I have put most of the news in the Hili dialogues, and, frankly, am afflicted with a bad case of Weltschmerz (I believe Dr. Cobb shares my ailment). So today I’m proffering space for you to talk about anything you want, and it need not be limited to the news. I expect many people will want to give their opinions on the ICE killing in Minnesota, but remember that there are huge protests, and thousands of deaths, in Iran, with the possibility of regime change. A government blackout is preventing us from hearing much about what’s happening, but video and messages have been smuggled out. That’s the news I’ll concentrate on in Hili Nooz until things are resolved one way or the other. The Iranian protestors, knowing that they could be shot, are still congregating en masse in the streets of many cities.
Finally, astronauts are coming back to Earth early because one of them has an undisclosed illness.
So talk about what you want, but please adhere to Da Roolz. For this one post I’ll relax the frequency restrictions, so you can make up to 15% of the total comments (about one comment in six). Please try to avoid one-on-one arguments, and be civil, and, if I can add one more thing, don’t keep emphasizing the same point over and over again.
Okay, that’s it. Ready, set, go. . . . and if I get fewer than 50 comments, I’ll be even more depressed.
Don’t be sad! We love you. We need you. Everyday!
I posted this recently, but too late in a thread to get an answer, so once more into the fray:
I’ve recently realized that I should at least know the general outline of the human migration out of Africa into the rest of the world. I asked Gemini to recommend a book–I specified “not overly technical” and “non-politicized”–and (eliminating its explanations), got this list:
Here are a few well-regarded, accessible, non-politicized, and non-technical books about the “Out of Africa” migration(s) that are suitable for a general reader:
The World Before Us: The New Science Behind Our Human Origins by Tom Higham.
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford.
The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts.
The Great Human Diasporas: The First Migrations and Settlements of Non-European Peoples by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
If I were to read only one of these, which one should it be? (If two are absolutely essential to understanding, please don’t hesitate to recommend both). Thanks!
The only one of these I’ve read is Sapiens. It’s quite a good book, but I don’t know if it’s exactly what you’re seeking. It’s not specifically about the human migration out of Africa. It IS very good, though. It includes one of my favorite lines: “We didn’t domesticate wheat; wheat domesticated us.”
My favorite two lines from the book (Sapiens): “It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo Sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
Go for the 2022 book ‘the 5 Million Year Odyssey- the human journey from ape to agriculture’ by Aussie archaeologist Peter Bellwood. Outstanding in its 300 pages, integrating archaeology, palaeontology, botany and population genetics.
The books on the great human migration have largely been by historians and geneticists. But most of the material is actually archaeological in some form. But geneticists and historians don’t really build careers on expertise interpreting vague and incomplete archaeological data. I’ve never come across such a good attempt to integrate the theories of language origin/migration in Asia with the data from other fields.
Ramesh 49% Oriental, 49% Indian, 2% colonised Denisovan
I have read two of them. Sapiens and Brief History. I recommend the latter. It addresses in detail the migration. As an aside it has one of the most humorous footnotes I’ve ever read. A seventeenth century scholar who was the Vatican librarian suggested that Jesus’ foreskin ascended into the heavens to become the rings of Saturn. The context of the footnote is a brief history of Charlemagne who presented the relic of Jesus’ foreskin to Pope Leo III as a gift when the Pope crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne is discussed in part because he sired 18 children and the author traces his descendants and remarks that “ if you’re vaguely of European extraction…you [the reader] are descended from Charlemagne too.”
I concur. I also enjoyed the latter, as well. Also Rutherford’s book Humanimal is interesting.
Dwakish Patel had geneticist David Reich on his podcast mid last year with latest updates on the genetic history of mankind. Long, maybe 2 hours but so good I listened twice.
Best regards,
D.A.
NYC/FL
ps Get well soon PCC(E). Come down to Florida, I’ll take you to the alligator wrestling. We’ll eat the loser. That’ll cure ya!
Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich is an excellent book on the subject. He uses ancient DNA analysis for the basis of his research.
And now I think I’m at my posting limit, but I think we hit 50!
