Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 13, 2017 • 6:30 am

Good morning on Saturday, May 13, 2017. It’s another triple-header food day: National Apple Pie Day. National Fruit Cocktail Day, and National Hummus Day. I’ll have the first and third, thank you, but I haven’t even seen fruit cocktail for ages. Does it still exist? And it’s Abbotsbury Garland Day in the eponymous Dorset village: the local children make garlands, as they have since the 19th century, and gambol about like these lambs:

On this day in 1830, Ecuador became independent from the then-country of “Gran Colombia”, a huge area that has now become 7 nations. In 1846, the Mexican-American War began. On May 13, 1917, the three kids shown below reported a vision of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal, leading to the sensational delusion of Our Lady of Fátima. Later that year, another delusion occurred, the famous Miracle of the Sun, which may simply have been a sun dog or other natural phenomenon—if it was anything at all.

Lúcia Santos (left) with her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto in 1917. Only Lucia survived the flu pandemic of the next year.

On May 13, 1989, the famous student demonstrations began in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. And on this day in 1995 (May is climbing season in Nepal), Alison Hargreaves, a 33-year-old British woman, became the first woman to summit Everest without either oxygen or Sherpas. She died in August of that year while descending from the summit of K-2. This photo of her and her two children was taken right before her fatal trip::

Notables born on this day include George Braque (1882), Gil Evans (1912), Joe Louis (1914), Bea Arthur (1922), Bruce Chatwin (1940), Ritchie Valins (1941), Manning Marable and Stevie Wonder ( both 1950), and the philosopher Herman Philipse (1951; I highly recommend his 2012 book, God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason).

Those who died on this day include Fridtjof Nansen (1930), Gary Cooper (1961), Bob Wills (1975), Chet Baker (1988), and Joyce Brothers (2013). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is looking very feral today, don’t you agree?

Hili: Did you plant these dandelions?
A: No, they sneaked in by themselves.
Hili: Somebody should hunt them.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy to ty posadziłeś tu te mlecze?
A: Nie same się wkradły.
Hili: Ktoś powinien na nie zapolować.

And from The Dodo, here’s a tweet showing a cat who doesn’t want share his noms!

Friday animals: Tired bird rests on head, sugar glider reaches for the skies

May 12, 2017 • 2:30 pm

All I know of this short video is what’s in it: the boat is 16 miles offshore. I don’t know the species of the bird (readers?) nor whether it was migrating. But I’m glad it found a head to rest on.

And here’s a video that’s been made into a great tw**t. This is surely a sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps), a marsupial found in Australia and New Guinea.

https://twitter.com/catesish/status/862730600981168128

h/t: Grania

Everyday Feminism advocates violence in the cause of social justice

May 12, 2017 • 12:34 pm

The site Everyday Feminism is devoted to two things: 1. Making listicles, and 2. Telling you why you’re oppressive. It’s good for a few chuckles, but its propensity for shaming everyone also exemplifies the identity politics that are ruining the Left. Go have a look at the front page and see how many ways you’re part of the problem.

When I saw the headline below on the Everyday Feminism site (click on screenshot to go to article), I had a pretty good idea what I’d be reading.

I thought I’d be reading a call for more violence in protests. I wasn’t wrong. But it’s a deeply confused piece, as none of the reasons it gives for the conclusion below lead to that conclusion,  Here’s the conclusion first:

But we all need to be more critical about how we define violence, because we’re seeing a lot more marching, protesting, and direct action than has previously been covered in mainstream news media.

And while it might make us uncomfortable to acknowledge, violence is often a necessary tool of resistance. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can end oppression.

Well, it was only a matter of time. . .

Now the author, Kim Tran, doesn’t really specify what kind of violence is a “necessary tool of resistance”, but one gets the sense, especially from her discussion of MiloGate, that it’s okay to riot, break windows, loot, and maybe even shoot people.  Here are her “reasons” (quotes indented, emphasis the author’s):

1). Non-Violent Action Has Always Been Violent 

In other words, the Civil Rights Movement that you think of as nonviolent actually included many actions that you might consider violent.

Moreover, it’s important to note that the super nonviolent act of existing as a person of color has historically been in and of itself enough to get you killed.

Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and Black people have been continuously killed for minor – if any – offenses.

. . . It’s time to recognize that not all violence is created equal. Part of nonviolent protest has always been violent, and in fact, some of what we call “violence” might not be violence at all.

People do have the right of self defense if they’re being threatened by other people (not, however, police), but this argument fails to show why demonstrators should initiate violence.

2).  What’s Legal Isn’t Always What’s Right

A lot of people are encouraging activists to stay within the limits of the law when it comes to direct actions resisting their oppression.

If you agree with these people, you might claim that the US has mechanisms in place for state-sanctioned protests. You tell us, “don’t break windows, don’t disrupt the peace, don’t assemble without a permit,” and so on.

In other words, don’t stray from the boundaries of what the government has decided is legally permissible.

But allow me to remind people that the law has never been race neutral and often, it hasn’t been fair.

