Starship launch likely today in the next 1.5 hours. Watch NOW!

April 20, 2023 • 8:09 am

I’m posting this quickly, as you don’t want to miss it. Elon Musk’s Starship, designed to be the vehicle to take people to live on Mars or the Moon, is scheduled to launch this morning after the first launch was scrubbed a few days ago.

The one-hour launch window is between 9:28 and 10:28 a.m. Eastern, or 8:28 and 9:28 a.m. Chicago time, and 2:28 to 3:28 pm London time. That means the window starts about 20 minutes after this post goes up. The vehicle will circle most of the globe and is slated to come down

To see it, click on the screenshot below to go to the SpaceX site, and then click the “watch” box, which I’ve circled in red. You’ll be sent to another screen and then you’ll have to hit “watch” AGAIN. Who can fathom Elon Musk.

From the NYT:

What is Starship?

It is the tallest rocket ever built — 394 feet tall, or nearly 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty with the pedestal.

And it has the most engines ever in a rocket booster: The Super Heavy, the lower section that will propel the Starship vehicle to orbit, has 33 of SpaceX’s powerful Raptor engines sticking out of its bottom. They are able to generate 16 million pounds of thrust at full throttle, far more than the Saturn V that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Starship is designed to be entirely reusable. The Super Heavy booster is expected to land much like SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rockets, and Starship will be able to return from space belly-flopping through the atmosphere like a sky diver before pivoting to a vertical position for landing.

Why is SpaceX building Starship?

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is the most frequently launched rocket in the world. Starship is the next step. It would be able to carry far more cargo and many more people than Falcon 9. And because it is fully reusable, Starship could greatly reduce the cost of launching payloads to orbit.

NASA is paying SpaceX to build a version of the vehicle to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface for the Artemis III and IV missions later in the decade. The spacecraft is also central to Mr. Musk’s vision of sending people to Mars.

What will happen during the flight?

For the test flight on Thursday, Starship will fly almost completely around the Earth, starting from Texas and splashing down in waters off Hawaii.

About eight minutes after the launch on Thursday, the Super Heavy booster will splash into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship vehicle will fly higher into space, reaching an altitude of about 150 miles and traveling around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere. If it survives re-entry, about 90 minutes after launching, it will splash into the Pacific Ocean some 62 miles north of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

But with all the new systems in Starship, the SpaceX founder acknowledged the difficulties of achieving all of the flight’s goals.

“There’s a million ways this rocket could fail,” Mr. Musk said. “I could go on for hours.”

h/t: Jim Batterson

Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 20, 2023 • 7:30 am

Greetings on Thursday, April 20, 2023, National Pineapple Upside Down Cake Day, a treat I dearly love but never get to eat (my mom used to make it for me).

I returned from Paris yesterday late afternoon, after an eight-hour flight that, with watching a few movies whose names I won’t divulge, wasn’t too unpleasant.  And here is my last meal in France, or at least on Air France.  Winnie expected that an Air France flight from Paris would have good food, but, sadly, it didn’t. Have a gander:

Le Menu

Gloppy chicken and mashed potato with some kind of nondescript gravy
Salad with lentils and various veggies (not bad, but not that good, either)
Semi-stale roll with a pat of butter and a hunk of unripe and cold Camembert cheese
Dessert: a chocolate fudge cake that was decent but the portion was too small
Diet Coke (my order; I don’t usually have alcohol on flights). Cut was too tiny.

This is pretty much the same thing we had flying to France, except the Camembert was replaced by a lame cheddar cheese.

For our prearrival snack, we had some kind of dreadful vegetable sandwich, a muffin, and a container of drinkable yogurt before we landed at O’Hare. I could have paid $450 to upgrade to business class, but it wasn’t worth it for a slightly better seat and meal.

Yes, I know I’m spoiled with respect to food.

Posting will be light for a few days until I get up to speed, as I’m badly-jet lagged and have to catch up with tasks that accumulated. Bear with me; I do my best.

Da Nooz is also short: There’s a NYT op-ed by Jack Resneck, Jr., President of the American Medical Association, about the ludicrous intrusion of courts into the FDA’s system of drug approval—namely, one courts’ decision that the FDA decided wrong. The op-ed is called “This could be one of the most brazen attacks on American’s health yet.” And it is for it allows the judiciary, which has no expertise in this area, to arrogate to itself whether a drug has been properly tested for safety.

