Wednesday: Hili dialogue

October 10, 2018 • 7:02 am

It’s Hump Day: Wednesday, October 10, 2018. It’s also National Angel Food Cake Day (I love the stuff, especially when made with fresh strawberry icing), as well as World Mental Health Day.

I’ll be leaving for Croatia tomorrow and posting will be light for a week. But Grania, peace be upon her, has agreed to do the Hili dialogues during my absence, so give thanks to her.

Not much happened on this day in history. Again, as with yesterday, Wikipedia says that in 1582,  “Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.” This day does not exist!!! On this day in 1871, the Chicago fire, begun October 8, after a barn accident (probably not Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lantern) burned out.  300 people died and 3.3 square miles of the city was destroyed, leaving over 100,000 people homeless. On October 10, 1928, Chiang Kai-shek became Chairman of the Republic of China. In 1938, the Munich Agreement, an act of craven appeasement, ceded the Sudetenland (the German-speaking moiety of Czechoslovakia) to the Nazis. “Peace in our time,” bleated the failed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. That peace lasted less than a year.  On October 10, 1971, London Bridge, sold to the Americans and moved to the U.S., opened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. This is London Bridge, not the Tower Bridge; here’s the difference.

London Bridge in its new home:

Tower Bridge, which everyone thinks is London Bridge:

On this day in 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with evading federal income tax. He never saw the inside of a jail, and died in 1996. Finally, on this day in 1985, U.S. naval fighter jets intercepted an Egyptian plane carrying members of the Palestine Liberation Front who were on their way to Tunisia. The jets forced the plane to land in Italy, where the hijackers were tried, paroled, released to Yugoslavia, and disappeared. I don’t know if Mossad ever tracked them down, but I don’t think so.

Notables born on this day include Giuseppi Verdi (1813), Alberto Giacometti (1901), two jazz musicians, Harry Edison (1915) and Thelonious Monk (1917), Harold Pinter (1930), John Prine (1946), Tanya Tucker (1958), Julia Sweeney (1959), and Daniel Pearl (1963, beheaded 2002).

Those who expired on October 10 include Abel Tasman (1659), Edith Piaf (1963), Yul Brynner and Orson Welles (both 1985), and my Chicago colleague Wayne C. Booth (2005).

Brynner, who had smoked since age 12, quit in 1971 but it was too late. He died of lung cancer 14 years later, and, as he was dying he made this commercial to deter people from smoking:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is auditioning for the role of Henri The Existentialist Cat:

Hili: I don’t see any sense in life.
A: You are looking in the wrong direction.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie widzę żadnego sensu życia.
Ja: Patrzysz w złą stronę.
Here’s a cartoon from reader Su:

 

A tweet from reader George; how could somebody be this muddled?:

https://twitter.com/_SJPeace_/status/1049431085405360128

Tweets from Heather Hastie. Who woulda thought that Noam Chomsky would come out against Antifa? In the tweet below that, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan decries the Offense Culture:

From Heather via Ann German: Is this a case of “monkey see, monkey do,” or was the gorilla trained to do this?

https://twitter.com/Koksalakn/status/1040981206874112001

Also via Ann German: Steve Stewart-Williams sends an illusion that Matthew will love:

Tweets from Matthew: Auden’s translation of the 9th century poem Pangur Bán, by an Irish monk (original test here).  I had a black cat for 18 years named Pangur after this poem.

A true fact, though it should be the singular “larva”:

Tweets from Grania. This one is a jawdropper:

Good morning, neko-san!

Man bites dog!

A refreshing ad. After all, who really cares (except HuffPo) that Taylor Swift endorsed a Democrat?

ZeFrank on bobbit worms

October 9, 2018 • 3:00 pm

I leave in haste, but will be back tomorrow. In the meantime, have a look at the latest “True Facts about Bobbit Worms and Pals”, which shows these amazing and lovely invertebrates. It’s almost like a Whack-A-Worm show. Read about Bobbit Worms here, and be sure to see the anecdote about Barry the Worm. Despite the persiflage, there’s some great video here.