I didn’t see that David posted Reich on the podcast above…
Thanks to all for the answers. I’ll read at least one of these books.
Thanks PCC(E) for supporting free expression of thought! n my imagination, I can see PCC(E) looking at me as I submit my comments – it’s nerve-wracking! But it helps the comments… mostly 😁.
Having satisfied myself on particular points (restrainedly IMHO) earlier this week, I am exercising here what in jazz improvisation is called laying out – restraint on blowing even when you sorta could – to listen to the other musicians take a few … verses, bars, rounds, or whatever.
🎶
… a good quote would be fitting, I’ll add one if I can think of it in time …
Weltschmerz? Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic, is taking me far from Minnesota, away from Iran, and entirely avoiding Washington, D.C. Anyone have other recommendations? Conductors of this piece? Composers of others?
Look out for Manfred Honeck’s recording of Beethoven 5 & 7 with the Pittsburgh symphony on Reference recordings. Honeck is Austrian, and in his voluminous booklet notes for this CD, notes that he was a violinist in the Vienna Philharmonic when Carlos Kleiber himself recorded one of these symphonies with the VPO! The DGG recording for Kleiber fils in the 7th was a murky mess, but the American recording for Honeck is state of the art, and ‘almost’ Kleiber-like in its intensity. I saw Honeck conduct the 7th with the Wiener Symphoniker last June in the Musikvereinsaal, and it was an incredibly exciting rendition of the work, as close as I will ever get to, in this life, witnessing Kleiber in Beethoven
Ramesh 2% recovering Denisovan
Just checked Classics Today and they give Honeck 10 out of 10 for artistic quality and 10 out of 10 for sound quality.
Slow movements of both Mendelssohn piano trios. Sehr innig.
Mahlers 2nd
Absolutely!
Let us not forget Itzhak Perlman’s monumental performance of Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor for Solo Violin.
Anything by Arvo Part, but especially Fratres.
Great recommendations from all. Thank you!
The new Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age series seriously downplays the role of humans in the extinctions of the Late Pleistocene. After watching it, one gets the impression that animals could not adapt to climate change and humans only struck the killing blow.
But why is the show doing this? My guesses are:
* Pushing climate change.
* Something about not blaming indigenous people of North America and Australia. I sincerely hope this is not true!
* academic controversies related to the previous points
* a strange love of complex explanations even when more elegant ones are available (megafauna vanish in the fossil records with the arrival of modern humans, having previously survived several glacial and interglacial periods)
Twenty years ago, Walking with Beasts provided a much better portrayal of animal extinctions: humans were shown as moving up the food chain and eventually killing off large prey animals. This was different from climate change and competition by other species. Despite fewer biomes shown and more scientific errors, the commentary also managed to name the animals, tell us when and where (!) they lived and whether humans were already present. The new show fails on all these counts. (When mammoths walk from North to South America and we are told they sometimes get marooned, the next scene shows small elephants on Flores in Indonesia, but we are never told. Similarly, Moas suddenly appear in an episode almost exclusively about Australia, as we just moved to New Zealand.)
I still recommend the series, but it bothers me.
I haven’t seen the series, and it’s my habit lately to avoid most such things since they can be very bad. As a parallel example, the story of human evolution that is depicted on educational television tends to be overly woke about the extinctions of earlier, smaller-brained hominins as larger brained and more technological hominins appeared on the scene. It’s as if we sang Kumbaya during these encounters. Well, that would be a first! Not just for our species line, but for all species where an ecological dominant encounters a less dominant species.
I know of one case where a promotion was denied because the academic’s research on the role of humans in the extinction of Australian megafauna was deemed by another academic to be outrageously offensive to aboriginals. No actual aboriginals were consulted about this as far as I know.
Suppose that Iran collapses. What next? Will birds and bunnies establish a democratic spring? Or will the end of the theocratic dictatorship unleash a power grab among IRGC hopefuls and produce a military dictatorship instead? And what might the current government unleash in the interim? Israel is said to be on high alert.
Also, new paragraph, it seems that President Trump has discovered that he likes using military power—or at least the threat of military power. What might three more years bring?