But I would be delighted if readers would bring me up to date on the last week’s news, perhaps with a brief comment on what they thought was the most important event since April 11.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is up in the rosebushes, looking quite regal.

A: So why did you get there? You will prick yourself.
Hili: None of your business.
In Polish:
Ja: No i gdzie tam wlazłaś? Pokłujesz się.
Hili: Nie twój interes.
*********************

From Divy,  a truth all rational people know:

From Nicole, who has chosen wisely:

From Science Humor on FB:

A tweet from Masih. Although the women covered their faces, the photos are on their social media pages, so they could still be identified. (“Haram” means “forbidden” in Islam.)

From Simon, another mockery of academia by Oded Rechavi. Simon adds,  “Wrong font! Even if you match the space you can’t ignore the font requirements….”

From Malcolm, An overeager cat:

A Pinocchio weevil from Dom!  Now what is that rostrum for?

From Luana; this appears to be a true story of a man who put himself in a burka.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, with everyone in the family probably gassed upon arrival.

Tweets from Matthew. The first comes from his research on Crick’s life, and is a long response to a young person. The mentions of Avery et al. and Chargaff are right on, and everyone should know what their contributions were to solving the structure of DNA:

Of course Poncho won’t obey. He’s a CAT!

God will save King Charles—with pieces of the True Cross

April 19, 2023 • 10:30 am

If all the wooden relics alleged to be parts of the “true cross”—the apparatus on which a supposed Jesus was said to have been crucified—were genuine, you could carve Mount Rushmore out of them. They are, one and all, phony.

Yet people treat them as real and revere them. In fact, when Charles and Camilla are crowned as the King and Queen of England on Saturday, May 6 (they’re already in effect King and Queen), the ceremony will receive God’s blessing—from a relic donated by the Vatican. Click on the BBC screenshot below to read.

From the article (bolding is the BBC’s):

Fragments said to be from the cross on which Jesus was crucified will be included in a newly made Cross of Wales used at the head of the coronation procession in Westminster Abbey.

The relics of what is known as the True Cross were given to King Charles by Pope Francis, as a coronation gift.

The cross uses Welsh materials such as slate, reclaimed wood, and silver from the Royal Mint in Llantrisant.

King Charles hammered the hallmark onto the silver used in the cross.

The announcement about the new cross is a reminder that, alongside the pomp and pageantry, the coronation on 6 May will be a religious ceremony.

Of course that’s why they cry, “God save the King/Queen”, for they assume that God will hear. But of course he doesn’t hear, and that was proved by SCIENCE.  In the first test of the efficacy of intercessory prayer, Francis Galton—a cousin of Charles Darwin—determined the longevity of Britain’s royals and compared it to the longevity of people in similar situations of well being. He figured that since millions of people pray each week for the health of the King or Queen, they should on average live longer than, say, landed gentry.

Nope. As this article notes,

Just for the record as examples of [Galton’s] data, the 97 cases of members of the Royal family were recorded as having an average life span of 64.04 years, the 945 members of the clergy in his sample having an average lifespan of 66.49 years and the 1,632 members of the gentry a life span average of 70.22 years. While we can detect a satirical flavour to Galton’s study and despite obvious individual exceptions such as Queen Victoria, or to bring the cases up to date, the Queen Mother and the present Queen, it is hard to avoid the inevitable conclusion that this form of stylised prayer of petition does not always get the desired result.

Since then there have been other studies of the power of intercessory prayer, including one on recovery of cardiac patients that was funded by the Templeton Foundation. The results of all of these? Nada, zip, zilch. Prayer doesn’t help kings live longer nor people recover from surgery or illness.

The conclusion? Petitionary, intercessory prayer doesn’t work, either because God isn’t listening, is listening but doesn’t care, or, most likely, doesn’t exist. (This must have severely disappointed the people at Templeton.)

Yet the charade goes on. From the BBC again:

The cross, made by silversmith Michael Lloyd, is inscribed with the words of St David, patron saint of Wales. It is a gift from the King to the Church in Wales.

The coronation will be an Anglican service, but the prominent inclusion of a gift from the head of the Roman Catholic church reflects how other denominations and faiths will be represented.

Set into the silver cross will be two small wooden shards, originating from what is claimed to be the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

Such relics of the True Cross have been venerated for centuries, with pilgrimages made to churches where they are held.

At least the BBC adds this caveat:

There has also been long-standing scepticism about the volume and authenticity of such relics and whether they could all come from a single cross.