Absolutely true! Much civil disobedience during the 1960s in the service of civil rights involved illegal actions against unjust laws. But those were peaceful protests, the heart of civil disobedience. And it was the peaceful nature of those protests, and those of the Indians resisting British occupation, that helped forward their causes. Again, Tran doesn’t make a connection between illegal peaceful protest and her perceived need for illegal violent protest.

3). Civil disobedience Needs to Be Disruptive

Civil disobedience requires that we resist what looks, feels and frequently functions like the same old system we’ve grown accustomed to our entire lives.

It means we decide en mass [sic] to walk out of work or school, to strike and boycott our favorite restaurants or rideshare apps because we must interrupt the ways economic, political, and physical violence has became routine.

Well, civil disobedience needn’t always be disruptive of people’s activities, simply of their sentiments, as in lunch counter sit-ins. Regardless, though, the actions that Tran mentions here are not violent, but peaceful. That is, unless she redefines violence, which of course is what the Regressive Left wants to do so they can ban speech they don’t like.

4). Ask who Is the Least Safe–and Why

During Yiannopoulos’s talk at the University of Milwaukee, a trans student’s picture was broadcast to the crowd and mocked. Afterward, in an open letter to the administration, the student wrote: “I am done getting repeatedly abused and shit on, and expected to just take it and not be angry.”

When we spend all of our time protecting the rights to “free speech” (harassment isn’t free speech, by the way) we’re protecting the rights of racists, transphobes, and pedophile apologists at the cost of the marginalized people who actually matter in this equation.

We need to ask, who is the most unsafe here? Is it the millionaire white person with a fetish for dating Black men, or is it the trans, undocumented student whose life will be made a living hell when they’re outed to a room of 900 white supremacists?

. . . What I’m calling for isn’t a form of the oppression olympics in which we rate everyone’s level of marginalization.

I’m asking that we consider how some people at any given moment will bear the brunt of a racism, transphobia, and heteropatriarchy unevenly and that those of us with the relative ability to do so must show up to be in solidarity with them as needed.

So here we get to free speech, which appears to be “hate speech” that Tran doesn’t like.  And yes, I criticized Milo for publicizing a trans student in one of his college talks. That was reprehensible, but it was not violence, and it didn’t justify violence at Berkeley. Real violence involves physical damage to people and/or property, and there’s no excuse to commit it.  Sitting down at lunch counters isn’t violence. Chaining yourself to a tree about to be logged isn’t violence. Blocking entrances to nuclear weapons sites isn’t violence.Hitting someone or damaging property is violence, and is best abjured if you seek justice.

None of the four points made by Tran go even a millimeter to justify her conclusion, “violence is often a necessary tool of resistance.”  But I can’t help but feel she thinks it does, and the “violence” she’s calling for is real violence, not hate speech.

Regressive Left blames Israel for American police shooting blacks

May 12, 2017 • 10:15 am

Yes, the source of this article, Legal Insurrection, seems to be largely a right-wing site, but who else calls out the Regressive Left these days? Check the facts rather than dismissing them based on the source.

William Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School, has new piece on the site (he’s its main author, I think): “New campus blood libel: Israel responsible for U.S. police shootings of blacks.” It’s based on a weird new form of “anti-intersectionality,” in which Israel (ergo Jews) are held responsible for the killing of blacks by American police because some American police chiefs go to Israel to be trained. The argument (see below) implies that these chiefs then go back to America and somehow train their beat cops in techniques of torture and killing used to target blacks.

This is palpable nonsense. As Jacobson notes, some US police chiefs and detectives (by no means thousands of them!) go to Israel every year, and they’re trained in anti-terrorism techniques and crowd control, something that actually might be useful to know in the U.S. And I don’t see blacks as particularly prone to terrorism, so the connection between this training and the murder of blacks by U.S. police—which does happen, though I’m not convinced of endemic racism in most U.S. police departments—is pure fantasy. Seriously, is this training meant to oppress black people?

Here’s some of the training they receive:

In 2002, Los Angeles Police Department detective Ralph Morten visited Israel to recieve training and advice on preparing security arrangements for large public gatherings.  From lessons learned on his trip, Det. Morten prepared a new Homicide Bomber Prevention Protocol and was better able to secure the Academy Awards presentation.

In January 2003, thirty-three senior U.S. law enforcement officials – from Washington, Chicago, Kansas City, Boston and Philadelphia – traveled to Israel to attend a meeting on “Law Enforcement in the Era of Global Terror.”  The workshops helped build skills in identifying terrorist cells, enlisting public support for the fight against terrorism and coping with the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

“We went to the country that’s been dealing with the issue for 30 years,” Boston Police Commissioner Paul F. Evans said. “The police are the front line in the battle against terrorism. We were there to learn from them – their response, their efforts to deter it. They touched all the bases.”

“I think it’s invaluable,” said Washington, DC Police Chief Charles Ramsey about the instruction he received in Israel. “They have so much more experience in dealing with this than we do in the United States.”

