Saturday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to CaturSaturday, March 21, 2026:  shabbos for Jewish cats. it’s also the first full day of Spring, as well as National Corn Dog Day. You probably haven’t had one of these cornmeal-batter-dipped and deep-fried hot dogs on a stick, and, indeed, I’ve never had one, either. (I would be delighted to try one.) The problem is that in America you can get them only at local fairs.  Wikipedia has an article on them, and I’ll give a quote and a photo. I was surprised to find that they’re made outside the U.S.A., though of course such a dubious food item have been invented only in America.

German immigrants in Texas, who were sausage-makers finding resistance to the sausages they used to make, have been credited with introducing the corn dog to the United States, though the serving stick came later.  A US patent filed in 1927, granted in 1929, for a Combined Dipping, Cooking, and Article Holding Apparatus, describes corn dogs, among other fried food impaled on a stick; it reads in part:^[8][9]

I have discovered that articles of food such, for instance, as wieners, boiled ham, hard boiled eggs, cheese, sliced peaches, pineapples, bananas and like fruit, and cherries, dates, figs, strawberries, etc., when impaled on sticks and dipped in batter, which includes in its ingredients a self rising flour, and then deep fried in a vegetable oil at a temperature of about 390 °F [200 °C], the resultant food product on a stick for a handle is a clean, wholesome and tasty refreshment.

A “Krusty Korn Dog” baker machine appeared in the 1926 Albert Pick-Barth wholesale catalog of hotel and restaurant supplies.^[10] The “korn dogs” were baked in a corn batter and resembled ears of corn when cooked.

Wholesome? Here’s a photo: of two, one in cross-section (note the ketchup topping, which wouldn’t be available in Chicago):

 

 

It’s also International Tiramisu Day, Maple Syrup Saturday (this is what you want), National California Strawberry Day, National Flower Day, National Crunchy Taco Day, National French Bread Day, National Vermouth Day, and World Poetry Day.  Here’s a famous passage from a world poem, and of course you’ll know who wrote it:

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head

In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,

An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago; a church stands near,

By the road an ancient Cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase,

On limestone quarried near the spot

By his command these words are cut:

               Cast a cold eye

               On life, on death.

               Horseman, pass by!

And, sure enough, here’s his grave in Drumcliff:

The Auschwitz Memorial is marking Poetry Day by putting up poems from Auschwitz inmates. One is below.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the March 21 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*First, here are the results of the poll I presented in yesterday’s article about the most taboo topic in science (the possibility of genetic difference in IQ among human populations):

*The New York Times has only negative news about the war on its front page again. Perhaps this is an objective view of the war, but I often think otherwise. At any rate, here’s their summary as of yesterday afternoon.

U.S. warplanes and attack helicopters have ramped up assaults against Iranian drones and naval vessels in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, American officials said, as oil prices remained high on Friday amid new attacks on energy sites in the Persian Gulf.

As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran approached the three-week mark, American commanders have been scrambling to accelerate plans to thwart Iran’s ability to choke off the strait, the critical passageway in and out of the Persian Gulf. Iran has used a lethal combination of mines, missiles and armed drones — or the threat of using them — to all but shut down shipping through the strait, through which passes a large part of the world’s oil and natural gas.

The war cast a pall over celebrations for Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of the Ramadan fasting month, and Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Iran fired more retaliatory strikes, with several U.S. allies saying they were responding to incoming drones and missiles.

The state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said a drone attack had caused fires at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, for the second consecutive day. Israel said it had launched targeted attacks on Tehran after Iranian missile fire set off sirens in Jerusalem and northern Israel overnight.

The sustained and wide-ranging strikes on energy sites have prompted the Trump administration to scramble for solutions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that the United States was planning to lift sanctions on Iranian oil in an effort to shore up the global market, reversing years of U.S. measures to cripple Tehran’s economy.

President Trump said he had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to stop attacking Iran’s energy fields. He also tried to reassure Americans on the economic impact of the war, saying on Thursday, “It will be over soon,” without explaining.

It’s clearly early days of the war, but I don’t see anything positive in the NYT when it’s reporting on what’s happening, even though we’ve destroyed much of Iran’s military capabilities already and have given them a severe setback in enriching uranium.  We don’t have regime change yet, but the new hard-line government has threatened several times to kill anybody who protests (was that in a NYT headline?). Anyway, I’ll try to balance it off a bit with the next item.

*The Free Press‘s reporter on the war is Israeli journalist Amit Segal, but his war coverage doesn’t rub me the wrong way—probably because he’s sym,pathetic to Israel and, unlike the NYT, doesn’t want the U.S. and Israel to lose the war (yes, I do think that about the NYT). Segal’s latest piece is “How Trump can buy time for his Iran war.”

While military commentators focus on flight paths and interception systems, historians will likely define the current campaign against Iran in entirely different terms: the first global energy war. This is not a war over territory, but over the ability of the West—and especially the Far East—to continue functioning.

At the center of the arena are oil prices. Any spike in commodity market charts for crude oil quickly translates into drama at gas stations in the United States and Europe. Those who thought natural gas would act as a brake to prevent economic escalation have discovered the opposite: Gas is not moderating prices—it is becoming fuel that intensifies international pressure. This follows Qatar’s decision to halt liquefied natural gas production (LNG) early on in the war, a dramatic move for a country that holds a third of the world’s natural gas reserves.

For a change, the most significant pressure on the Trump administration is not coming from campus protesters, but from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. These three technological powers have made it clear to the Americans: If the energy market does not stabilize, the global semiconductor industry will suffer a severe blow. When chips are hit, everything is hit—from the smartphone in your pocket to the most advanced weapons systems. This is a supply chain that begins in the Persian Gulf and ends in factories in Taipei, Taiwan, and any disruption in the Hormuz Strait echoes all the way to Silicon Valley—especially as President Donald Trump has made clear that the chip war with China is the most important global issue of his presidency, and everything is judged in relation to it.

So how to buy time? Here’s Segal’s “solution”:

. . . The West is looking for insurance. Of the 12 million barrels of oil produced by Saudi Arabia and effectively stuck, 5 million already have a solution in the form of an old pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. It was built during the Iran-Iraq War and stood largely unused for decades, but it is now serving as a partial yet important solution.

. . .But the long-term strategic solution—the one that has already caused oil prices to drop sharply in contracts for two years and beyond—is the plan to double that pipeline and connect it to the ports of Haifa or Ashdod. This would be a historic shift: Saudi oil reaching the Mediterranean through an Israeli port, bypassing Iranian threats and creating a global energy security corridor. In short: The market anticipates short-term disruption, but also a long-term solution that bypasses the Hormuz bottleneck and strips Iran of its most important strategic asset.

At the end of the day, international pressure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for oil is significantly higher than pressure regarding gas. The world can “hold out” for about a week—perhaps 10 days—of a closed strait; that is the maximum tolerance of the global economy. This is why Israel, in coordination with Trump, raised the stakes yesterday and has begun targeting Iran’s economy, signaling that blocking the strait will lead to the complete collapse of the ayatollah regime’s economic model. It is a high but calculated gamble.

If Trump reaches the end of March with oil prices stable—or even declining—a radical shift will occur across the entire region. If not, the Iranians can breathe easy.

Who will run out of oil first?

Okay, fine, but how long will it take to “double the pipeline” and “connect it to Haifa or Ashdod”?  Not two weeks for sure.  As for a short-term solution—the one we need now—we hear nothing. I didn’t predict that this war would become about oil, but I am not a pundit, just a country biologist. Iran is clearly cleverer than I.  But you may read about the war and the oil markets at the linked article in The Economist.

*Boston University is in hot water for removing gay pride flags from several windows.  But it’s a defensible move if it falls under the University’s policy of institutional neutrality, and that’s what seems to have happened.

Boston University President Melissa Gilliam said there was “no targeting of any particular population” when school officials removed several pride flags from public view, insisting that the university’s public signage policy is “content neutral.”

“I want to be very clear that we have unequivocal support for our LGBTQIA plus community,” Gilliam said during a town hall-style event at the George Sherman Union Thursday morning.

Gilliam took about five minutes to address the topic following an hourlong presentation by senior level administrators regarding the financial health of the institution and plans for growth.

Gilliam invoked her years working as a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist in defending the university’s support for LGBT rights.

“The experience of queer and non-conforming young people, all young people, minoritized groups, is my life’s work,” Gilliam said. “So to suggest that we as an administration do not see and value this community is frankly untrue.”

She said working in a university community, however, “means that people have lots of different ideas and the privilege of being in an academic community is you get to say what you want no matter how wrong headed it is.”

“ But you speak as an individual,” Gilliam added. “We have time, place, and manner of rules, and these are content neutral. And so we’ve decided that if you have the privilege of having a window that faces campus, you don’t get the privilege of speaking for the university.”

Gilliam’s remarks come days after several faculty members sent her a letter decryingthe removal of pride flags from several windows, including one at the Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies department.

Some professors said they received prior warning from the administration to remove their pride flags under a BU policy that prohibits any placard, banner or sign to be posted where the public could see it unless it’s in an approved location like a “Free Expression Board.”

The BU chapter of the faculty union American Association of University Professors sent a letter to Gilliam on Monday, urging a reversal of the policy. They also sent her a document listing at least a dozen examples in which they said the administration had chilled free expression around campus in the past year, including imposing discipline for actions taken by members of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine.