Indeed!

Well, the first thing they should do is some carbon dating on tiny bits of the “true cross”.  It should be at least two millennia old, but that’s just a start, because we can get wood that old from several species of living trees, or from pieces of wood known to be ancient. But no, Charles plays along, even participating, as in the picture above, in the invasion of knavish Popery into the coronation.

The King will then be anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (an Anglican), and that’s supposed to be the Holy Moment when the face of God smiles on Charles III:

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who is conducting the service on 6 May, has highlighted how the heart of the coronation is a religious ceremony, likening it to the ordination of a priest.

In a newly-published official souvenir programme, the archbishop says that in the middle of all the “magnificence and pomp” is a moment of “stillness and simplicity” when the King is anointed with holy oil.

The archbishop says the anointing will see the King in a simple white shirt, rather than “robes of status” and he says the King will be “in the full knowledge that the task is difficult and he needs help”.

This is a moment not previously seen by the public, and did not form part of the television coverage at the coronation of the late Queen Elizabeth in 1953.

There has been speculation about whether or not it will be visible for next month’s ceremony, but current expectations suggests it will remain a private moment in the coronation proceedings.

In fact,  the British public appears to be against government funding of the coronation, which is indeed largely funded by the state:

Alongside some opposition to the coronation from anti-monarchy groups, a survey on Tuesday raised questions about the level of support for public funding of the occasion.

The coronation is a state event, but a YouGov poll of 4,000 adults found that 51% were against the government paying for it, compared with 32% who supported state-funding, with the rest saying they “didn’t know”.

Among 18-24 year olds, 62% thought the government should not fund the coronation.

And this:

The amount that it will cost the government will not be revealed until after the event.

Of course! We don’t want people grousing about how all that pomp is coming out of their pockets. We want them to think that faith is playing a substantial role in the ascendancy of Charles to Britain’s throne.

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 19, 2023 • 6:45 am

by Greg Mayer

Good morning on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Jerry is on his way back to Chicago from Paris, and will soon resume his full WEIT duties. He sent this photo of himself at the Paris airport this morning, adding, “My first morning coffee in eight days.”

And, when he took that one, he also found a photo from several years ago when he spent the night on his lab couch with an orphan duckling so he could hand it over to rehab at 4 a.m.:

Da Nooz

*The big news of the day is that Fox News has settled Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit for $787.5 million. That’s a lot of money– on the order of 20% of Fox’s cash on hand! A settlement had been widely expected when the judge delayed the trial by a day without explanation. The amount was more than I expected, since an analysis of Dominion’s business that I read indicated to me that they had generally done pretty well in expanding their business– I thought they might well win on the claim of actual malice, but receive much less then the $1.6 billion they asked for, since they had not suffered much demonstrable financial damage. Dominion argued that Fox had limited their future growth, which may well be the case in getting contracts with Trump-friendly election commissions, but it’s harder to demonstrate the counterfactual of what their profits would have been absent Fox’s attacks on them.

Fox also had to make a limited admission of fault:

We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.

This is less than a full acknowledgement of its errors and malice, but much more than the usual denial of all claims of the plaintiff by the defendant. Dominion’s lawyers are also issuing full-throated cries of “Qapla’.” Many plaintiffs are satisfied with monetary damages, and accede to the defendant’s demand for silence. Dominion did not agree to be gagged in exchange for the money, though Fox’s limited admission must be less than they desired.

*This isn’t news to those who have been paying attention, but the CBC seems surprised that philosopher and socialist Susan Neimanthat says that “‘woke-ism’ is not leftist” (ht: Brian Leiter). I have long made that point here at WEIT, noting that the most trenchant critiques of the “1619 project” were organized by the World Socialist Website, and that Marxist political scientist Adolph Reed has derided Kendian “antiracism” as a neoliberal alternative to an an actual Left. Identity politics is orthogonal to economic politics: Orban’s blood and soil nationalism is the mirror image of Kendi’s antiracism.

Like Jerry  (and Freddie deBoer), Neiman agonized over using the word “woke”:

I thought about it for a long time. I agonized about it. But it still seems to me that woke picks something out that we all recognize and that needs to be examined, even if it looks like it’s putting you in bad company.

Money quote:

Every place I go, I hear another story [about the excesses of wokeism]. Look, critical books are not being published, critical plays are not being presented. Or if they’re presented, they’re being rewritten in certain ways.