If you’re going to blame that training on the cases in which cops have unjustly murdered blacks, you have to make a better connection than that!

Jacobson’s piece, which has links so you can check his assertions, gives several examples of this tortured and false connection between Israel and police murder. Here’s a tw**t but the notorious loon C. J. W*rl*m*an, who is apparently still making a living from anti-Semitism and apologetics for Islam, blames Israel for the death of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge (Louisiana) police:

Second, the organization “Jewish Voice for Peace”(JVP), a left-wing organization that is basically anti-Israel, has a new project, launched at a conference in Chicago, that targets these exchange programs, saying this;

We introduce our campaign: Deadly Exchange: Ending US-Israel Police Exchanges, Reclaiming Safety One of the most dangerous places where the far-right regimes of Trump and Netanyahu converge are in exchange programs that bring together police, ICE, border patrol, and FBI from the US with soldiers, police, and border agents from Israel. In these programs, worst practices are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing in both countries including extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportation and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders.

The Forward reports on a JVP meeting in Chicago:

Over the weekend’s discussions and workshops, JVP members tried to figure out what they, personally, could do to support the Palestinian cause from their American base. Deadly Exchange, one of JVP’s newest projects, will target the exchange programs between American police forces and the IDF where they two groups, in the words of JVP deputy director Stefanie Fox, share “worst practices.”

“They practice torture, surveillance and spying,” she said, “which is all brought to bear against Palestinians and people of color.”

Finally, as Jacobson reports, the student government of the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus at Madison passed a divestment resolution (during Passover, so that Jewish students wouldn’t come) which said this:

That last sentence, in particular, is completely unsupported by evidence.

Here we see an attempt to use the Black Lives Matter movement (a movement that has some worthy motivations) to demonize Israel, thus linking two Leftist sentiments. It’s a pity, because Jews have been among the strongest supporters of civil rights in America. It’s also a shame that these Leftists overlook the fact that Palestine’s laws are anti-woman, anti-Jewish, and anti-atheist, and the practices are anti-gay. If any state is an apartheid state, it’s Palestine. But I’ll say it again: because Muslims (and not Jews) are considered People of Color, these regressive traits are ignored when Israel is demonized.

Trump threatens Comey on Twitter

May 12, 2017 • 9:45 am

It’s so sad watching a demented clown ruin whatever reputation the U.S. ever had by emitting threats and other idiocy on Twitter. He’s already mimicking Nixon by firing FBI director James Comey in a “Saturday Night Massacre“-like act. This morning he carried the parallel with Nixon further:

And then threats to cancel press briefings:

Yeah, that will keep U.S. citizens better informed!

Stephen Fry on Trump and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

May 12, 2017 • 8:30 am

Now here’s a 7-minute video featuring two intriguing people: one smart and funny, and the other the incompetent victim of the former’s sarcasm. I speak, of course, of Stephen Fry and Donald Trump,  respectively, with Fry discussing whether Trump illustrates the Dunning-Kruger Effect: the observation that individuals of low ability tend to overestimate their competence more than do individuals of higher abilities. Lest this all depress you, note that Fry ends with a positive message.

The video, narrated by Fry, was put together by Pindex, and the YouTube notes are below.

For grins, here’s a screenshot showing Trump’s proposed budget changes:

Strange illusions shape Trumps views. In trying to protect America, he may unleash a killer that already claims 200,000 lives each year.

Voiced by Stephen Fry
Music by Hugh Mitchell: https://audiojungle.net/user/hughmitc…

Pindex.com is a pinboard for learning. If you’re a teacher, there are many engaging Science, History and English boards ready to assign, with quizzes and rewards.

Cognitive biases:
Salience bias (1.01): https://youtu.be/rW9R6jgE7SQ?t=60
The mere exposure effect (2.36): https://youtu.be/rW9R6jgE7SQ?t=156

Health and economic benefits of reduced air pollution (the EPA Clean Air Act):
https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-ove…

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 12, 2017 • 7:30 am

Ants are more than a picnic pest, but have their own beauty. Reader Tony Eales shows us some lovely pismires from Australia. His notes are indented:

Ants. I don’t personally know a lot about ants but I do find them fascinating, if challenging, photographic subjects. Because of my arthritis all these species are typically found running up and down the trunks of trees (except for the Rhytidoponera). The one nearly every child in my area knows about are the Rhytidoponera metallica as they are very common in grassy parks where children play and sit and they deliver a memorable sting. My favourites are the golden and silver Polyrhachis which are large, fairly common and not very aggressive. The group is in dire need of a re-classification and the experts will usually just say Polyrhachis sp. Rather than commit to a species name.

Myrmecia nigrocincta:

[JAC: read the link to see why this is called the “jumper ant”.]

Podomyrma gratiosa:

Polyrhachis (Hagiomyrma) sp1:

Polyrhachis (Hagiomyrma) sp2:

Polyrhachis (Hagiomyrma) sp3:

Rhytidoponera metallica [green-head ant]:

Rhytidonoponera sp.:

Tetraponera sp. [“slender ants”]: