German high court affirms that Kuwait airlines can discriminate against Israeli passengers flying from Germany

October 1, 2018 • 12:15 pm

Here are two articles that both say the same thing (I’m putting up the Reuters piece because posting only The Tablet piece would lead some to say, “Well, that’s just a Jewish site kvetching about Jewish mistreatment.”

Reuters:

The Tablet:

The short story: an Israeli passenger tried to book a trip from Frankfurt to Bangkok in 2016 on Kuwait Airways. The airline refused to sell the passenger a ticket because Kuwait Airways—and I didn’t know this—won’t transport Israeli passengers. And that’s because Kuwait has a law prohibiting its companies from doing any business with Israeli citizens.

The passenger, who is unnamed, sued.  A Frankfurt court ruled for the airline last year, which outraged many Germans. Subsequently, the passenger, with support from Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, appealed.  A week ago the German High Court of Hesse affirmed the lower court decision, though it found Kuwaiti policy reprehensible. As The Tablet reports:

Critically, the [High Court] court was sympathetic to M’s plight. In a hearing on Sept. 6th, the court made clear that it shared the view of Nathan Gelbart, German counsel of The Lawfare Project acting for M, that this Kuwaiti law must not be applied in Germany as it contradicts important German values, including the value of friendship towards the State of Israel.

But the dispositive factor was a logistic one:

Factually, however, the court said, M would not be able to leave the first plane after it landed in Kuwait, because the transit area of the airport is under the territorial integrity of Kuwait. Put simply, the court seems to have dismissed the claim on the practical ground that it has no jurisdiction over  the anti-Semitic laws in Kuwait that would prevent an Israeli from disembarking a plane in the country, even if only to catch a connecting flight in the airport.

Well, fine. But I don’t agree with this decision, which amounts to Germany endorsing anti-Semitic policies of another country, and being complicit in them.

Soothing words of the High Court aren’t enough. Germany, especially with its sensitive history vis-à-vis the Jews, needs to take action to free it from complicity in bigotry. Germany should simply tell Kuwait Airlines that so long as they have that policy, they cannot land in Germany.

And I’d suggest the same thing if an airline refused to carry women, or passengers from any country. This may inconvenience some non-Israeli people in Germany, who have to find other ways to get to Kuwait, but that’s just too damn bad. An international carrier that discriminates against carrying passengers of any national origin, sex, or ethnicity, should not be able to operate from a democratic country.

h/t: Orli

BBC: 62% of UK adults (and nearly 75% of young Brits) think miracles are possible

October 1, 2018 • 9:30 am

The other day I posted a list of the percentage of all Americans who believe various supernatural truth claims of Abrahamic religions. The proportion of Yanks who accept things like a personal God, miracles, heaven and hell, angels, the resurrection of Jesus, and so on, ranges between 54% and 72%. Brits, famously more secular than Americans, usually rank lower (i.e., more rationally) on these polls, but a new study commissioned by the BBC suggests that Brits are more credulous than I thought. Click on the screenshot to see the short article:

The survey was taken by telephone of 2002 British adults in August, and here’s their summary of the results (direct quote):

  • 62% of British adults believe some form of miracle is possible today
  • Nearly three-quarters aged 18-24 say they believe some form of miracle is possible today, more than any other age group
  • 43% say they have prayed for a miracle
  • 37% of British adults who attend a religious service at least monthly say they believe the miracles of Jesus happened word for word as described in the Bible
  • Half of this group say they have prayed for a miracle which was answered in the way they had hoped
  • But 37% of Christians have never prayed for a miracle

I’ll add these data in the article:

  • 59% of those who identify as Christian have prayed for a miracle
  • Half of those who have prayed (29% total) said their prayer was answered “in the way they hoped.” (That is, God said “Yes” instead of “No,” which could also count as an answer from above.)

The higher proportion of miracle-believers among young folk than adults suggests either that Britain is becoming more religious, which goes against all the data, or that the striplings haven’t yet come to their senses. As for the 43% of British adults who have prayed for a miracle, well, that’s just bizarre.

The article goes on to quote some believers who experienced or accept miracles, but then we hear of an accommodationist Sophisticated Theologian™ who thinks miracles are just metaphors:

Monsignor Peter Fleetwood, a Catholic hospital chaplain in Liverpool, says families will ask him to pray for a miracle to bring someone back from the brink of death.

He believes in those cases a miracle would be a terrible thing because it would be prolonging a life that is already at its natural end.