The idea of cultural appropriation, that cultural products belong to a member of a particular tribe, strikes me as against the concept of culture itself. That’s one kind of problem.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili seems concerned that, despite the fact that she is a card-carrying member of the order Carnivora, she might be on the menu:

Hili: An Eagle.
A: So what?
Hili: We’d better hide.
In Polish:
Hili: Orzeł.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Lepiej się schować.

Paris: Day 8, Meal 8, and tourism

April 18, 2023 • 12:00 pm

This will be a quickie, as I must scribble this post and then pack, for I’m leaving early tomorrow for home.

Our lunch destination was the Café des Ministères in the spiffy Seventh Arrondissement, where there are lots of fancy apartments and government buildings (ergo the name of the café). One of Winnie’s friends recommended it for its large portions of good food (always a draw), and it also has famous chou farci (stuffed cabbage), for which it won the “best of” prize in France last year. How could I not try that dish?

It’s a short walk from the Invalides Métro stop to the restaurant, and you pass the National Assembly (France’s legislative body) on the way. Note the “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan in several languages on the left. That’s the cry of the new Iranian revolutionaries, and I wonder if this was to deliberately show solidarity with Iran. On the right it says “Freedom for everyone, everywhere,” with the figure of Marianne, the woman who symbolizes the French Republic and the freedom of its citizens.

A statue of Marianne:

The café, which isn’t very large. Although there were a few open tables at lunch, the proprietress (who was not very friendly) turned people away if they didn’t have reservations. But there may be a reason for that, like not having enough chou farci on hand for those without reservations.

Nicole, Winnie’s friend, was to join us again as she greatly enjoyed our meal of lamb at Sébillon. While waiting for them, I luxuriated in a park across the street, surrounded by bits of old Paris like this streetlight:

The inside of the restaurant (there’s a smaller back room) with a display of digestifs:

The menu, front and back:

Nicole’s entrée:  Leeks vinaigrette with a sauce that included minced egg and sausage. I tried some; very nice!

Winnie had the octopus starter with Spanish sausage (chorizo-like) and chickpeas. She liked it, but to save room she ate only the mollusc.

My starter: the house terrine with pork, chicken liver, and pickled veggies on the side. It was at least twice as thick as the terrine you usually get in a restaurant, and I knew if I ate it all, I wouldn’t be able to handle my cabbage. Sadly, I left about a third of it. That’s sad, because it was excellent.

The pickled vegetables below replaced the usual small pickles (cornichons) served with paté.  These were lovely. I hate cauliflower, but crunched greedily on this version and on the carrots. I’ve never had pickled vegetables so tasty. Of course I downed my terrine with plenty of the local bread.

Winnie’s plat: the classic coquilles St. Jacques (scallops, nine total) served in scallop shells and resting on a bed of garlicky mushroom duxelles. ringed with baked mashed potatoes that were crunchy on top and soft inside. She pronounced it excellent. (The French say “miam miam” instead of “yum yum”, but they sound the same.)

Scallop season in France goes from October 1 to May 15, and catching them smaller than 11 cm is not allowed.

Nicole and I had the famous stuffed cabbage. Here’s the award for Best Stuffed Cabbage in France that they display proudly:

IT WAS A WHOLE DAMN CABBAGE, not just a few stuffed leaves. I’m not sure what was in the stuffing, but certainly pork, and then, in the middle, a hunk of salted ham. It was terrific!

Partly dissected:

Partly dissected showing the coeur de jambon.  Many people ordered this but none finished it. I ate about 60%, and they even offered to let us take the rest home (if I lived here I would have!)

Desserts. Last night Winnie said that she and Nicole had decided to have three desserts between the two of them (I was going to pass on dessert and have a Mont Blanc pastry at Angelinas across the Seine.) I didn’t think they could do it, but they did!

First, profiteroles (creampuffs) with ice cream and warm chocolate sauce:

Second, rhubarb Pavlova with strawberries and frozen yogurt:

And a delicious Parisian flan with vanilla. It had the consistency of cheesecake rather than flan, and was redolent with vanilla bean (you can see the seeds in the cake). I had some and it was incroyable.

Nicole (photographing me) and Winnie during dessert. Afterwards, Nicole pronounced that she’d eaten way too much. But she has the makings of a foodie in her!