Emily Yoffe on how to adjudicate claims of sexual misconduct

October 9, 2018 • 1:15 pm

Over at The Atlantic, Emily Yoffe, who used to do the Dear Prudence column for Slate (a feature I quite liked), has since moved on, reporting extensively for The Atlantic on sexual assault allegations, particularly in colleges. Like me, she’s worried about the lack of proper adjudication in colleges that arrived after Obama’s well-intentioned “Dear Colleague” letter, and removed many of what I see as the “rights” of accused people. This goes along with my discomfort about the #BelieveSurvivors hashtag, which takes accusations as equivalent to truth. (If a survivor of sexual assault has a credible story, especially in court, then yes, you’d believe them, but “survivors” are lately construed as those who claim to have been assaulted.)

Yoffe walks the line between fairness for both women and the accused; as she notes, she herself has been sexually assaulted more than once.  Her new article in The Atlantic, which you can get by clicking on the screenshot, is worth reading to calm the waters a bit.

Yoffe’s theme isn’t surprising, but is sufficiently inflammatory these days that even saying it makes you subject to accusations of sexism (For instance, calling attention to the deleterious effects of false accusations on men’s lives is verboten):

. . . when a woman, in telling her story, makes an allegation against a specific man, a different set of obligations kick in.

Even as we must treat accusers with seriousness and dignity, we must hear out the accused fairly and respectfully, and recognize the potential lifetime consequences that such an allegation can bring. If believing the woman is the beginning and the end of a search for the truth, then we have left the realm of justice for religion.

. . . Whether an investigation takes place at a school, at a workplace, or in the criminal-justice system, neutral fact-finding must apply, regardless of how disturbing we find the offense, the group identity of the accused, or the political leanings of those involved. History demonstrates that ascribing honesty or dishonesty, criminality or righteousness solely on the basis of gender or race doesn’t increase the amount of equity in the world.

She gives some examples of “the realm of religion”, which involves both parties, but she’s particularly incensed by the preconceived conclusions of Democrats. (I hasten to add here that yes, I found Christine Ford’s accusations credible, but would have voted against Kavanaugh anyway based on his record and his unhinged demeanor on view during the hearings. And Republicans had just as many preconceptions as Democrats.)

In one sense, the hearing was theater, not fact-finding, because except for a handful of undecided senators, the rest had already made up their mind about the accusation based entirely on their desire to either seat or thwart Kavanaugh. Republicans sought to discredit Ford and quash the airing of her story. President Donald Trump, in a speech Tuesday night in Mississippi, openly mocked her.

As for the Democrats, in a Senate floor speech the day before the hearing, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York announced that it was unnecessary for her to hear Kavanaugh’s testimony. Gillibrand declared, “I believe Dr. Blasey Ford.” Many Democrats, in keeping with #BelieveSurvivors, are taking their certainty about Ford’s account and extrapolating it to all accounts of all accusers. This tendency has campus echoes, too: The Obama administration’s well-intended activism on campus sexual assault resulted in reforms that went too far and failed to protect the rights of the accused.

The impulse to arrive at a predetermined conclusion is familiar to Samantha Harris, a vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (fire). Harris says that under Title IX, students who report that they are victims of sexual misconduct must be provided with staffers who advocate on their behalf. These staffers should “hear them out, believe them, and help them navigate the process,” she said, but added, “When the instruction to ‘believe them’ extends to the people who are actually adjudicating guilt or innocence, fundamental fairness is compromised.” Harris says that many Title IX proceedings have this serious flaw. As a result, in recent years, many accused students have filed lawsuits claiming that they were subjected to grossly unjust proceedings; these suits have met with increasingly favorable results in the courts.

One thing that puzzled me, though, was Yoffe’s reference to the British “scandal” in this bit, which I’ve put in bold:

We don’t even have to imagine the dangers of a system based on automatic belief—Britain recently experienced a national scandal over such policies. After widespread adoption of a rule that law enforcement must believe reports of sexual violation, police failed to properly investigate claims and ignored exculpatory evidence. Dozens of prosecutions collapsed as a result, and the head of an organization of people abused in childhood urged that the police return to a neutral stance. Biased investigations and prosecutions, he said, create miscarriages of justice that undermine the credibility of all accusers.

The legitimacy and credibility of our institutions are rapidly eroding. It is a difficult and brave thing for victims of sexual violence to step forward and exercise their rights to seek justice. When they do, we should make sure our system honors justice’s most basic principles.

When I asked Grania, she me a link to the article below, which gives the details. Click on the screenshot; I’ve put an excerpt below;

Police should refer to people who report rape as complainants rather than victims, senior legal figures said last night, amid warnings that the policy is undermining impartiality and leading to miscarriages of justice.

MPs and members of the judiciary have also called for an overhaul of the current guidelines which demand that officers automatically believe complainants from the outset.

Scotland Yard has ordered an urgent review of scores of sex abuse cases, including 30 which are about to go to trial, after it emerged that crucial material had been withheld from defence lawyers.

Two rape cases collapsed in the last week, because a detective constable in the Met’s Child Abuse and Sexual Offences (CASO) unit, failed to disclose texts messages undermining the complainants’ stories.

It raises concerns that dozens more cases could be thrown out by the courts and could potentially spark a raft of appeals by convicted rapists.

Here the police construed “survivors” as “those who complain,” which is the sense it’s been used with respect to the Kavanaugh hearings. Of course we should take every accusation seriously and investigate them (if the accuser so requests) to the limit of our ability. Just remember that “accuser” is not synonymous with “survivor.”

h/t: Grania

What’s with the blue hair?

October 9, 2018 • 10:30 am

This is just a question to dispel my ignorance. A lot of the kids, and some adults, are dyeing their hair fluorescent colors like blue, red, and green. I’ve seen it on both men and women.

Now I think it’s ugly, but that’s their choice, and I’m not going to hair-shame. Often the dyed-hair crowd comprises social-justice warriors, like the famous “Big Red” below, but I’m not sure that’s always true. My question is this.

What’s with the colored hair? Is it to show adherence to a particular ideology, or are there other reasons?

 

Palestinian murders two Israeli civilian coworkers; Palestinians celebrate by dispensing sweets and hailing the killer; Western media largely ignores the murders

October 9, 2018 • 9:15 am
Imagine, if you will, that Israeli civilians crept over the border into Palestine, where they’re not allowed to live, and killed Palestinian civilians by shooting or stabbing them, or hitting them with cars. Imagine, too, that Israelis rejoiced in the streets when this happened, and even handed out sweets to fellow Israelis in celebration. Finally, imagine that if the Israeli terrorists were caught and killed, or jailed in Palestine, the Israeli government would give their families a handsome stipend in reward for the murders.

If the world knew this to be true, Israel would (rightly) be excoriated even more than it is now. For rewarding the killing of civilians, and celebrating it in public, is beyond odious. But, in fact, this is exactly what happens in Palestine when Israeli citizens are subject to terrorist attacks and murders. Palestinians celebrate, hand out sweets, and then, in the infamous “pay for slay” program, Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO hand out generous stipends to the families of Palestinian terrorists who are jailed or killed by Israelis after terrorist attacks (see here and here).

This is exactly what happened two days ago when two Israelis who worked in a West Bank factory were shot by a Palestinian coworker (who also injured another Israeli), in a terrorist attack that has been praised by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah (see the New York Times report here). The gunman, Ashraf Naalwa, 23, is still on the loose, and the IDF is trying to track him down. He first handcuffed 28-year old-Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, a secretary, and shot her to death. He then shot another Israeli, not killing her, before dispatching Ziv Hagbi, 35, an accountant, with a shot to the head. All these people worked for the Alon Group, a waste-management company in the West Bank. Ironically, the company was well known for employing Palestinians and Israelis together, and for the (up to now) harmonious workspace.

Here are the dead:

Ziv Hagbi was also married and had children:

World reaction was predictable: Fatah (a part of the PLO, whose chairman is Abbas, also head of the Palestinian Authority) said this, blaming the incident on Israeli policy:

On the official Facebook page of Abbas’ Fatah Movement, a Fatah official blamed Israel for the murders, stating that “Israel… is incapable of protecting anyone that steals the Palestinian land” and announced that no Israeli is safe until the Palestinian people gain “its rights in its homeland.” Israel, he said, uses “terror and murder,” while he himself coined yesterday’s killing of two Israeli civilians an “operation.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 7, 2018]

Other Palestinian organizations chimed in:

The terror organization Hamas called the murders “a heroic operation” and a “natural response to the Israeli occupation’s crimes.” The terror organization Islamic Jihad also justified the attack as “natural,” and added that “the settlements are a legitimate target for people of the resistance.” The movement also called for more attacks, encouraging people to “carry out intifada against the settlement terror, until its removal and the liberation of the West Bank from the settlements and the settlers.” [Ma’an, independent Palestinian news agency, Oct. 7, 2018]

While both the Washington Post and New York Times have reported on the story, the initial Times headline gave accurate details of the incident but then carried a headline that cast some doubt on the story (they changed the headline, but if the first report was accurate, why the headline?):

I find no mention of this killing in Salon, Slate, or HuffPo, though it does appear in Breitbart, the Daily Wire, and The Daily Mail.  But of course had it been an Israeli who killed two Palestinian civilians, it would have been everywhere.

You won’t find many left-wing bloggers dealing with this. Indeed, the screenshot below (click on it to go to article) shows three other UK sites that have ignored the incident as well as a recent and similar attack:

It’s especially bad because, as usual, Palestinians handed out sweets in the street to celebrate the killings. This is disgusting and reprehensible behavior, but unfortunately ubiquitous in Palestine. (See other pictures of Palestinians celebrating terrorism by giving out sweets here.) The Palestine-loving Left ignores this behavior as part of the racism of low expectations. But of course if Israelis did it, or rewarded the killing of civilians, it would be all over the media.

 

If Naalwa is caught, as he almost certainly will be, his family will get lots of money (see here, here, here, and here for descriptions of the “pay for slay” program (aka “The Martyrs Fund”) of the PLO, which is subsidized by foreign donations that free the PLO to use its own money for paying “martyrs”.

The celebration of the murders by Abbas’s organization and by Hamas, and the payment of stipends to Palestinian murderers who are caught or killed, does nothing less than encourage further murders, as does the religiously-promoted notion that one achieves “martyrdom” by killing Jews. (The PLO stipends are given out to Palestinians who kill Jews, Jewish tourists, and even non-Jewish American tourists in Israel.

When I posted a notice about this on my personal Facebook page, decrying the hypocrisy that celebrates all that is Palestine while demonizing all that is Israel, and that also ignores these nefarious Palestinian deeds and policies, I got a comment typical of many American liberals (poor grammar and spelling were in the original comment):

Am I supposed to believe that the thousands of Palestinian families that have be killed by the IDF are of no value by comnparison with these people? That is the most blatantly racism possible.

This, my friends, is the racism (or bigotry if you will) of low expectations. This kind of belief means that any killing of Israeli civilians can be justified. (I said nothing in my original post about the value of Palestinian lives.) Just say that “the IDF kills civilians” (it tries desperately to avoid doing that, by the way), and you’re home free: any Palestinian terrorism and murder can be justified by saying “Israel does it too.”

I am no diehard booster of Israeli policy, and I favor a two-state solution (not the one Palestinian state envisioned by groups like the BDS movement), but I am sickened by the hypocrisy of the British and American Left, who resolutely ignore officially sponsored or remunerated Palestinian terrorism and murder of civilians.

Oh, and please don’t bother to comment if you want to say that these two Israelis had it coming because of their government’s policy. That is a monstrous attitude—just as monstrous as it would be to justify the deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli terrorists because of the PA and Hamas’s policies.

 

h/t: Malgorzata

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 9, 2018 • 7:45 am

Be sure to send me photos, but please not between this Thursday and a week from Friday, as I’ll be in Croatia then.

Today’s swell photos of birds (and a squirrel as lagniappe) are from reader A. W. Savage, whose comments and IDs are indented.

Here are some photos from a few years back, all taken during a holiday spent in the area around Naples in Florida. The first two are of Loggerhead Shrikes (Lanius ludovicianus), perched out in the open, probably looking for prey.

Next, a Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus). The bird was singing loudly and took no notice as we crept up closer to get a better view.

The next five photos were all taken at Corkscrew Swamp, a wonderful reserve with boardwalks to let you thread your way amongst the swamp cypress trees without getting your feet wet! They are, in order, a Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris), a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), a Wood Stork (Mycteria americana), a Tricoloured Heron (Egretta tricolor) and a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus).