He also thinks you can be a Christian and interpret the miracles of Jesus in a different light.

He uses the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 – where Jesus fed a crowd with five loaves and two fish, as an example of how spontaneous generosity can cause a sense of wonder.

“One explanation may be that he inspired people to share what they had with them in their baskets,” he explains.

“So rather than magically producing food, it’s making food appear in another way. There are all sorts of ways it can be seen and still be wonderful.”

Well, Monsignor Fleetwood is reading his Bible VERY metaphorically, for here, from the King James Version, is Matthew 14:13-21 (my emphasis):

13 When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart: and when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities.

14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.

16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.

17 And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.

18 He said, Bring them hither to me.

19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

That isn’t an outburst of generosity! The people didn’t HAVE food with them. They were hungry, and Jesus, after praying to God, miraculously turned two fishes and five loaves into enough noms to feed 5,000 people!

If the good Monsignor thinks that’s just a metaphor, then why couldn’t the entire Bible, including the Resurrection of Christ, be a metaphor, too? (I could argue that the Resurrection was just a metaphor for the spread of Christianity after its founding figure had been killed.) I love to watch these religionists pick cherries from the Bible.

This year’s Physiology or Medicine Nobel goes to two cancer researchers (and a contest)

October 1, 2018 • 8:15 am

Here’s the video announcing today’s Nobel Prize, awarded to James P. Allison, an American who works at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Tasuko Honjo, a Japanese immunologist at Kyoto University, for the discovery of ways to cöopt the human immune system to attack cancer cells.  (See announcement and press release here).

Here are the winners, and the long announcement is below:

James P. Allison
Tasuko Honjo

 

I thought that some CRISPR workers would win the prize this year, but I suppose that a.) it needs to be proven to work in humans given that the prize is for work relevant to our own species, and b.) there are several contenders, more than the three allowed to share a prize.

We’ll also have a contest, which is open until 5 a.m. tomorrow. Please post below your guesses for the winners in these TWO categories for 2018:

  • Chemistry
  • Physics
  • Literature NOTE: Literature prize not awarded this year.

The science prizes may be shared, but you will be counted as “correct” if you give a single winner in the group. But if you give an incorrect name among several winners, that won’t be counted as a correct answer.  The first person to get a correct answer in all three categories will win an autographed copy of my book (either trade book of your choice), with a Nobel cat drawn inside. Last year, as I recall, there were no winners. The literature category is always hard! However, that category is not being filled in 2018 because of a sexual assault scandal.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 1, 2018 • 7:45 am

Do send me your good wildlife photos; I’m getting a bit nervous as the tank runs low. . .

First up today is reader Barbara Wilson, who sent photos of ducks (!!!) and blackbirds. Her words are indented:

Surf scoters (Melanitta perspicillata) are by far the most common near-shore sea ducks on the Oregon Coast.  The bill colors of the males are odd.  These birds are often called skunk ducks, for what should be obvious reasons.  Surf Scoters eat invertebrates, fish eggs, and anything else that’s handy from the sea bottom.  This flock was resting between the jetties at Yaquina Bay, Newport, Oregon.

JAC: These are some weird-looking ducks. Here are a male and a female, taken from Wikipedia:

Brewer’s Blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) are common around ranches and rest areas in the west.  These were photographed in a rest area on I-5 in Oregon, where they were moderately tame.  The male looks black with a pale eye, but as you can see, in good light it shines purple and blue.  The female is dark brown with a black eye.  These birds eat seeds and insects, and diverse trash.

And from reader Tim Anderson in Oz:

Herewith is a short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), which I encountered wandering about in the Warrumbungle Ranges.

Monday: Hili dialogue

October 1, 2018 • 6:45 am

As Thomas Wolfe said, “October has come again, has come again. . . “. Yes, it’s Monday, October 1, and, as usual, I’ll post Thomas Wolfe’s paean to the month from Chapter 39 of Of Time and the River. Wolfe was an uneven novelist, but often a great writer, and this is great prose:

It’s also National Pumpkin Spice Day, and I suppose those dreadful Starbucks concoctions, the Pumpkin Spice Lattes, will soon be appearing.  It’s also International Day of Older Persons, but they don’t define what “older” means. Older than what?

This week we’ll feature the Cheezburger site’s “Typical week through the eyes of a cat”, which happens to be my favorite wild felid, Pallas’s cat. Here’s the Monday entry (h/t Su):

I’m saddened to report that the rose-breasted grosbeak female that I “rescued” and handed over to the wildlife rehabbers died only an hour after it was picked up. It apparently had internal injuries and was bleeding a bit from the beak. It probably flew into a window. These things hit me hard. Although one person told me, “Thousands of birds die in collisions every year,” that lovely bird’s life was all that it had. A big thank you to the volunteers at the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors and to the people at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center.

On this day in 1861, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management was published. It sold 60,000 copies in its first year and remains in print today. Exactly 30 years later, Stanford University opened for business. On October 1, 1908, Ford Model Ts went on sale for $825. For 1913 dollars (the earliest I could get data on), that’s the equivalent of $21,000.   On this day in 1918, Arab forces led by T. E. Lawrence captured Damascus.  After the takeover, the Arab tribes fought for control of the city. Here’s a clip from “Lawrence of Arabia” showing the dissension.

On this day in 1946, Nazi war criminals were sentenced at the Nuremberg trials.  Twelve were sentenced to death and hanged on October 16. Two sentenced to death escaped the noose, but only because they were already dead (Martin Bormann died while escaping from Berlin, and Hermann Göring committed suicide).  On this day in 1964, the Free Speech Movement was launched at the University of California at Berkeley. Five years later, the Corcorde broke the sound barrier for the first time. On this day in 1975, Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier in the boxing match called “The Thriller in Manila.” Finally, on October 1, 1989, Denmark became the first country to introduce legal same-sex partnerships.

Notables born on October 1 include Annie Besant (1847), Vladimir Horowitz (1903), Bonnie Parker (1910, died 1934), Walter Matthau (1920), William Rehnquist (1924), Julie Andrews (1935), Theresa May (1956), and Mark McGwire (1963). Here are Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in 1933, a year before they were gunned down:

Only a few notables died on October 1; these include E. B. White (1985) and Tom Clancy (2013).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej tries and fails to remind Hili how good she has it:

A: You are living in a land of milk and honey.
Hili: Honey is totally redundant.
In Polish:
Ja: Żyjesz w krainie mlekiem i miodem płynącej.
Hili: Ten miód jest zupelnie niepotrzebny.

Also from the Cheezburger site, we learn how geese are made:

Some tweets from Matthew Cobb. First is a binturong or “bear cat” (Arctictis binturong). It’s a viverrid from Southeast Asia. The first time I saw one of these things in the zoo, I thought, “What the hell is that?”

This will cheer up even the grumpiest Monday hater:

https://twitter.com/xxlfunny1/status/1045309689280573440

WHAT? Only six bottles of Bordeaux??? That shows that it wasn’t a French expedition.

Orcas porpoising. Man, can those things swim!

I believe many of these are examples of convergent evolution, with the egg-eating habit evolving independently. Be sure to watch the video:

A bad science pun:

I’m not sure whether these are tuna, but when you see such a scrabble, you know that a hungry whale is about to surface: 

A hungry tuna drives a pack of prey out of the water:

Another “baitball”, this time for a fish predator:

Matthew loves these illusions. And Stewart-Williams has a new science book out.

And some lovely ceramic cats. You can buy these brooches and other of Damave’s ceramics at Etsy:

 

I hate fruit stickers

September 30, 2018 • 12:30 pm

You know what really bothers me? It’s when every single piece of fruit you buy has a sticker tightly affixed to it. And I mean tightly: tighter than Donald Trump and Putin. Despite rumors to the contrary, those stickers aren’t edible.  After lunch today I was all set to have a nice, tart Granny Smith apple that, as usual, was marred by a fruit sticker. This one was on tight, too, so when I removed it a piece of the apple peel came with it (picture below). Somehow that ruined my mood. The apple was besmirched.

A while back I heard that they were replacing these stickers with laser-embossed tags that simply inscribed the skin of the fruit. So far I haven’t seen one of them. I suppose there’s a reason for the paper things, but I don’t know what it is. Surely the human mind can devise a fruit-marking system better than this.

You want thoughtful content today? Too bad—my brain isn’t working.

 

Politics as religion: Bill Maher’s latest bit

September 30, 2018 • 11:45 am

Reader Timothy called my attention to Bill Maher’s latest monologue, delivered on the tenth anniversary of Maher’s movie “Religulous”.  His bit about Kim Jong-il not needing to defecate, and the offhand comment about it, are precious. So is Maher’s take on “Trump’s Ten Commandments.”

In fact, it’s all great, and I realized that as well as having congenial views about The Donald and religion, Maher also has impeccable comic timing.