We strolled across the river to the famous Place de la Concorde, which was hardly harmonious during the French Revolution, for this is where the guillotine was set up to lop off the heads of royalty and commoners alike. In its center is one of the two Egyptian Luxor Obelisks, constructed around 1250 BC and given to France by Egypt in 1830. Moving it must have been quite a job! It was towed on its own ship by another sailing ship.

The gold-leaf cover was added in 1998, and the height of the obelisk and newer pedestal is about 33 m (109 feet).

It still has the original hieroglyphics, whose translation is here:

Two famous structures in the same frame, built more than a millennium apart:

We made a quick stop in the fancy shop of the Japanese designer Issey Miyake, as Winnie likes his clothes (he died not long ago). Her “anemone pants” are by Miyake. Here’s one outfit on display.

I looked at some price tags of the clothes, and very small blouses were over 1000€. I have to admit that a lot of his stuff is nice, though I’m not keen on the outfit below.

Then a stiff walk down the Rue Rivoli to Angelina’s. Instead of going inside, I decided to buy one of their famous Mont Blancs and take it back to my hotel. In fact, I just polished it off before I wrote this paragraph: it’s pure cream filling covered with ribbons of rich, chestnut-purée frosting, all resting on a thin cookie. It is outstanding.

Angelina’s. We skipped the line to sit down with pastries and hot chocolate, as I didn’t think my stomach could handle both.

Of course, to get at the goods, you have to open the fiendishly devised pastry box that they put the Mont Blanc in, and that’s after after you remove the box from the requisite fancy bag:

Et voila! A Mont Blanc in all its glory!:

Partly eaten. Oy, was it good!

And that was my last meal in Paris, the world’s most beautiful and romantic city (I haven’t seen them all, but this is still on top). My next meal will be whatever glop Air France decides to give me on the way home tomorrow. I will miss this town. All told, I’ve probably spent about a year in Paris (I did six months hear during my first sabbatical in 1989, when I met Matthew in the fly lab at the CNRS an hour out of town. (I decided to live in Paris, and had a garret apartment in the Sixth.)

A la prochaine!

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

April 18, 2023 • 6:45 am

It’s Tuesday, the Cruelest Day (April 18, 2023)—especially cruel as today’s my last full day in Paris before I head home tomorrow. At least nobody can say that I didn’t eat well! The internet is once again working in my hotel, too. It’s National Animal Cracker Day; I don’t know if they have them outside the U.S., but I loved them (and their string-held box) as a child. Now the box comes with a cardboard handle, and the animals have been freed from their cages!

Photo from NPR

I’ll be back Wednesday afternoon and I expect to begin regular posting by Friday. As of Thursday you are welcome to begin sending in readers’ wildlife photos, which I always need.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the April 18 Wikipedia page.

It’s also Adult Autism Awareness Day, Income Tax Pay Day in the U.S., National Lineman Appreciation Day, Coma Patients’ Day in Poland, Friend’s Day  in Brazil, International Day For Monuments and Sites, and Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel (the UN’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27, the day Auschwitz Birkenau was liberated)

Da Nooz:

*According to the Washington Post, the Discord Leaks, which I guess by now are established as genuine, have just revealed a disturbing development,

Egypt paused a plan to secretly supply rockets to Russia last month following talks with senior U.S. officials and instead decided to produce artillery ammunition for Ukraine, according to five leaked U.S. intelligence documents that have not been previously reported.

The Washington Post last week reported on another document that exposed a covert scheme by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in February to provide Russia with up to 40,000 122mm Sakr-45 rockets, which can be used in Russian multiple-launch rocket launchers. Sisi instructed his subordinates to keep the project secret “to avoid problems with the West,” the document said.

But the new documents, which The Post obtained from a trove of material allegedly posted on Discord by a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, appear to show Sisi in early March backing away from plans to supply Moscow, a move that would have represented a major rebuke to Cairo’s most generous Western ally, the United States.

In an apparent diplomatic win for the Biden administration, a new leaked document stated that Egypt shelved the Moscow deal and approved selling 152mm and 155mm artillery rounds to the United States for transfer to Ukraine.

Well, Egypt is supposed to be our ally; how could it engage in duplicity like this?

One Western ambassador in Cairosaid the leaks suggest Egypt “underestimated the U.S. response to a possible arms supply to Russia” and wanted to “maximize their benefit from both sides.”

It’s diplomacy, Jake, not ethics. . .

*The NYT has an absorbing op-ed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, “The closing of ‘Phantom,’ the loss of my son, and the future of Broadway.” (“Phantom of the Opera” just closed after a 35-year run.) Curiously, most of his attention is devoted to the last topic, especially the high price of mounting a Broadway musical and the vanishing of the Broadway of yore. My friends who go to NYC and want to see a Broadway musical are invariably facing a menu of pap.

Even a medium-scale musical today can cost $18 million to present. The weekly running costs of “Phantom” prepandemic were about $850,000; the additional requirements of the pandemic era pushed it to almost $1 million, and that’s with minimum royalties going to its creators.

No wonder musicals now feature small casts and minimal sets. No wonder producers turn to jukebox musicals with song catalogs everyone knows. . .

Shows like “The Lion King,” “Hamilton” and “Phantom” are the exception, not the rule.

First, ticket costs. The average is now around $130, unaffordable for too many people. Add to that significant markups from the digital sale platforms with which theater owners enter into contractual arrangements.

. . .But there is, sadly, an all too likely scenario. Broadway, unlike London’s West End, is a worldwide brand name, inextricably linked to New York. So if you want to establish a brand, having a show on Broadway is like renting an expensive loss leader storefront on Fifth Avenue or London’s Oxford Street. OK, your brand will lose money, but it has to be there to ensure a successful worldwide rollout.

Please, no.

*This news is six days old, but I missed it, and since I’ve been following the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos case, I’ll add it anyway.

A US judge said Elizabeth Holmes could not remain free on bail while she appealed her conviction of defrauding investors.

Holmes, who was sentenced in November to 11 years and three months in prison, requested in December to remain free during her appeal. The founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos was found guilty of four fraud-related charges.

Prosecutors said in January that Holmes bought a one-way flight to Mexico, which was set to take off three weeks after she was convicted. They called it an “attempt to flee the country,” according to a filing.

In a court ruling filed Monday, US District Judge Edward Davila said the flight wasn’t an attempt to flee but “ill-advised,” nonetheless. The flight booking led to more scrutiny and speculation into Holmes’ personal affairs and motivations, he added.

. . . In a further reference to the Mexico flight, Davila wrote in the filing: “Booking international travel plans for a criminal defendant in anticipation of a complete defense victory is a bold move, and the failure to promptly cancel those plans after a guilty verdict is a perilously careless oversight.”

I still have no explanation from anyone why Holmes, during the trial, booked a ONE WAY TICKET.  That implies she wasn’t coming back, but nobody’s mentioned that.

Holmes will report to federal prison for her 11-year sentence in ten days. In the meantime, her business partner and erstwhile paramour Sunny Balwani was also denied freedom on bail while he appeals his 13-year sentence.

*Finally, you’ve heard about the riots and strikes in France over the raising of the retirement age from 62 to 64, a raise vehemently opposed by the French people, who want to spend their golden years not working, but written into law by the French legislature on April 15.  So far we’ve seen plenty of cops deployed to stop the rioting, but have managed to miss the unrest itself.

Yesterday Macron affirmed the law but threw a verbal bone to his constuents.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that he heard people’s anger over raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, but insisted that it was needed to keep the pension system afloat as the population ages.

In many cities, opponents to the pension law took to the streets to bang pots and pans during Macron’s televised address to the nation, with the rallying cry: “Macron won’t listen to us? We won’t listen to him!”

In Paris, the gatherings quickly turned into spontaneous demonstrations in several neighborhoods, with some people setting fire to trash cans as police attempted to disperse the crowd. Hundreds of people also started marching in the western cities of Rennes and Nantes.

In many other places across France, the protests remained peaceful, with people chanting and dancing in front of city halls to the sound of pots and pans used as drums. Many reject the changes as unfair, arguing the government could have raised taxes on the wealthy or employers instead.

In his speech, Macron said “this changes [sic] were needed to guarantee everyone’s pension,” after he enacted the law on Saturday. “They represent an effort, that’s true.”

But then he added this, which isn’t going to cut the ice with many French:

“Gradually working more means also producing more wealth for our whole country,” he added.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, I think Andrzej has the wrong interpretation—”meat lover” is more like it!

Hili: The birds are singing beautifully.
A: A music lover.
In Polish:
Hili: Ptaki tak pięknie śpiewają.Ja: Melomanka.

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

From Only Duck Memes:

From Facebook:

From Barry:

A tweet from Masih below. The Google translation from the Farsi is this:

Received message and video: Hello Jesus Christ.

Our daily work is to walk without obeying the inhumane law of mandatory hijab.

Jesus Christ

We said hello to our tent friends and we don’t have any problems with each other, everyone can have their own cover in free Iran.

#woman_life_of_freedom
*Mehsa_Amini

“Tent friends” is hilarious. But yes, you should be free to have a tent.

A tweet from Simon, who says, “Frankly, neither of these look too attractive.” That change fee has got to be a mistake!

From Amy. Elsevier is gouging scientists again, charging $3,450 just to process your article after it’s accepted for publication. Editors resigned in protest. I’ve long had a policy of not reviewing for this money-grubbing publisher:

From Steve Stewart-Williams (via reader Barry) on the new “social justice therapy”. It’s pretty much what you imagine: patients, no matter what their issues, are urged to view them through the lens of social justice. I urge you to read the article at the link. First, a quote from that article:

The governing council of the American Counseling Association, or ACA, has endorsed “multicultural and social-justice counseling competencies.” According to these competencies: “Multicultural and social-justice competent counselors assist privileged and marginalized clients in unlearning their privilege and oppression, [help] privileged and marginalized clients develop critical consciousness by understanding their situation in context of living in an oppressive society” and “initiate discussions with privileged and marginalized clients regarding how they shape and are shaped by local, state and federal laws and policies.”

The therapists need therapy!

Two tweets for Holocaust Remembrance Day by the Auschwitz Memorial

This woman was gassed upon arrival:

At 74, this man stood no chance of passing the inspection:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb, currently enjoying himself in Madrid. In the first tweet, I guess both parties like it!

Duck swimming through cherry blossoms!

Well, they looked at three species of monkeys, only one lacking an opposable thumb. A larger sample of species might have been better. . .

Paris: Day 7, meal 7

April 17, 2023 • 11:30 am

We will temporarily skip the post abut yesterday’s meal—but only for a short time—because that will involve a longer post since I also went to the Musée de l’Homme (and watched a Catholic mass and baptism before lunch) and took some photos that would make this post too time-consuming to write today.  I’ll post about Sunday’s all-you-can-eat lamb leg lunch either tomorrow or Wednesday.

But enjoy an account of our gargantuan lunch from today. We returned to a place where we had a spectacular meal several years ago, and then a not-so-great one last week. We decided to give it one more try, as it might have been having an off day last Wednesday. And I’m glad we did.

We returned in fact to the Restaurant Cartet, having specified in advance that we wanted to try the navarin:  French lamb and turnip stew. Dominique, the owner, cook, manager, and server (he’s the only guy who works there) requested in turn that Winnie wear her spiky, stretchy pants, as (being a gardener) he said they reminded him of anemone flowers moving in the breeze. (Remember, this is France.).

So, Winnie donned her trousers and we met at Le Cartet, worried that the meal would be so-so like the one we had last week. But then, as Dominique unlocked the door to let us in (and then relocked it), we spotted four big bowls of desserts on one table to the right, and three big entrees on the other, and we knew we were in for another belly buster. First, the trousers in question:

What we saw upon entering: the desserts: riz au lait (rice pudding), the cream for Îles flottantes (floating islands), into which you put big globs of stiff meringue at the last moment, a gigantic tureen of crème caramel, and bugnes (small crispy pastries dusted with sugar, not visible in photo below). We did not know that a tureen of fantastic chocolate mousse, the best I’ve ever had, was also lurking in the kitchen. The huge array of desserts and entrées let us know that Cartet was back on form.

These are not ramekins; they are BIG BOWLS and TUREENS.

The entrées: beef muzzle with mustard sauce (not my favorite, but still pretty good), fresh artichokes with fresh pecorino cheese, and my favorite of all Dominiques starters, endives with walnuts, also with mustard sauce. There was a also a plate of beautiful tomatoes, which he displayed because some of them had gone into the navarin.

 Starters: the endives. Yum! This is a world-class entrée.

Beef muzzle (enough for 6 people as a starter)

Fresh artichokes with peas and pecorino cheese:

At this point we were discussing Calvados (a meal at Cartet, if you befriend Dominique, is half eating and have chatting with le chef), and Dominique displayed this bottle of Didier Lemorton Reserve Calvados from Normandy, which he said was made from 70% apple and 30% pear. He brought it out because the wine we were drinking was redolent of pear. (I am now regretting not having a small taste of the Calvados after lunch, as I see it’s highly rated on the Internet.)