Finally, knowing your fondness for squirrels, here’s an unusual one, photographed in a small stand of trees not far from the entrance to Corkscrew Swamp. It’s a Sherman’s Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger shermani), a subspecies of Fox Squirrel found mostly in Florida and Georgia, in fire-prone areas of longleaf pine and wiregrass, especially around sandhills.  The colour is very variable, but this one was a most attractive gingery hue underneath and dark on the back. They are also very large squirrels. It was much bigger, to my eyes, than the common American Grey Squirrels now infesting most of the British Isles, or our native Red Squirrel. It appeared to be nearly three feet from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail and bulkier to match.

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

October 9, 2018 • 6:45 am

It’s Tuesday, the Cruelest Day, and October 9, 2018: National Dessert Day as well as World Post Day, commemorating the anniversary of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) which began in Switzerland in 1874. Before that, international delivery between two countries required a separate treaty and arrangements between those countries. The UPU, peace be upon them, has obviated all that.

On this day in 768, Caloman I and Charlemagne were crowned as kings of the Franks. And on October 9, 1582, according to Wikipedia, “Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.” The day does not exist!  On this day in 1701, the antecedent of Yale University, called “The Collegiate School of Connecticut” was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.  On this day in 1874, the General Postal Union (the same as the UPU) was created by the Treaty of Bern.  On October 9, 1919, the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series, but, in the “Black Sox Scandal”, it was because members of the Chicago White Sox took money to lose the Series on purpose. While none of the players were convicted in court, eight of them, including “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, were permanently barred from baseball.

On October 9, 1969, the U.S. National Guard was called out to control demonstrations and crowds protesting the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began September 24.  If you were alive then, how many of the eight can you name? (I got six). On this day in 1981, capital punishment was abolished in France.  On this day in 1986, the original production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical The Phantom of the Opera opened in London. It became London’s second longest-running musical, and can you name the first? On October 9, 2006—a day that will live in infamy—North Korea conducted its first nuclear test.  Finally, on this day six years ago, the Pakistani Taliban tried and failed to assassinate the activist schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai (Nobel Laureate)

Notables born on October 9 include Camille Saint-Saëns (1835), Alfred Dreyfus (1859), Max von Laue (1879, Nobel Laureate), Aimee Semple McPherson (1890), Horst Wessel (1907), Jill Ker Conway (1934, died this year), John Lennon (1940), Jackson Browne (1948), David Cameron (1966), and we can’t leave out Bella Hadid (1996), whose video on Nike shoes (below) always cracks me up. Rich girl as gangsta! Sex for shoes!

“If homeboy is coming through with these, it’s quiet for him. But if he comes through in like, these, you got some Air Maxes out here, you got some Jordans, homeboy’s gonna, like … get it.”

(See the memes here.)

Those who died on October 9 include only one person of note: Oskar Schindler (1974).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hungry (surprise!):

Hili: As the shadow moves my hunger is growing inside me.
A: Has it grown much?
Hili: Half a meter.
In Polish:
Hili: W miarę jak się przesuwa cień we mnie narasta głód.
Ja: I bardzo już narósł?
Hili: O pół metra.
Courtesy of reader Nilou, here are the parts of a duck. Note especially the crown, “nail,” and speculum. There will be a quiz. (James, by the way, was still here yesterday, waiting in vain for Honey. . . .)
Grania sent this, commemorating a birthday that was yesterday (watch the video; he’s singing through the guitar!):

A tweet from reader Blue, showing amazing feline paternal care:

https://twitter.com/videocats/status/1049004393880637440

Tweets from Heather Hastie. About the first one she says, “We used to do this when we were kids.”

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1048529806609055744

Her take on this: “It’s a dog, but it’s a GOOD one!”

From Ann German, fancy bricklaying:

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1047689488191967232

Tweets from Grania. The HappyCow machine resembles the “self-hugging machine” that Temple Grandin built for herself.

These poor dudes!

The Russian regime is odious, but this still surprises me:

Tweets from Matthew. This first video of reunited swans (who mate for life) is ineffably sweet:

https://twitter.com/serenepoker/status/1049140930547261440

The big one probably weighs at least four times as much as the small one:

https://twitter.com/MakoPeggy/status/1049226216992112641

“I understand.”

No comment.

https://twitter.com/ThatIgboBooy/status/1048787089180045314