shots of him so often catch a small smile on his lips and a crinkle in his eyes. After he slid into second base last night, spikes high, he even checked on the second baseman to see if his leg was hurt. I really like this guy!
Oh and Ohtani was his own dh(designated hitter) when he pitched last night. Something I had not seen before. So when he was replaced on the mound, he stayed in the game as the dh for the relief pitchers.
When a sports hero is also a nice guy it’s the icing on the cake.
The fact that that Ohtani is such a scary good hitter that the Blue Jays coach walked him made my jaw drop. He may be the Secretariat of baseball.
I sent you a lovely photo of my cat Jemma a few weeks ago, do I win the prize? 😁 There is a gorgeous cat here in my Aswan hotel and I’m trying to get a photo to add to my international cats collection, but it’s jet black, and it’s hard to get a proper photo of it. I pinched some butter from the breakfast buffet and I’m hoping to use it to tempt the cat into a decent position for a photo later 😂
No, sorry, photo has to be sent this morning. But hold onto your photos.
Got one of my dog and me here, Joolz in a (sadly discontinued WEIT section) “Photos of Readers”.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
🙂
Enjoy the trip, feed the kitties!
D.A.
NYC
Sadly, I’m going to have to delay the pleasure of seeing this as I’m getting a message that says “We cannot complete this request, remote data could not be fetched” on all the photos in that link. It’s weird because I can see all the photos ok in this page. I’m assuming it’s probably this foreign internet playing up 😉 I’ll try again tomorrow.
I think it’s an issue with how old WEIT pages have been cached. Once you go back a certain amount of time none of the pictures on any WEIT page are viewable.
Thanks, I tried again this morning but I see I’ll have to give up hope of seeing David and his dog 😂
Re Aswan, have you seen / are you going to see Ramses’ temples at Abu Simbel? IMO they’re very much worth the long bus ride across the desert.
Part of my trip to Aswan is a 3 night cruise on Lake Nasser which includes a visit to the temples. I saw them on my first trip to Egypt several decades ago, but I wanted to come back and visit them again. You are right that they are amazing, not just for the ancient history, but also for the more modern history of them being moved stone by stone further up the hill in the 1960s as they were building the Aswan dam. It was an incredible feat of engineering to keep them safe, just as it had been to build them in the first place.
In case anyone is interested in the story, here is a quaint film about how UNESCO saved the temples with the help of the world.
I came back from the cruise yesterday and have a few more days in Aswan before heading home. The official opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) took place while we were sailing, and we watched it live. That will be my next trip 😁
Jerry, when did you arrive in Chicago?!! That would be Michael Jordan’s iconic jump from the free throw line. I couldn’t recall which year it was, but Grok tells me it was the 1988 NBA Slam Dunk contest before a home crowd at Chicago Stadium. Sounds right.
Thank you. I was here in 1986 but didn’t follow basketball much, and still don’t.
Thank you Steve and Ira (and Jerry of course) for the video snippet of President Summers’ remarks. It tells a slightly but importantly different story than the Crimson article on the interaction at url
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/24/summers-confrontation-psc-wall/
In the short video, President Summers seems to make it clear that though he disagrees with the speech on display the antidote is additional speech…which he was apparently trying to provide when cut off by one of the college’s deans. The Crimson article certainly is written in a pali-friendly style.
There is a ten minute instagram live video showing the full statements of the Chabad rabbi and President Summers at url
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQKIwF-jRPq/
Hopefully it has conveyed with audio. Tells a different and more complete story than the Crimson article or the snippet.
Definitely conveyed the message more clearly.
Equines love pumpkin too. To bribe love from a horse, chunks of pumpkin or orange squash work even better than carrots or parsnips. Horses go into ecstasy over the flavor.
“From Malcolm; does somebody want to fill me in here? Who is it and how did it change basketball?”
Who is it? You are kidding, right?
Umm. . . no, I am not kidding. You could have been like Doug above and simply answered the question, but you have to imply that I am an ignoramus. No, I am not kidding and do not know who it was or why it changed basketball. Protipo: never tell anybody they’re kidding when they ask an honest question: it’s a way of denigrating them.
Sorry, I honestly thought you were being funny. That’s Michael Jordan, considered the greatest basketball player ever, and certainly the greatest Chicago Bull ever. He won 6 Championships in Chicago! And, he’s doing his most iconic and probably most viewed dunk here, the one that gave rise to the “Air Jordan” moniker.
But…since it was a young Michael in the video (late 80s), and the Bulls haven’t been very good for decades now, perhaps these things just fade into irrelevance. Apologies for coming across as rude.
I thought it might be Jordan, but when I started paying attention to him he had shaved his head, so I thought “naaah”. But what really confused me is why that move changed basket ball.
No worries!
Yes…the shaved head Michael was the one that won all the championships (starting in 1991) and became the transcendent celebrity and pitchman (everything from Nike to Gatorade to Wheaties)…the younger version shown here from 1988 was probably not too well-known outside of basketball junkies at the time…the NBA had not quite reached its peak popularity then.
Last comment from me!
“It changed basketball” in the sense that it had never been seen before. It is easy to miss in that video clip, and people unfamiliar with basketball wouldn’t know the significance anyway, but the “extent” of that jump he made for that dunk was the “never been seen before” thing.
He left the ground at the free throw line and “floated” all the way to the hoop. At the time that jump was almost like magic.
That dunk went what these days would be called “viral” to such an extent that it made Jordan a celebrity even outside the world of basketball fans and had a lot to do with increasing basketball’s popularity.
Or at least that’s the myth. I think it would be more accurate to say that this famous dunk was just the beginning of his rise to stardom. Michael Jordan then continued for many years to do amazing things that no one else, or very few, had ever done.
Yeah. Well I did follow basketball and from the quality of the video, I could not tell who it was except at the very end, paying close attention would reveal his name on the back of his jersey. But it seems that a number of players can make something close to that move today? Yes? No?
My last comment of the day to not over-comment.
a reasonable sounding article on the history of dunking
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/feb/17/slam-dunk-banned-college-basketball-high-school
Not sure if it was hacked into Wikipedia, but it does say that Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln. I know he acted in a film that had him looking all over Europe for descendants of Jesus.
Congrats to Lucy! Wonderful picture.
And the rest of the news? This year’s World Series is the best I’ve seen since the 1969 Miracle Mets beat the Baltimore Orioles in five games.
MAD Magazine used to do articles that featured song parodies collected together in themes. One issue the theme was sports and one song about baseball made a number of digs about the perennial laughingstock losers, the New York Mets. When they republished that song in an anthology a few years later, it included as asterisk: “pre-1969 version.”
Lucy is a handsome tabby! 🐈🐈🐈
The elephants smashing pumpkins and eating them is cute. 🐘🐘🐘
Indeed. Lucy is a beauty! Lovely shot. I smile at the requisite lint remover behind her on the dresser.
Re Ohtani:
“From that point on, Schneider decided, Ohtani would not see another strike—period.”
Then why is the last walk listed as “unintentional”?
Would Schneider have been satisfied if Ohtani had a game winning hit off a ball?
An international peacekeeping force, under UN auspices as they have been, can work only if both sides give at least lip services to maintaining peace. The Blue Berets armed only with light weapons for self-defence and thin-skinned patrol vehicles merely observe the conduct of both sides and report truce violations to the UN commission running the operation, which then gives a stern lecture to the offending warlord. They can’t fire on anyone unless directly molested themselves — this traditionally happened only if a soldier or civilian on one side of the line or other got drunk or went insane. Nor can they get between armed parties each determined to “finish the job” on the other. That’s not “peace.” A mission in Gaza would be suicide for the poorly trained soldiers of small poor countries with no combat experience who usually do this work as mercenaries now. Canada was once pretty good at this, at least when there was actual peace to keep, but our abject failure in Rwanda — sorry, Gen. Dallaire, if you’re out there reading this — has put us off UN peacekeeping forever I think. We disgraced ourselves in Somalia, too. For it being “the end of history”, the 1990s were pretty grim times in wretched places.
Speaking purely as a partisan, I also think a peacekeeping force would be bad for Israel because the IDF needs freedom of movement in Gaza to respond effectively and decisively to violations by Hamas, without worrying that terrified hapless kids from Sri Lanka or Senegal are going to get run over by a tank, or kidnapped for ransom by jihadists or something.
An international force is a no-starter in Gaza I think Leslie.
No Arabs will do it b/c any conflict with Hamas and their jihad will be fighting Allah.
And why should Sri Lankans or Fijiian soldiers be at risk from the zombie army of orcs?
For an international/ neutral force as you say, you can’t have one side fundamentally and religiously (see Koran) determined to exterminate their (Jewish in this case) neighbors. Int’l force, peacekeepers, etc. assume different circumstances than exist there.
best,
D.A.
NYC
My issue with Summers is that he’s a slow talker. In interviews etc, he eats up space and time by taking so long to get his words out of his mouth,
Yeah.. I found myself inadvertently trying to auto complete his sentences. I try real hard to abstain from that behavior in real life but this video just brought it out again…
I wasn’t aware that Summers is a slow speaker, but I do agree that slow speakers can tax one’s patience.
One such speaker is Glenn Loury. He’s sooo slow that I was never able to make it all the way through his Glenn Show videos until I began speeding them up by 1.3 or even 1.4 x.
I can’t watch TV anymore b/c it is too slow.
My default is 1.25 but for slow talkers like Summers or Sam Harris I up it to 1.75. I even give PCC(E) a bump in speed. 😉
The commonality is the above consider their words. And worth one’s time.
And I am an impatient jerk!
D.A.
NYC
Peacekeeping Gaza is an oxymoron?
Hamas are violence in a face mask.
Perhaps the UN could teach them self gratification as a “self occupation”. Then move on to B&D, a dominate female with a whip…stop ✋️ ok, ok… family show and all that.
The game on Monday night went 18 innings, not 17, Jerry!
I love Krazy Kat, and consider it the greatest comic strip ever penned. If anybody is interested in a good collection of Kat strips, along with a brief biography of their brilliant creator, I can recommend Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman, by Patrick McDonnell (of “Mutts” fame), Georgia Riley de Havenon, and Karen O’Connell.
Riley Gaines finished fifth in the race tied with transgender athlete Lia Thomas. Gaines had to share locker room space with Thomas while he still possessed male genitalia.
I am sure that AOC is aware of these events. Therefore, her scornful comment is hard to beat in terms of nastiness.
The exchange illustrates how the trans activists think. Men in women’s sport illustrates most vividly the absurdity of trans ideology. In the other women’s domains we want to keep them out of, trans-identified men could conceivably not be a danger to women if they always behaved themselves. But in sport, a man even if he uses the men’s locker room and otherwise behaves like a gentleman is still taking unfair advantage of women just by doing his honest best to win when he competes against them.
Sport is the no-brainer category. Furthermore it is the category where nice middle-class girls and women get cheated and injured. Even if you pretend that female prisoners, clients of violence shelters, and customers in Walmart bathrooms don’t matter, being invisible to the better classes, it’s your own daughters and sisters, even Cortez’s daughters and sisters if she has/will have any, being cheated here. Yet the activists can’t yield even on sport. Why? Because the ideology says that everyone who says they’re a woman is a woman. Sport is where you show your tribal bona fides. It’s a high bar but by God we’re going to clear it.
There is no point trying to get trans activists to agree to the common-sense carve-outs from their “full civil rights as trans people.” If they want sport, they want the whole damn thing. Whoopi Goldberg was holding forth some months ago about how “trans women” don’t have an unfair advantage. Have you seen these [biological] female athletes play, she asked rhetorically. They’re really strong, they’ve got it together. They don’t take second place to anyone. The playing field is level.
You just have to take one look at Miss Goldberg to know she hasn’t the faintest clue about what goes into athletic performance. She is lying in the service of ideology.