Here we have a clash between free expression and institutional neutrality.  It’s a tough one, and even the University of Chicago’s policy is not completely clear.  As far as the flags go, it depends on whether they were flying from University flagpoles. Although any rational person is in favor of gay rights, being on that side remains a moral and ideological position. An institutionally neutral university can say that it doesn’t discriminate against people based on sexual orientation, but flying Pride flags probably violates institutional neutrality.  Likewise, I think Pride flags displayed in administrative offices of the University, like in the windows of a President or Dean, violates institutional neutrality. This was the policy of the University of Chicago when the dean’s office at our Divinity school had a keffiyeh on display (yes, the Div school seems pro-Palestinian to me), and it could be seen by students entering the office or looking at the window from outside. It was removed. Likewise, I’m told that a faculty member was forced to remove a sign saying “Deport Israelis” on their office door probably because it advocated discrimination against national origin/religion and thus violated the Civil Rights act. On the other hand, a faculty member can stand in the quad with a sign saying the same thing, or “Gas the Jews,” and the University would probably do nothing about it, as that is individual free expression, not an expression of institutional values. 

*I cringed when I saw, on last night’s news, that Trump made a joke about Pearl Harbor when he met with the Prime Minister of Japan.

For decades, American presidents have avoided speaking harshly about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, eager to focus instead on deepening ties with Tokyo, which has been a steadfast ally since World War II.

Not so with President Trump.

At an otherwise congenial meeting with Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday, Mr. Trump invoked the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, which led the United States into World War II. He was responding to a question from a reporter about why Japan and other allies had received no advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran.

“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” he said. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?”

There was some laughter from the officials and journalists gathered in the room. “You believe in surprise, I think, much more so than us,” he added.

As Mr. Trump spoke, Ms. Takaichi widened her eyes and appeared to take a deep breath. She kept her arms crossed in her lap and did not speak.

The remark was the latest example of Mr. Trump’s penchant for tossing aside diplomatic norms.

After the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman used the attack on Pearl Harbor to justify American efforts to remake Japanese society and to impose a pacifist Constitution. (The United States led the Allies’ occupation of Japan from 1945 until 1952.) The Constitution forced Japan to renounce war and put limits on its military, making Tokyo reliant on the United States for protection.

But during the Cold War, the United States shifted its official portrayal of the attack, describing it as a historical tragedy rather than pointing fingers at Japan. American officials were eager to keep Tokyo as an ally as communism spread in Asia, and to form security and economic pacts.

Here’s a video of the cringeworthy statement, and you can see Takaichi’s reaction.  Japan is a valuable ally now, and may be even more so if (or rather, when) China goes after Taiwan. There’s no sense in alienating the country with gaffes like Trump. It’s like the old joke, “Why did Bach have so many children?” The answer is, “Because his organ had no stops.” In Trump’s case, the organ is his tongue.

 

*As usual on Fridays, I’ll post a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news-and-snark column at the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: Bring them back from Palm Beach.”

→ This bakery feels a little Jewish, if you ask me: There’s a bakery chain in England called Gail’s, founded by an Israeli British woman, and later bought by Bain Capital. But it was founded by an Israeli British woman. So it is constantly protested, splattered with red paint, windows smashed and such. And still Gail’s has the gall to expand, even expanding to an area with a Palestinian-owned café. Here’s how The Guardian described that: “Even though Gail’s describes itself as ‘a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK,’ its very presence 20 meters away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.” That’s exactly what I think when I see a pain au chocolat made by someone who once knew a Jewish person. And in related but non-bakery news, Belgium is deploying the military to protect Jewish spaces. (My bet is they don’t have enough cops willing to do it.)

→ Shoplifting for revolution: Activists across Britain staged a coordinated shoplifting spree, calling it “liberating” food from supermarkets. Take Back Power—basically the sequel to Just Stop Oil—hit Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Morrisons across three cities this past Saturday, calling it a “non-violent action to resist” billionaires hoarding wealth. Labeling cardboard boxes full of food with “these things are going to those who need them,” they gave them to food banks and members of the public. Watch one of them explain their actions here, but basically there’s an idea that holding food hostage in a store is inherently illicit. (Wait till they see the squalid living conditions of toothpaste on a CVS shelf.) It might make sense if we all agree to eat porridge except for a little shaving of chicken skin on Sundays. But how do we expect society to sustain my $27 anchovy three-pack? I’m not going to even talk about my cultured French butter. What’s your plan for me, guys? After I’ve liberated all my anchovy packs, who is gathering more?

→ NYC bond ratings in trouble: New York City’s new socialist mayor is getting kicked in the shins by credit agencies. An analysis by S&P Global Ratings said that Mamdani’s budget plan “could make it difficult to sustain budgetary balance beyond fiscal years 2026 and 2027.”

