Sunday: Hili dialogue

September 3, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Sunday, September 3, and greetings from Jerusalem, site of all kinds of mythical miracles. But it’s still ancient and beautiful, even if Jesus didn’t get resurrected here. Today I’ll do a bit of touring and get taken for lunch (hummus, I hope!).  The sightseeing, however, will begin in earnest tomorrow.  My jet lag enabled me to sleep 9 hours last night: a paradise.

It’s National Baby Back Ribs Day, a Chicago speciality. There are many famous places to get rib tips (pork, of course), often accompanied by hot links (big fat sausages). But the best, Uncle J’s on 47th Street, is now closed. No other place, including the reputed Lem’s and Leon’s, comes close. Here: mourn what is no more. Its closing broke my heart.

My usual order was a large tips with mild sauce; it was good for two meals.

It’s also National Skyscraper Day, National Welsh Rarebit Day, Merchant Navy Day Min the UK, and the Feast of San Marino and the Republic, celebrates the foundation of the Republic of San Marino in 301.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the September 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Jimmy Buffett, the original Parrothead, died on Friday at only 76.  It was announced on his website this way:

From the NYT:

Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76.

His death was announced in a statement on his website. The statement did not say where he died or specify a cause. Mr. Buffett had rescheduled a series of concerts this spring, saying that he had been hospitalized, although he offered no details.

Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, salt water and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads.

But my favorite song of his—by far—isn’t mentioned until later in the article, and although it was his first big hit (1974), who remembers it now. Here’s the original video, which I believe shows Buffett’s wife and his own pickup truck.

Although he had only one top-ten single (“Margaritaville, which I’m not that keen on), he was wildly popular, and his net worth this year, according to Forbes (in the article) was a billion dollars!

*A sad but true headline from the WSJ: “Trump is top choice for nearly 60% of GOP voters, WSJ poll shows.” Oy, my kishkes!

Donald Trump has expanded his dominating lead for the Republican presidential nomination, a new Wall Street Journal poll shows, as GOP primary voters overwhelmingly see his four criminal prosecutions as lacking merit and about half say the indictments fuel their support for him.

The new survey finds that what was once a two-man race for the nomination has collapsed into a lopsided contest in which Trump, for now, has no formidable challenger. The former president is the top choice of 59% of GOP primary voters, up 11 percentage points since April, when the Journal tested a slightly different field of potential and declared candidates.

Trump’s lead over his top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has nearly doubled since April to 46 percentage points. At 13% support, DeSantis is barely ahead of the rest of the field, none of whom has broken out of single-digit support.

Look and weep:

. . . and here’s the sick part:

The poll highlights one of the remarkable features of the 2024 primary race: Criminal prosecutions that in past eras might have sunk a candidate have only strengthened the leading contender. Two of Trump’s indictments involve his efforts to remain in power after his 2020 loss, which included repeated false claims of widespread election irregularities.

Asked about the indictments of Trump, more than 60% of Republican primary voters said each was politically motivated and without merit. Some 78% said Trump’s actions after the 2020 election were legitimate efforts to ensure an accurate vote, while 16% said Trump had illegally tried to block Congress from certifying an election he had lost. About half, or 48%, said the indictments made them more likely to vote for Trump in 2024, while 16% said they made them less likely to support him for a second term.

*My Chicago colleague, political scientist John Mearsheimer, who’s well known but heterodox, has written a Substack post called “Bound to lose: Ukraine’s 2023 offensive.” He thinks Ukraine will lose the war, as I recall, but here’s some of what he said in his recent essay (I’ve omitted the footnotes, and h/t: cesar):

It is now clear that Ukraine’s eagerly anticipated counteroffensive has been a colossal failure.  After three months, the Ukrainian army has made little progress pushing back the Russians. Indeed, it has yet to get beyond the so-called “grey zone,” the heavily contested strip of land that lies in front of the first main line of Russian defenses. The New York Times reports that “In the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, as much as 20 percent of the weaponry Ukraine sent to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed, according to U.S. and European officials. The toll included some of the formidable Western fighting machines — tanks and armored personnel carriers — that the Ukrainians were counting on to beat back the Russians.” According to virtually all accounts of the fighting, Ukrainian troops have suffered enormous casualties. All nine of the vaunted brigades that NATO armed and trained for the counteroffensive have been badly chewed up on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive was doomed to fail from the start. A look at the lineup of forces on both sides and what the Ukrainian army was trying to do, coupled with an understanding of the history of conventional land war, make it clear that there was virtually no chance the attacking Ukrainian forces could defeat Russia’s defending forces and achieve their political goals.