The plat (main course) was navarin: spring lamb and turnip stew with tomatoes, peas, carrots, and mushrooms.  We ate almost the whole bowl, sopping up the juices with crusty baguette. I didn’t hold out much hope for lamb and turnip stew, but this is a traditional seasonal dish in France, called navarin printanier when made with fresh Spring veggies. And Ceiling Cat help me if it wasn’t delicious!

We also had the same luscious white wine we had last time

Desserts: The crème caramel, which was about four inches thick with a crispy crust, luscious creamy/gelatinous interior, and a layer of caramel sauce at the bottom. Délicieux! This is a big crock that could feed five, but we ate nearly half of it. (There is no hope of finishing most dishes at Cartet, and the chef knows it.) But Winnie and I are nearly equal to the task, for we are feeders.

Below: rice pudding, some of the finest I’ve ever had, rivaling that of L’Ami Jean before that bistro went steeply downhill due to an influx of diners driven there by Adam Gopnik’s favorable review in The New Yorker. I’ll never forgive Adam for writing about the place! We took a pass on the isle flottante as we didn’t want to waste the meringue and we were getting pretty full.

Again, this is enough for four or five people even as a single dessert. It’s very rich.  Perhaps it’s in my Jewish genes, but I love rice pudding.

On the side we got a bonus plate of bugnes lyonnais craquantes, a crispy accompaniment to wet desserts. They’re basically made of donut ingredients and deep fried, then dusted with powdered sugar.

Just as we could barely eat any more dessert (or a molecule of any food), Dominique appeared at the kitchen door with a big bowl of chocolate mousse, and put a huge spoonful of it on each of our plates. Yes, it was the best chocolate mousse I’ve ever had: cakelike on the top, more moussemo-ish a bit further down, and with small bits of solid chocolate floating throughout. The taste and texture were incomparable.

Dominique doesn’t like to be photographed, but he obliged me by posing with the bowl of mousse over his face.

While we were eating, he was cleaning a bunch of chinaberries (Melia azedarach) to make a necklace and bracelets from the seeds for the children who were coming this evening.

This is a TON of work: you have to boil the berries to loosen the skin, peel it off, scrub the berries with a nylon sponge-thingie so they’re clean, and then let them dry. Chinaberries are popular in some places to make jewelry as the dried seeds are crenulated like a peeled orange and have a natural hole in them, perfect for stringing. They are also used to make rosaries. The fruits and skins are toxic to humans, but are consumed by birds.

One seed. You can’t see the natural hole through it, but, when dried, these can be easily strung on a thread.

Dominique did all this work simply to bring joy to the children dining there tonight. He works because he loves to work, and he doesn’t care about money, which is why he usually serves only one table at lunch and/or dinner.

For more on chinaberry jewelry, go here. I think the trees are easily found in the US.

Here’s our reservation in the book; note that it just says “Winnie” and “2 couverts” (two “covers”, or customers). Again, there were only two of us at lunch, but there would be four for dinner. Although the restaurant opens at noon, Winnie asked to dine at 11:30 so we’d have at least 2.5 hours for lunch (not a long lunch at Cartet)—she had a later engagement. Note that “Navarin” is listed by her name, as we requested it this time.

Finally, Dominique does all the produce shopping for the restaurant, sometimes getting up at 2 a.m. for the hour-long schlep to the Rungis wholesale market, where Les Halles moved when in 1973 it evacuated its centuries-long location in the middle of the city. The market is only open very early in the morning, and only chefs and the like are allowed to shop there. It’s the second largest wholesale food market in the world (second only to Mexico City), and is larger than Monaco!

Winnie took this picture of me after lunch. If you enlarge it, I suspect you’ll see that my tummy is enlarged:

For readers, I still recommend this restaurant highly: two of the three meals we had there were nothing short of spectacular, and will be remembered fondly. It’s an absolutely unique place, and you’ll have to call for reservations.

Again, you might hit it on an off day, but if you order the boeuf ficelle, you can’t go wrong (specify when reserving, or ask what is on offer).  It ain’t cheap: lunch for two was 300 euros, but in my view we got our money’s worth. (There is no menu with prices; you are simply presented with a bill at the end that gives the total price, sometimes separated by food and wine.)

Now I am in my hotel, typing on my laptop but keeping it off of my stomach, which is still painfully distended with lunch

Bon appétit!