And Moody’s changed its outlook on the city’s finances from “stable” 😐 to “negative.” :/

Mamdani is trying to get tax revenue up—and fast. One of his ideas is an “overhaul” of New York State’s estate tax. Bring it to 50 percent! His recommendation is for the state to lower the exemption of $7.35 million to $750K and raise the top rate from 16 percent to 50 percent. So I need to be very clear: You cannot die in New York. Do not do it. As soon as you feel a little ache in your knees or see a few age spots on the back of your hands, you need to move out of New York immediately. Here’s Kathy Hochul this week encouraging people to stay in New York to pay taxes—and asking them to please bring their friends back from Florida.

I need people who are high-net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state. Right? Now, there are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. Okay, cut me the checks. If you want to be supportive, but maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded. . . . And I would say remote work changed everything. There were people who could only work in an office in Manhattan or work in New York State and they were captives to our state. They were going to stay. We saw that that’s not the case.

In other words: Tell them it’s fun here!! I know the mayor’s wife is kinda Hamas, but seriously come back, it’s actually fun now. I would tell you if it wasn’t fun.

* You may remember that Rama Duwaji, the wife of NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, was criticized for celebrating terrorism—in the form of “liking” social-media posts that celebrated Palestinian terrorism.  Hizzoner responded (quote from the Times of Israel), and now there’s a new allegation:

“My wife is the love of my life,” Mamdani said at a press conference when asked about the social media activity, “and she’s also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall.”

Last week, another report found that Duwaji illustrated a book for a prominent anti-Zionist writer, Susan Abulhawa, who has called Jews “supremacist vampires,” supported terrorism against Israelis and made other antisemitic statements.

Inflammatory social media activity by members of Mamdani’s staff and inner circle, much of it directed at Israel, has caused repeated controversy since he launched his run for mayor last year.

There’s little doubt that Mamdami’s wife is an antisemite and promoter of anti-Israel terrorism, and I have equally little doubt that Mamdami himself is an Islamist and is also antisemitic. I also doubt whether he’ll keep his promises about childcare, public transit, and city-run grocery stores—the promises that got him elected (even Jews voted for him!).  But we shall see.

At any rate, Luana sent me this tweet; noting that Duwaji closed her account (it was this month). There were also homophobic and “n-word” tweets from 2013.  The second tweet below was taken from The Onion:

pic.twitter.com/MEbVMF2yHP

— UGAALF (@ugaalf1) March 19, 2026

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s maintaining her privacy:​

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

From Kitty Litterposting. Is this real?

 

From Give Me a Sign:

From Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit (remember about cats and hair ties from yesterday, though):

From Masih. It’s ineffably sad to see these young men when they were still alive, and now they’ve been hanged—simply for protesting.

Six years ago, when regime in Iran hanged wrestler Navid Afkari, I launched the United for Navid campaign alongside 50 athletes and activists. We warned the world. No action.
Now it’s happening again.
More protesters. More athletes. On death row.

This time, please don’t look… pic.twitter.com/gdtUja5BJd

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 20, 2026

From Luana, a tweet showing how much more religious America is than Europe. Even Catholic Ireland is less religious than Maine!

The least religious state in the United States is Maine – 55% of people claim no religious affiliation.

However, there are six European countries who are more secular:
Netherlands
Sweden
Norway
Belgium
United Kingdom
Iceland pic.twitter.com/SEM17LBGX4

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) March 20, 2026

Don’t say that this is antiwoke stupidity, for there is indeed a forthcoming book arguing that Shakespeare was a black woman, and a Jewish black woman!

Shakespeare was a black woman. Deal with it.

My latest column for @TheCriticMag.https://t.co/WnMjUYvYI5

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) March 18, 2026

Two from my feed.  First, a real ailurophile:

Next level. 😂 pic.twitter.com/9jyCLRYgtT

— The Figen (@TheFigen_) March 19, 2026

From Brianna Wu, a diehard Democrat:

What do I expect her to do?

I expect her to hold a press conference, and unequivocally denounce the Jew violence she glorified. I expect her to show shame for feeling glee at Jews being forced to dig their own graves by terrorists.

I expect her to cry about what happened to… pic.twitter.com/dCAvkgzpwb

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) March 20, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Czech Jewish boy was murdered at 14 years old in Auschwitz, but managed to write a poem in the camps.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-03-21T10:15:39.151Z

 

Two from Dr. Cobb. I like the first one:

— Kenny Logins (@kennylogins.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T13:11:58.344Z

. . . and a lovely fox (we love foxes):

Magnificent . Today’s #FoxOfTheDay from @ antoniasalter.co.uk

— Chris Packham (@chrisgpackham.bsky.social) 2026-03-19T07:01:02.003Z