Read the piece if you want to get depressed. A bit more:

. . . many in the West will argue that the time is now ripe for diplomacy. The failed counteroffensive shows that Ukraine cannot prevail on the battlefield, so the argument will go, and thus it makes sense to reach a peace agreement with Russia, even if Kyiv and the West must make concessions. After all, the situation will only get worse for Ukraine if the war continues.

Regrettably, there is no diplomatic solution in sight. There are irreconcilable differences between the two sides over security guarantees for Ukraine and territory, which stand in the way of a meaningful peace agreement. For understandable reasons, Ukraine is deeply committed to getting back all the land it has lost to Russia, which includes Crimea and the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. But Moscow has already annexed those territories and made it clear that it has no intention of returning them to Kyiv.

The other unresolvable issue concerns Ukraine’s relationship with the West. For understandable reasons, Ukraine insists that it needs a security guarantee, which can only come from the US and NATO. Russia, on the other hand, insists that Ukraine must be neutral and must end its security relationship with the West. In fact, that issue was the main cause of the present war, even if American and European foreign policy elites refuse to believe it.[62] Moscow was unwilling to tolerate Ukraine joining NATO. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see how both sides can be satisfied on either the territorial or neutrality issue.

*A guest essay in the NYT by two physicists shows us that no, it’s not “the end of science” (regardless of what the chest-thumping John Horgan maintains): “The story of our universe may be starting to unravel.” Whaaaa?

Not long after the James Webb Space Telescope began beaming back from outer space its stunning images of planets and nebulae last year, astronomers, though dazzled, had to admit that something was amiss. Eight months later, based in part on what the telescope has revealed, it’s beginning to look as if we may need to rethink key features of the origin and development of the universe.

Launched at the end of 2021 as a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb, a tool with unmatched powers of observation, is on an exciting mission to look back in time, in effect, at the first stars and galaxies. But one of the Webb’s first major findings was exciting in an uncomfortable sense: It discovered the existence of fully formed galaxies far earlier than should have been possible according to the so-called standard model of cosmology.

According to the standard model, which is the basis for essentially all research in the field, there is a fixed and precise sequence of events that followed the Big Bang: First, the force of gravity pulled together denser regions in the cooling cosmic gas, which grew to become stars and black holes; then, the force of gravity pulled together the stars into galaxies.

. . . The Webb data, though, revealed that some very large galaxies formed really fast, in too short a time, at least according to the standard model. This was no minor discrepancy. The finding is akin to parents and their children appearing in a story when the grandparents are still children themselves.

Take the matter of how fast the universe is expanding. This is a foundational fact in cosmological science — the so-called Hubble constant — yet scientists have not been able to settle on a number. There are two main ways to calculate it: One involves measurements of the early universe (such as the sort that the Webb is providing); the other involves measurements of nearby stars in the modern universe. Despite decades of effort, these two methods continue to yield different answers.

At first, scientists expected this discrepancy to resolve as the data got better. But the problem has stubbornly persisted even as the data have gotten far more precise. And now new data from the Webb have exacerbated the problem. This trend suggests a flaw in the model, not in the data.

Two serious issues with the standard model of cosmology would be concerning enough. But the model has already been patched up numerous times over the past half century to better conform with the best available data — alterations that may well be necessary and correct, but which, in light of the problems we are now confronting, could strike a skeptic as a bit too convenient.

And we still don’t know what dark matter or dark energy is. I’m not a physicist, and so can’t judge how serious these problems are. Physicists should weigh in below.

*Finally, you’ve surely read about the Nebraska man who was given a ticket for transporting a huge Watusi bull with giant horns (named Howdy Doody)in the front seat of his car.  Here’s a video:

Now the WaPo defends this, as will all right-thinking people, in a piece called, “The Watusi bull riding shotgun is what makes America great.” (I hope Trump doesn’t coopt this MAGA trope!” An excerpt:

The nation’s unseemly recent obsession with politics and cultural strife has been an unhappy distraction from the great American pastime of wacky undertakings. Policy brings out the worst in us. The mystic chords of our better angels are strummed by episodes of loony brilliance: a man who takes flight in a lawn chair lifted by balloons; another who makes a modern Stonehenge from half-buried Cadillacs; some person who paints a monumental likeness of the Mona Lisa on the side of an isolated barn. As a boy, I was entranced by billboards advertising the World’s Largest Prairie Dog on the remote plains of western Kansas, and felt mixed disappointment and admiration when, old enough to drive at last, I pulled off to discover a weather-beaten statue some eight or 10 feet high.

In this grand tradition comes Lee Meyer. By now, there’s a good chance you’ve met him on the internet. “Full grown bull riding shotgun” is what you call clickbait, but unlike most things fitting that description, the bull in the car is even better than the tease. He is an adult male of the Watusi breed, known for their almost comically enormous horns. In the viral video, the bull appears blissful riding down the highway in the retired police cruiser that his human friend has modified to contain his tonnage. The license plate reads: “Boy & Dog.”

. . . A sedan with half the roof and windshield sliced away to make space for a large animal stall, containing a monstrous beast with a cheerful disposition, is exactly the sort of parade feature that keeps America daffy and great. Let other nations goose-step. We’ll take the shiny fire engine with little kids tossing candy from it, and the girls in braces twirling batons, and the grown men driving figure eights in tiny cars, and the eccentric neighbor who enjoys taking his pet bull for a ride.

There are, as of this writing, 1485 comments on this piece!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are on the prowl:

Szaron: We have to check the northern part of the orchard.
Hili: Try to convince me because my motivation is weak.
In Polish:
Szaron: Trzeba sprawdzić północne krańce sadu.
Hili: Spróbuj mnie przekonać, bo mam słabą motywację.

First, see this Facebook video on Jesus of the Day.

And another from that site:

Two examples of confusing English from The Absurd Sign Project 2.0:

And another:

Three from Masih. First, a hijabless Iranian woman gets tear gas sprayed in her face by the cops.  We need to hear more about this from Western feminist vehicles like Teen Vogue, a shamless apologetic for Islamist oppression of women.

Sound up:

Two more. Dancing in the streets in Iran could be a capital crime. Sound up.

In hospital before he died.  There is no excuse for treating protestors this way, but it’s not rare:

From Malcolm. I wouldn’t think a McDonald’s sign would be tasteless, but this one is. McCrispy!

From Luana, whose humor is always political:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, an entire family extirpated:

From Matthew: a cat brings presents to its girlfriend (sound up):

Look at the snout on this mole!:

A BBC reporter gives a lousy simulacrum of the supermoon!

I have landed!

September 2, 2023 • 8:15 am

Yes, I made it to Jerusalem with very little trouble. It took about five minutes to get through Israeli customs at Ben Gurion airport outside of Tel Aviv, I got shekels from an ATM, and I managed to get a cheap shared bus that dropped me right at my modest hotel in Jerusalem for 66 shekels (a shekel is worth almost exactly 25¢ U.S. It was about an hour’s ride.

I’m staying in “center city” of Jerusalem, not too far from the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.  I will probably rest up for the remainder of the day since I was up at 3:30 on Friday and watched movies on the plane instead of sleeping last night.

My first impressions are without much value, but one thing is clear: the country is very quiet on shabbos, without public transportation, and most of the stores closed.  Orthodox Jews can be seen all over the place, and I’m told that there are more of them here than in Tel Aviv, as this is a far holier city.

Tomorrow, after a full night’s sleep, I’ll begin touring, with several people having offred to guide me around. And, of course, I’ll look for hummus.

Stay tuned.

Saturday: Hili dialogue

September 2, 2023 • 5:17 am

PCC(E) is in Israel, recovering from his journey.

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is contemplating the changing seasons:

Hili: We are entering into a season of falling apples.
A: Does it scare you?
Hili: No, but I’m checking whether anybody is sitting under the tree.
.
.
In Polish:
Hili: Znów wkraczamy w sezon spadania jabłek.
Ja: Straszą cię?
Hili: Nie, ale sprawdzam czy nikt nie siedzi pod drzewem.

Newark airport: cozy, boring, and with extra security for Israel

September 1, 2023 • 1:13 pm

The Newark Airport (at least the United section) is clean and comfortable, with plenty of electrical plugs and tables to sit, but there’s a dearth of places to get food, and noms are thin on the ground and expensive. Anticipating that I’ll get dinner on the plane, I had only a meager slice of pizza, far inferior to the “slices” across the harbor in Manhattan.

Here’s a panorama of one gate, which is very different from any airport gates I’ve seen before. There are more seats at the many tables than along the walls, and tons of electrical outlets. Q

The gate above is the next gate over from the one where we’re to wait for the plane to Tel Aviv.  We were just kicked out of that gate so they could ring it with barriers and put up this sign:

I haven’t yet faced the “additional security screening”, but it looks as if I’d better micturate before I get screened!

I’m screened now.  It’s done on two sides of a room. One one you deposit your luggage, which gets inspected and wiped down with the help of a “sniffer machine,” presumably to detect explosives. Then while your luggage is being sniffed, you cross the room (below) to get a thorough inspection with a wand. But no groping!  I passed!

I wondered if we’d face extra security going to Israel, and it’s starting here. I’m especially curious about how thoroughly we’ll be grilled when we arrive in the country.

El Al, Israel’s national airline, is famous for successfully screening dangerous passengers (as far as I know, the airline, despite being a juicy target for terrorists, has been hijacked only once: in 1968).  But I’m flying on United.

I did not get groped!

September 1, 2023 • 8:15 am

Even at 6 a.m., O’Hare Airport is hellishly busy today; I had forgotten that it’s Labor Day weekend and people are off to celebrate the end of summer.  I’m glad I’m leaving now, as the Chicago weather is predicted to be in the nineties next week. Our Dorm Ducks, however, have surely found a nice home in a nearby pond or lake, and, as I try to drift off to sleep each night, I soothe myself by thinking what a treat it would be for a duckling reared entirely on a plaza, with only very limited bathing facilities, to suddenly find itself in a large body of water, able to dunk, dabble, dive, and do the zoomies.

But I digress. Having both TSA Precheck and Global Entry, I got through security in a matter of minutes (NO GROPING AT ALL), and now I’m relaxing and waiting for my flight with coffee, a bagel and cream cheese.  I have several hours in Newark to cool my heels, and then it’s off to Tel Aviv on a long flight.  Thanks to the seatguru site (h/t Simon), I looked up my flight in advance, found that the aircraft on which I was flying had seatback entertainment, and so I can watch movies en route. (That site is a mitzvah.)

On the way to Newark, though, there’s only “device” entertainment: you’re supposed to download an app on your phone, use “air” earphones (there’s no plug in earphones with my newer iPhone), and watch movies on your phone!  This is the way airlines are saving money these days, and it was my situation on American Airlines all the way to Ecuador and back.  My advice to airlines, which of course they won’t heed, is to stop the madness!  Seatback screens with earphones are the best way to go. Imagine watching movies for nine hours on the tiny screen of an iPhone.

So I also have a novel: Middlemarch, which I’ll read for the third time, as well as the Lonely Planet guide to Israel and the Palestinian Territories (I won’t be allowed to enter Palestine, and it’s not safe there for an American Jew).

Tomorrow morning I’ll be in Tel Aviv, and will hie myself to Jerusalem to crash and recover from jet lag.  For the first two weeks I’ll be seeing Anna Krylov and her partner Jay, who lived in Israel, for some sporadic tours and activities, but I also have other cool people lines up to meet, thanks to invitations on this website and the advice of my surrogate mother Malgorzata. I’ll do my best to document my travels here (with photos), but I won’t wail at the Western Wall.

My food goal is to find the best hummus in Israel, though I won’t have time to try every place. But I’m told by everyone that Israel’s hummus is qualitatively better than hummus in America, and I love hummus, even in America.

So it’s hasta la vista, baby, and, I hope, my next post will have a picture of hummus in it.

Friday: Hili dialogue

September 1, 2023 • 6:45 am

I discovered I’m leaving for Israel today, not tomorrow, and it’s a good thing I looked at my plane ticket yesterday.  (I made the stupid mistake of thinking that a September 2 arrival meant a Sept. 2 departure, forgetting that it’s an overnight flight.) But all is well, and as you read this I’ll likely be on the first leg of my flight—to Newark.

Posting will be light for a while, and nonexistent tomorrow.  I’ll do what I can during my trip, documenting it with photos when possible, and will be home on Sept. 23. Bear with me.  Also, please try not to email me very often:  I won’t be checking emails all the time and I may miss something, including photos or possible subjects to post on. Thanks! That said, if you see something juicy, send it along. So, here’s the last full Hili dialogue for a few days:

**********

Good morning on the first day of September: Friday, 1 September, 2023,  and National Gyro Day, another example of tasty cultural appropriation (the sandwich, if that’s what you consider it, was developed in the Ottoman Empire).  And September is these food months:

National Chicken Month
National Honey Month
National Mushroom Month
National Papaya Month
National Potato Month
National Rice Month

I suspect you could use all those ingredients in one meal, with the papaya and honey used for dessert.

Tomorrow morning I fly to Israel via Newark, arriving on Sunday morning, after the Sabbath is over. (Public transportation in Israel shuts down on the Jewish sabbath.)

It’s also American Chess Day, National Burnt Ends Day (that refers to ribs, and it’s one of the best bits), National Forgiveness Day, Emma Nutt Day (honoring the world’s first telephone operator), National Cherry Popover Day, Ginger Cat Appreciation Day, National Chianti Day (don’t drink with with fava beans and liver), National Tofu Day, World Letter Writing Day, and, in Australia, Wattle Day.  Here’s one of the best Monty Python sketches: the philosophy department of the University of Woolabaloo. The Wattle Chant is at 3:17.

World War II began on this day in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the September 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Breaking news (yesterday afternoon). A lieutenant in the right-wing Proud Boys and one of the instigators of the January 6 insurrection got a whopping big sentence in his sedition case.

Joseph Biggs, a onetime lieutenant in the Proud Boys, was sentenced on Thursday to 17 years in prison after his conviction on charges of seditious conspiracy for plotting with a gang of pro-Trump followers to attack the Capitol and disrupt the peaceful transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Biggs’s sentence was one of the stiffest penalties issued so far in more than 1,100 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack and among only a handful to have been legally labeled an act of terrorism. It was just over half of the 33 years the government had requested and just shy of the 18-year term given in May to Stewart Rhodes, the leader of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers militia, who was also found guilty of sedition.

There are more Proud Boys cases pending, and, with its leadership convicted or facing jail, it’s effectively been disbanded.

*The Wall Street Journal reports that Ukraine has penetrated the main defensive line of Russian troops, which happens to be an advance towards the south.

Ukrainian forces have penetrated the main Russian defensive line in their country’s southeast, raising hopes of a breakthrough that would reinvigorate the slow-moving counteroffensive.

Ukrainian paratroopers are fighting through entrenched Russian positions on the edge of the village of Verbove, a Ukrainian officer in the area said. Ukrainian forces have also reached the main defensive line to the south of nearby Robotyne village, he said. Ukraine’s military confirmed advances toward Verbove and south of Robotyne, without giving details.

Describing the advance, the Ukrainian officer held up three fingers representing lines of attack through entrenched Russian positions on the western flank of Verbove, an agricultural village of some 1,000 residents before the war. The significance of the advance is that it marks the first time Ukraine has penetrated the main Russian defensive line, an extensive system of minefields, trenches and antitank obstacles covered by artillery.

Ukrainian forces are now working to expand the cracks in the line to create a hole large enough for Western-provided armored vehicles to push through with sufficient logistical support.

Here’s the paper’s diagram of the advance (caption from the paper):

*Russian-controlled area as of Aug. 30 Sources: Brady Africk, American Enterprise Institute (Russian fortifications); Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project (Russian-controlled area). Graphic: Andrew Barnett/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

*After requesting 90-day extensions, Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito released their required annual financial-disclosure forms yesterday (you can see Thomas’s form here and Alito’s here). Some of the items are quite interesting.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his annual financial disclosure form that was released Thursday, responded in detail to reports that he had failed to disclose luxury trips, flights on a private jet and a real estate transaction with a Texas billionaire.

In an unusual move, the justice included a statement defending his travel with the billionaire, Harlan Crow, who has donated to conservative causes.

. . .In his disclosure, Justice Thomas addressed his decision to fly on Mr. Crow’s private jet, suggesting that he had been advised to avoid commercial travel after the leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating a constitutional right to an abortion.

“Because of the increased security risk following the Dobbs opinion leak, the May flights were by private plane for official travel as filer’s security detail recommended noncommercial travel whenever possible,” Justice Thomas wrote.

Justice Thomas also defended his past filings, which did not include many of the trips with Mr. Crow and other wealthy friends. He wrote that he had “adhered to the then existing judicial regulations as his colleagues had done, both in practice and in consultation with the Judicial Conference.”

. . . Justice Thomas also acknowledged errors in his previous financial reports, including personal bank accounts and his wife’s life insurance, which he said were “inadvertently omitted from prior reports.”

Inadvertently?  Some of those trips vacation trips? Why couldn’t he drive using his huge and expensive RV (also subsidized by Crow, I believe)? Oh, I forgot, some of those trips were fancy cruises.  As for Alito:

Justice Alito, for his part, acknowledged in June that he had taken a private plane on a vacation in 2008 to a luxury fishing lodge in Alaska, where he was hosted by Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire. In the years that followed, Mr. Singer repeatedly had business before the court.

Both justices have insisted that the gifts and travels did not need to be reported.

THEN WHY WERE THEY REPORTED NOW?  This kind of unreported largesse, especially when given by people who have business before the court, is totally unethical. The Justices need a written and explicit ethics code, and should for their own trips.

*According to the BBC, Denmark is planning to make burning a Qur’an or a Bible a criminal offense, punishable by a jail term. (h/t Leo)

The Danish government has proposed a ban on setting the Quran alight in public after a series of burnings led to uproar in Muslim countries.

Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard said such burnings harmed Denmark and risked the safety of Danes.

The planned law will make improper treatment of the Quran or Bible a criminal offence punishable by a fine and jail sentence of up to two years.

The centre-right government said it wanted to send a signal to the world.

Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Denmark had witnessed 170 demonstrations in recent weeks, including the burning of copies of the Quran in front of foreign embassies.

Denmark’s PET intelligence service has warned that the latest incidents have intensified the terrorist threat.

Neighbouring Sweden has also seen a series of Quran burnings and its security service has warned of a worsening security situation. In July, the Swedish embassy in Iraq was set alight by protesters.

But both Denmark and Sweden have hesitated to respond to the burnings because of their liberal laws on freedom of expression. Sweden scrapped its blasphemy laws in the 1970s.

Just the Qur’an and the Bible? What about the Book of Mormon, or any of the sacred texts of other faiths? Look, we know what they’re afraid of, and it’s not reactions to burning the Bible. They’re afraid of the ire of offended Muslims. And this law is cowardice in light of Denmark’s laws favoring freedom of expression. Sweden is far more rational, opting to allow Qur’an burnings because to ban them would require amending the nation’s constitution. I don’t think people should willy-nilly burn Qur’ans just to offend Muslims, but it’s okay if they do it to point out the oppressiveness of Islam. At least in the U.S. you can burn Qur’ans at will, though of course you’re still putting yourself in danger by doing so.

*Inside Higher Ed reports on the slaries of diversity officers at American colleges and universities. They are surprisingly high (I guess they should be compared to “officers” that staff different offices in their schools. Get a load of this (h/t Luana):

The large majority of U.S. universities’ chief diversity officers—87.9 percent—have held their positions for five years or less, according to the first-ever survey of CDOs by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, released Wednesday. More than half reported that they were their institution’s first-ever CDO.

The survey received 261 responses to questions about the demographics of CDOs, the support they get from their institutions, the most critical issues they face and the future of the profession.

Respondents reported a range of annual salaries, with 16 percent saying they earn less than $100,000, about half saying they make between $100,000 and $200,000, and the remaining 34.2 percent citing salaries above $200,000. But just over half also said they either probably or definitely were not being paid the same as their peers.

Those are huge salaries: 84% of DEI officers make more than $100K, and over 34% make more than $200k.  How many professors (who actually accomplish something productive) make that kind of money? According to a BestColleges report from this year, here are the average salaries including both private and public colleges in the U.S., as well as religious colleges:

Assistant professor: $88,597
Associate professor: $101,941
Full professor: $149,629

One can guess that DEI officers are generally paid more than associate professors, who take about six years at most places to achieve that rank. (I’m betting DEI officers have an average job duration of less than that.)

And of course adjuncts make much less; they’re grossly underpaid.  DEI officers, on the other hand, appear overpaid.

*This is essential reading for anybody who likes pizza. The Washington Post‘s travel section has singled out not only the best style of pizza from four American cities and one region (New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Haven, and California Neopolitan), and tells you where to get the best example of each one. It also has a list of where to get the best pizza in each state, but the latter recommendations are based on Yelp reviews, which I often find untrustworthy.

Chicago’s picks are a bit dicey (the omission of the apotheosis of Chicago pizza: the “stuffed” variety with two layers of dough separating a thick layer of cheese and stuff in the middle, as found at Giordano’s or Edwardo’s) is absolutely unconscionable. But the article does steer you to one of the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten: the white clam pizza at Pepe’s in New Haven.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,  Hili’s hunting instincts can’t be suppressed:

Hili: There is a mouse somewhere here.
A: Spare her life.
Hili: That would be against Nature.
In Polish:
Hili: Tu gdzieś jest myszka.
Ja: Daruj jej życie.
Hili: To wbrew naturze.

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

From Stephen:  a Dan Piraro Bizarro cartoon depicting the first lawyer:

From Matthew:

From Tom: a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon:

From Masih, another protestor killed.  Masih Amini, whose death started all the protests, is on the left:

From Malcolm; these marmots are fighting, but it looks as if they’re dancing (sound on):

From Simon, who says “God almighty!”  But LOOK AT THAT BULL! (Reader Divy sent a yahoo! news link and a news video.) They shouldn’t have given the man a ticket.

From Jez. Martina Navratilova posted a KITTY with a “Lol”!:

From the Auschwitz Memorial. September 1 is of course the day that WWII began:

. . . and a woman murdered at 41:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, chest kitties are the best kitties! Sound up.

I wonder if those flanges are part of the animal or waxy excretions:

Ha! The d*g has to walk!

Video: Animal antics

August 31, 2023 • 1:00 pm

Fare thee well, readers: tomorrow I’m off for Israel for three weeks. My farewell post (#27,916!) is this ten-minute video showing animals doing humorous things.  My favorites include the attacking raptor (0:24), the horizontal sloth (1:20), the rotating d*g circle (2:00), Jesus cat (4:03), donkeys following a ride-on mower (5:26), young sheep practicing head-butting (6:34), the galloping goat (6:48), irritated octopus (7:15), gamboling sheep (8:05), and the dancing Indian deer (8:46).

Hasta la proxima!