By the way, on February 6 the last nuclear arms agreement between the U.S. and Russia comes to an end (https://fpif.org/edging-closer-to-armageddon/). What could go wrong?
Sometimes Weltschmerz is a justifiable affliction.
In 2016, his fans claimed Hilary Clinton was the warmonger, and Trump the Prince of Peace! Foolish back then, incredible now.
I was in college when the Shah of Iran was overthrown. As a naive college student (is that redundant?) I was happy to see that dictator out of power. “Yay! Now Iran will be free!” Live and learn.
I’m rooting for the people in Iran, but I hope that the current regime is not replaced by something worse.
What could possibly be worse??
I don’t mean to be a smartass (really, I don’t), but I haven’t tempted fate with that sort of question since my early 50s. My friends and I used to believe ourselves when we said things like, “It can’t get any worse than this!” How naive we were.
I did not claim there is no chance something worse could replace it, but rather just asked what could be worse than the ultra-oppressive, antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic Islamofascist regime of Iran today? I guess what could be worse depends on one’s perspectives.
Anarchy — all against all — is much much worse than repression. Although repression plus economic collapse is essentially anarchy because the state can’t pay its agents of order-keeping to ensure their loyalty.
That’s why revolutions almost always fail.
Sorry Leslie but anarchy in Germany in the 1930s would’ve been objectively better for the world than Hitler. Of course you can argue that the rise of Hitler and Nazi repression were the result of anarchy, but anarchy itself was preferable to that lot taking over.
A plague of smallpox, nuclear radiation, and the wrath of God that sterilized all the women in Germany would have been better for the world than Hitler was, sure, but for Germany other than the Jews who lived there, Hitler was much preferable. Germans voted for him. They must have known the choice they were making was a preference over Bolshevism.
Since Doug R.’s frame of reference was Iran, not the world, repression is better for the Iranians than anarchy. As for the world, anarchy would make Iran impotent, so sure, better for us. But we can’t expect the Iranians to look out for our interests.
Thing is, anarchy never lasts very long. Someone ruthless eventually emerges to run the place. The wealthy have to scrape together private security forces to protect their households first from mobs of commons, and second from other warlords who want to take what they have. The weak find that fighting loyally for a lord and protector in return for sharing his harvest is better than his neighbours stealing all of it. Eventually the wealthiest most successful warlord who is the least bad chap to work for amasses enough of a following to cow the other warlords (=dukes) into fealty: he becomes a king. His subjects put up with the repression he needs to apply to keep himself and his descendants on the throne because they know from lived experience that anarchy was worse.
The former Shah’s son, the Crown Prince, has been putting himself out there. Trump has been keeping him at arms length. Would that the Crown Prince had a Nobel prize to at least dedicate if not gift.
I speculate that the U.S. would like to re-establish military bases in Iran.
I suppose it’s inevitable that an old professor of belles lettres would write the following: propaganda works. It is the most virulent form of sophistry: using rhetorical tricks like dressed-up, emotionally-charged language first to sway, then to enroll citizens in an anti-democratic program (such as MAGA).
From my vantage, such propaganda has one motive: to defeat the commons. That is, to make U.S. democratic community practically impossible.
Beginning or end, it is the result of educational failure, and fatal in a democracy.
I think it is as much a failure to stop the unfettered accumulation of wealth (esp. in politics) than educational failure. Billionaires disdain democracy, and the commons (at least contemporary billionaires) and are trying desperately to destroy (and/or own) both. Worked in Russia.
I ask why billionaires are allowed to exist? They are the new kings, and shouldn’t be tolerated in free societies. If a person/family can’t “survive” with…let’s say $100 million…then something is terribly wrong with you. Democratically and economically, America is the healthiest when we don’t allow billionaires to exist. We’re the most unhealthy when we allow their existence, like today and during the gilded age. All this is known, the proof is in the history books. You can also see how Reaganomics, a key producer of billionaires, destroyed the middle class.
There are 935 billionaires in the US. We only hear about a few of them. How do we know what US billionaires think about democracy or the commons?
I seem to recall at least two of them calling for higher taxes on the rich.
Yes, 935 too many.
The Trump administration has 12 or 13 of them. I’m pretty sure how they think about democracy/commons and it’s not a pretty picture. A couple of our corrupt SCOTUS justices are also directly linked to billionaires. This crop of corrupt justices has done incalculable damage to democracy, from corporate personhood, to allowing unlimited money in politics to the gutting of voting rights.
Corporate personhood goes back hundreds of years. The current crop of corrupt justices didn’t invent it. Capitalism would be impossible without the limited liability corporation that exists in law as a person. No one would invest in a venture if his entire personal wealth could be attached in a bankruptcy, not limited to what he had invested.
You may be upset that corporations, as persons, can donate money to political campaigns under the First Amendment — a bee that a lot of commenters here have in their bonnets — but that’s not because the Supreme Court suddenly made them persons. It’s because corporations already were persons that the Court found they had 1A rights.
When discussing billionaires, we do have to remember to adjust for inflation: J.P. Morgan, Sr., left an estate that was “only” worth $68 million or so–but, adjusted for inflation, that was the equivalent to well over $1 billion today. Conversely, someone with a net worth of one billion Japanese yen is worth “only” six or seven million U.S. dollars. Very rich people have been around since the dawn of history, and “1,000,000,000” is just a number.
And, depending on who you ask, Norway has at least a dozen billionaires, Denmark has between ten and a dozen and a half, and Sweden has between two dozen and forty-odd billionaires. And all of those countries have a lot smaller populations than the U.S. does, and are famous for their strong social safety nets (“socialism”), “hygge”, and so on.
The hypothesis that “the billionaires” are the cause of all of our problems does not seem well supported. In the last three U.S. presidential elections, nearly 63 million Americans, over 74 million Americans, and over 77 million Americans thought that electing Donald Trump as president, keeping him in office (in spite of everything that happened in the Year 2020), and then re-electing him (even after January 6) was a perfectly good idea. Our problems are way too deep and too widespread to just blame it all on Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, however tempting it may be to do so.
No where did I say billionaires are the cause of all our problems. I’m positing that generally, they aren’t good for democracy or the commons.
Yes, JP Morgan was a robber baron, a billionaire in today’s dollars, and Roosevelt rightly thought robber barons weren’t good for America/democracy and broke them up. Needs to happen again.
Just because millions of Americans voted for Trump means nothing. Millions of Americans believe in God, heaven, hell and Creation. How Americans vote (red or blue) isn’t a good metric for rational behavior or good decisions.
But at no point in American history have we ever “abolished billionaires”. Neither Teddy nor Franklin Roosevelt did that. At whatever point you personally think was the high-water mark of America–some people were still very, very rich. In the past we have had very high marginal income tax rates (which also often had huge “loopholes” and were always taxes on INCOME) but we never just “capped” the amount of money someone can have, either de jure or de facto. And other advanced and “progressive” countries haven’t done that either.
And I was not at all suggesting that voting for Trump is rational behavior or a good decision! Quite the contrary! I’m just pointing out, “the billionaires” don’t actually get “a billion votes”. They can’t literally just “buy the election”. They can persuade ordinary people…but ordinary people are also too damned susceptible to being persuaded.
Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon, died this morning of metastatic cancer. He was also a podcaster, and broadcast pretty much every morning for many years, even through his illness and right up to yesterday, though speech had become difficult for him.
Adams was famously opposed to evolution as an explanatory mechanism for his existence, and asserted instead that the universe is a “simulation” in which “real players” strove in a world also populated by “NPCs,” non-player characters, these latter largely including those who disagreed with his views.
While Adams claimed that he was a religious unbeliever, his belief in this simulation of course implied the prior existence of a godlike Simulator, and in his last days he was persuaded to accept Pasqual’s Wager and declare a form of Christian belief, just in case.
I was just talking about him with our secretary (she likes to talk!). So he was apparently cancelled, in the sense that his strip was pulled by a large swath of newspapers after issuing remarks deemed as racist. I could not find a clear summary about what that was supposed to be about, though, so I have no opinion on it.
You can listen to Adams’ comments at https://youtu.be/K6TnAn7qV1s?t=870 (increase playback speed) and decide for yourself how to interpret them. I loved Dilbert but disliked Adams for many of his views – he was always an ardent Trump supporter, e.g.
I guess it mainly starts at about 15 min. in? Perhaps it is over my head, but what I hear there is a simplistic and crude opinion about black/white relations from the standpoint of a conservative who isn’t interested in introspection. You’d hear the same narrative on Fox News. To me, it does border on racism, but whether it crosses should remain as a matter of opinion.
As PCC(E) regularly points out, it’s good to hear the opinions of people you think are absolutely wrong. In that sense, I think the death of Scott Adams is a loss. Want to hear a different take? Check out what P.Z. had to say.
Also, re: j a h above, I liked Dilbert.
Here’s the BBC’s report from the time of his cancellation in February 2023: https://archive.ph/EmtKT
I remember when Adams wrote something about the contents of a letter not existing until he saw it, or some such nonsense based on quantum flapdoodle. When physicists tried to correct him, he doubled down. The woo was strong in that one.
It would be good to have more of these open discussions.
So…
1. I don’t think the protests in Iran will come to regime change. At least not how they are now. What is needed is an en-masse overwhelming storming of the castle, with support or at least tacit lack of reaction from the military. If things don’t break that way soon, I don’t think they will happen.
I hope it happens, though.
I think Jerry has been amazingly objective about the ICE killing. It helps clarify for me that as a strictly legal matter an investigation will technically pivot on proof beyond reasonable doubt that that was an unlawful killing. Otherwise the perp will walk or have a lesser charge.
Even if there is a more serious charge like manslaughter or murder, I would bet a gazillion dollars that Trump would pardon the federal charge. That is how broken we are.
Not sure, Mark. I posted this morning in the general comments below about why this one MIGHT be the big one. (I welcome debate, this is The Story of the hour, until, quite soon Cuba REALLY falls apart. It will.)
IRAN
The Iran protests are bigger and angrier this time for sure. I came to the USA to study M.E. politics (Islam in Iran and Algeria) and this time it is diff – largely due to (info) technology.
And different to recent protests b/c the Islamic Republic is essentially broke. And AMAZINGLY corrupt, an economy maybe worse than communism.
They peed Iran’s wealth away on nukes (fiendishly expensive) and adventurism abroad wrecking Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Syria. David Frum asserts that without the revolution, on a 70s projection Iran SHOULD be as rich as southern Euro countries.
Further, 45 years ago, with a huge youth population (and big oil bucks), they could do a million death war with Iraq, a hostage drama, harass the Great Satan and other hooliganism. Now, with no money and a terrible demographic decline, they’re out of options and have lost touch with their youth who… hate the mullahs. No projections, randomness and chaos theory rule Iran’s near future. My 0.02 cents.
best to you Mark,
D.A.
NYC/FL
I saw that earlier comment. Here is hoping you are right!
There were blips of statements from the Iranian military that they may become involved in backing up the thugs that shoot protestors. That was not good news. But it’s possible that they will have a change of heart as situations like this can become quite brittle. Of course, there could be factions in the military who might fight each other if some join the protests while others join the thugs.
But the protestors are not yet showing the stomach for storming the castle, as it were, and the longer they wait the more likely more and more will stop showing up for the revolution.
This time.
FINAL FROM ME TODAY – up to my loudmouth limit! 🙂
The world’s best living historian (IMHO), Hoover Instution’s Stephen Kotkin, Stalin biographer, talks about how totalitarian states only have to be competent at one thing – blocking alternatives, and controlling life choices of the citizenry. National wealth doesn’t matter much to dictators – but in Iran’s case it has gotten so terribly bad this time it might.
He writes and talks often about how strong they are but very brittle. I’ll see if I can find his best lecture. This is an academic who is too. cool. for. twitter/x!
D.A.
NYC
In any murder trial, the perp walks if there is reasonable doubt that the killing was unlawful. He doesn’t get convicted on a lesser charge of which there remains reasonable doubt as a consolation prize for the government. If the government thinks he was guilty of some “lesser charge”, it has to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, too. It can’t just say to the jury, “Well, OK, we can’t convince you beyond reasonable doubt that the killing was unlawful use of force, so how be you find him guilty of manslaughter or negligence instead of murder, despite your doubts, just to keep everybody happy?”
I recommend watching the 26(!) episodes of the History of Ancient Israel of the Albright Institute for Archeological Research with Israel Finkelstein and Matthew Adams.
The first episode is at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22HQKXCMfHk
Indeed. Brilliant and fascinating.
Small matter of the Association Football* Men’s World Cup being tri-hosted this summer by the US/Mexico/Canada.
Too early predictions:
Pick to win: Either Spain or France. Spain seem to be the current tactical masters of the game, and France has an assembly line of talent. They could send 3 national teams.
US: Will be eliminated by second knock-out match (final 16)**
Mexico: Ditto
Canada: Will get out of the group but lose first knockout match.
*Aka “football” aka “soccer”.
** The US will never win a men’s WC. Only 8 nations have done it thus far, and none outside of Europe or South America. It’s not an athlete problem…millions of American kids have been exposed to the game since the youth soccer boom of mid 70s. It’s a culture/development system problem that is very difficult to change.
And there is politics politics politics. Of course right now that includes the calls to boycott the games because Trump got a fake peace prize in the run-up to the event.
I don’t think there will be much of a boycott.
Umm. . . . overposting here, Mark.
There probably won’t be a boycott, but there are other concerning issues:
-The ticket prices….pure extortion. Add travel costs and I don’t know how the typical fan affords this.
-The new tournament format of 48 teams is bloated…that’s double the number of qualifiers from when the US last hosted in 1994. That means there will be a lot of dead weight teams that are there just to make up the numbers.
-I’ll have a look at the game times, but many will be played mid-day to accommodate European audiences. An afternoon game in the summer in many locations in North America will be sweltering, negatively affecting the health of the players and pace and quality of the games.
-Inconsistent refereeing will continue to plague the tournament, as FIFA seems more interested in making sure that its referee corps is representative of all the nations, rather than picking the most qualified refs. This will also negatively affect the play on the field (e.g. look for a lot more diving).
-Modern footballers play more games than ever, so they will be entering the tournament after long, hard seasons.
The heat, an expanded format that dilutes the quality, inconsistent refs, tired and dinged up players…all of this means that many of the games are going to be tedious to watch. Football will not be putting its best foot forward.
FIFA is going to kill the golden goose.
Trump liked the large gold made-up peace prize just fine. But when they also presented him with a “medal” on a lanyard, one that looked just like any cheap ID badge at a trade show, he proudly put it on and seemed to like it even more. To me, the reaction was that of a six-year old. Just happy to have something cool he could wear and touch and proudly point to when approached.
This article, quoted by UN Watch, asserts over 12,000 killed in Iran just over the past week:
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601130145
I have nothing important to say, just responding to the professor’s request for posts.
I’m disappointed that 3I/Atlas (or is it 31/Atlas–perhaps Linda McMahon can help?)isn’t an alien spaceship.
I hate that regional accents in the U.S. are fast disappearing, particularly from the deep south. The voices of young Americans, especially female but many males as well, aggravate my misophonia like nothing else.
After spending countless hours earlier in my life watching sports of all kinds, I went sports-free in the early 00s and have never looked back. If I ever change my mind, baseball will be my game.
I know climate change is bad, but damned if I’m not happy it doesn’t snow here as much as longtime residents say that it did. I hate the stuff.
On a more positive note, I’m happy The Season is behind us. Whenever someone calls me a Scrooge, I repeat to myself Ebenezer’s other, less-often-quoted sentiment that every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.
New Year’s resolutions are for saps.
It’s not just accents that are disappearing; it’s differences in clothing and hairstyles etc. People all over the world are becoming homogenized.
Even just a century ago, there was a tremendous diversity in costumes between different cultures and different localities. Just look at the pictures of people getting off the boat on Ellis Island. Today, the different nationalities would be indistinguishable, since people all over the world seem to have abandoned traditional costumes in favor of a sort of universal, or global ‘costume’ consisting of variations on a T-shirt-type top and jeans-type bottoms.
Erich von Daniken, author of the original “Aliens built the pyramids” book–“Chariots of the Gods?”, also just passed. I did, at one time, read some of his writings. His work was, unfortunately, not even entertainment.
My father believed in his theories. He was also a true believer in the Amazing Kreskin. Debunking Ancient Astronauts and ESP is what originally got me into skepticism, and from that to atheism.
Regarding: a bad case of Weltschmerz
Right — many of us, me too, aggravated by personal circumstances, and I want to add to the comment number by thanking you (Jerry aka PCC(E)) of your kind heart and your open mind, and my thanks for this website — to which I am a latecomer.
https://youtu.be/SOpITGIgnB0?si=NkuXs2aEcqmv7-0h
The above is a link to a James Webb audio visual narratored by a David Attenborough AI voice (I beleive) but don’t let that put you off. With the discussion about alien life just recently WEIT it puts this wee planet right in the middle of… nowhere important. I found it quite moving and a reality check on just how vast the universe is and our place in it.
Thank you. It is mind boggling. The AI voice (?) is clear and easily understood, better than many human voices I have heard.
AI narrator:
…only mentioned it as a passing thought, some are AI averse and in the music industry, soundtracks, jingles, it is astounding just what AI is doing.
I was a bit put off by an automated narrator who/which didn’t understand the term “a capella” and spoke it as though the “a” were the indefinite article.
Some college athletes are being paid as much as $4 million to play college sports. I do not know what to say about that. An interesting corollary factoid I stumbled across is that AP is reporting that viewer ratings for the College Football Playoff (CFP) games has been lackluster, down 7% from last year.
Could these two facts be related?
The ICE shooting has got me thinking about my friend L, who died a few years ago after a long and extraordinary life.
L was an old-school radical. In the 60s she was with, or a fellow traveler with, the Black Panthers (L was white.) She was personal friends with Eldridge Cleaver, and remained friends with his widow, [ed.: ex-wife] Kathleen, until her (L’s) death. She basically ran Cleaver’s campaign for President in ’68.
Later in life L became a lawyer, but she remained a big ol’ Commie. She thoroughly approved of Castro’s Cuba, and managed to travel there several times.
Here’s why I think of L in connection with the ICE shooting: One time, some years ago, we were driving somewhere together, and NPR was on the radio with a then-current story about yet another unarmed citizen who had resisted arrest and wound up shot and killed by police. I was saddened and outraged by the incident, and asked L what she thought.
She said–OK, I don’t recall her exact words, this is from memory, but in effect she said–
“He” (the man killed) “was an idiot. You don’t resist arrest.”
I responded with all the but but buts. But he was unarmed. But why are police so quick to shoot, can’t they be better trained in de-escalation techniques. But behaving stupidly shouldn’t be a death sentence.
L didn’t want to discuss the details. She just repeated herself in that “This Discussion Is Over” tone people get when you’re getting on their last nerve. He. Was. An. Idiot.
This woman makes much the same point, but she’s far kindlier in tone. It’s a Facebook reel, hope it works:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1202777388490293/?mibextid=9drbnH&s=yWDuG2&fs=e
Thanks for the link, Lady Mondegreen. Much as I’d like to disagree, she does make a valid point
I will note here that not resisting arrest does not correlate with not being charged with resisting arrest, nor with not being harmed during the arrest. (my first ex was charged with assaulting an officer and resisting. The news footage showed she was not resisting, and the assault was one officer using her leg and foot to smack another repeatedly, after she submit to handcuffs. Rather than letting her walk, a second officer took her to ground and she was then picked up by legs and cuffs. She, eventually, had charged dropped, but it cost a LOT in time and money, even with the PD representation. This was the same event where I was first teargassed for a permitted, nonviolent protest. No charges went to trial nor plea, after roughly a year. The drunks throwing bottles at us and carrying weapons, on the other hand, were not bothered by the police… Teargas: zero stars. Do not recommend)
While cruising along with your friend L, did you find yourself discussing the many women who by his own boasting admission Eldridge Cleaver brutally raped? How did she work that credential into his presidential campaign? Asking as someone who is of an age to have known women who, notwithstanding, voted for Cleaver For President.
Yes, I did. Her belief was that he never actually raped anybody. She thought he’d adopted a badass persona to survive incarceration.
Her politics were insane, and her rationalizations of them unpersuasive. Yet she was a delightful person: warm, funny, smart. She’d known all kinds of people. She’d worked with free-speech lawyer Leonard Boudin. Through Boudin she’d known Marlon Brando (his son-in-law at the time) and his dear friend and putative lover, Wally Cox (her verdict: Cox was smart and fun; Brando was his opposite.)
I miss her.
Cleaver was literally convicted of and served time for rape. Along with attempted murder and sundry other things. His book bragging about raping white women (he started with black women“for practice”) was an early example of intersectionality. Then he ran for President. Later on he blew away his wife’s lover with a really big gun. I miss him!
I said my friend believed he was innocent.
I didn’t say I had warm fuzzies about Cleaver, that I myself ever supported him, or that I believed my friend’s rationalizations about him. We clear, now?
I said I missed my friend, not Cleaver.
Believe it or not, people are capable of being friends with people who have very different views. Many people believe things without much rational justification. I’ve assumed that was something those of us who follow this blog understand.
In addition to her work with Cleaver, L spent years as an attorney helping homeless and mentally ill people get the government benefits to which they were entitled, but incapable of applying for. She also volunteered for years with the Center for Inquiry. She was a person, not a caricature Red.
There is no need for you to take a hostile attitude towards me. Kindly stop.
Thank you Jerry for years of entertainment. I hope your melancholy is short. I am going to see the movie, Hamnet, Friday next. I am three quarters through the book, which is excellent, and looking forward to the movie. I am a Shakespeare fan. All the best.
News flash: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/federal-prosecutors-minnesota-resign-joe-thompson/
In Minnesota many federal prosecutors, including a key Trump appointee, have resigned, reportedly to protest the administration’s pressure to treat the ICE shooting of Renee Good as an assault on the ICE officer rather than a civil rights case, and the withholding of evidence from Minnesota authorities.
These are people who know the law (and the case) better than any of us, and the highest-ranking of them is a Republican Trump appointee. They threw their careers away; I am sure this was not done lightly.
Because of the rules I can’t write more here.
I think Good acted foolishly and may well have been partly to blame for her own death. That being said, I have to contrast this with the Ashlee Babbitt incident. Imagine if Biden or Harris or Pelosi had made speeches immediately after Babbitt’s death publicly accusing her of being a domestic terrorist (although quite frankly she was — much more clearly than Good was). The treatment of Good by Trump and his government flunkies while an investigation of Good is just getting started is horrific.
This is number 72!
The rial seems to have completely collapsed, and there have been many private jets leaving Iran. Will we wake up to find that the Ayatollah is in Moscow?
Also, a 26y/o guy from near Tehran, Erfan Soltani, is threatened with execution today (14th). If that happens, it sounds like further hell will break out.
I expect that there will be big changes by the time I get up tomorrow, but how soon we will learn of them is another question.
Two years ago I was hiking in the Scottish Highlands with a friend. We talked about life, the universe and everything – nature is good for that! I told her that I had stopped following the news every day, it all being much too depressing, but felt bad about it: don’t we have some ‘citizen duty’ to keep ourselves informed? She suggested the following solution: don’t read or watch the media too much, but ask a close friend to update you when there is something you should know. I did not want to burden anyone with the task and went with something else: making WEIT my homepage. That makes me still see a lot of depressing news most days when I open my laptop, but it is always expressed in a sane and humane voice. Thank you.
I hope you are well. Your posts are thoughtful and insightful. You are successful and should be happy with your words. Take care of yourself.