Friday: Hili dialogue

April 14, 2023 • 6:45 am

Greetings from Paris at the beginning of le week-end: Friday: April 14, 2023, and National Pecan Day (some of my southern friends pronounce the nut “PEE-cun”, with the accent on the first syllable).

It looks as we’ll have a truncated version of Hili until I return next Wednesday, as I am managing to sleep late, which gives little time to write much. On the other hand, I’m managing to sleep late!

You can look at significant events on this day by Googling the April 14 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz

*The FBI has apprehended one of the people who leaked secret US government documents, most notably pertaining to Russia and Ukraine. That didn’t take long! An Air National Guardsman, and only 21 years old. How did he get his hands on those documents?

The F.B.I. arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard on Thursday in connection with the leak of dozens of highly classified documents containing an array of national security secrets, including the breadth of surveillance the United States is able to conduct on Russia.

Airman First Class Jack Douglas Teixeira was taken into custody to face charges of leaking classified documents after federal authorities said he had posted batches of sensitive intelligence to an online gaming chat group, called Thug Shaker Central.

As reporters from The New York Times gathered near the house on Thursday afternoon, about a half-dozen F.B.I. agents pushed into the home of Airman Teixeira’s mother in North Dighton, with a twin-engine government surveillance plane keeping watch overhead.

Some of the agents arrived heavily armed. Law enforcement officials learned before the search that Airman Teixeira was in possession of multiple weapons, according to a person familiar with the investigation, and the F.B.I. found guns at the house.

Not long after, cameras caught a handcuffed Airman Teixeira, wearing red shorts and boots, being led away from the home by two heavily armed men.

Teixeira is in big trouble for violating the Espionage Act, and yet we don’t know either how he got access to the documents or why he would post them. Surely there are others involved. The article continues:

Indeed, the disclosures were potentially damaging to all parties in the Ukraine war as well as future intelligence collection. While some officials, including President Biden, have downplayed the damage from the leak, it will take months to learn whether U.S. intelligence loses access to important methods of collection because of the disclosures.

The F.B.I. had been zeroing in on Airman Teixeira for several days, tracking its own investigative clues as well as some of the same information that The Times and The Washington Post had developed about the Discord group where he had shared the documents, officials said.

*Meanwhile, the Washington Post is reporting the contents of the documents, including this:

The war in Ukraine has gutted Russia’s clandestine spetsnaz forces and it will take Moscow years to rebuild them, according to classified U.S. assessments obtained by The Washington Post.

The finding, which has not been previously reported, is among a cache of sensitive materials leaked online through the messaging platform Discord. U.S. officials attributed their assessments to Russian commanders’ overreliance on the specialized units who have been put to use as part of front-line infantry formations that, like the Ukrainians, have suffered massive numbers of dead and wounded.

Typically, spetsnaz personnel are assigned the sorts of stealthy, high-risk missions — including an apparent order to capture Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky — for which they receive some of the Russian military’s most advanced training. But when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion last year, senior commanders eager to seize momentum and skeptical of their conventional fighters’ prowess deviated from the norm, ordering elite forces into direct combat, according to U.S. intelligence findings and independent analysts who have closely followed spetsnaz deployments.

The rapid depletion of Russia’s commando units, observers say, shifted the war’s dynamic from the outset, severely limiting Moscow’s ability to employ clandestine tactics in support of conventional combat operations. U.S. officials believe the staggering casualties these units have sustained will render them less effective not only in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world where Russian forces operate, according to the assessments, which range in date from late 2022 to earlier this year.

*The controversy over the abortion pill, banned by one federal judge and allowed by another, will now go to the Supreme Court, and only Ceiling Cat knows what will happen there. If the Court takes it upon itself to rule on the safety of drugs, we’re all lost.

The Justice Department will take an emergency dispute over medication abortion drugs to the Supreme Court, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday.

Garland’s announcement comes after a federal appeals court overnight froze parts of a Texas judge’s order that would have suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a medication abortion drug. But the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals only partially granted the request by the Justice Department and the drug’s manufacturer to put US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling on hold, with the appellate panel effectively making the drug harder to obtain by leaving in place aspects of Kacsmaryk’s ruling that will reverse moves by the FDA that expanded access to medication abortion pills.

In the new statement, Garland indicated that the Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to intervene now in the emergency dispute over how the FDA has approached the drug, mifepristone.

“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA to deny in part our request for a stay pending appeal,” Garland said, referring to an appellate ruling that left parts of the judge’s ruling in place while reinstating the FDA’s approval for the drug, mifepristone.

He added, “We will be seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court to defend the FDA’s scientific judgment and protect Americans’ access to safe and effective reproductive care.”

Danco Laboratories, a mifepristone manufacturer that intervened in the case to defend the drug’s approval, also plans to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, a lawyer involved told CNN.

Still in place are restrictions to the drug for everyone, including cutting back its use to only seven weeks into pregnanacy, and a ban on obtaining the pill via telehealth calls, mail, or virtual visits to providers. You have to go to a doctor or hospital to get it, though it’s possible it can still be prescribed off label until ten weeks into pregnancy.

A tweet from CNN’s Supreme Court analyst:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s doing indigenous herbal medicine:

A: Why are you chewing these twigs?
Hili: I’m checking medicinal properties of their bark.
In Polish:
Ja: Dlaczego gryziesz te gałązki?
Hili: Sprawdzam lecznicze właściwości ich kory.

From Thomas:

From Nicole:

From Merilee:

From Masih, who is a conduit from the women of Iran.

Titania’s new column at The Critic:

From Simon, who says, “This truly has the makings of a decent sized scandal.” Have a gander:

 Another creationist loon, sent by Barry:

From Malcolm, who notes that these are only the observed losses:

From the Auschwitz Memorial. Mengele experimented on twins in gruesome ways and then killed them, so all four died.

Tweets from Professor Cobb. This is some costume; figure it out at the end:

This new paper has them domesticated in Mesopotamia around 10,000 years ago, something we already suspected given the finding on Cyprus. Their ancestor is the African wildcat, Felis sylvestrus lybica. Click the link to go to the paper.

What does a penguin think when it sees its first human?

Paris: Day three, meal three

April 13, 2023 • 12:15 pm

Winnie and I both were quite intoxicated after yesterday’s lunch, and she fell asleep on the bus home and dropped her Victor Hugo book three times during a five minute walk. I tried to stay awake but fell into a restive sleep interrupted with weird dreams. Today we were both off wine: no more two-bottle lunches! But I did have one glass of Rhone for lunch.  From now on, one bottle equals two servings.

Here are some photos of Paris before today’s lunch at Chez Monsieur, and then of the meal itself.

I snuck a picture of this guy on the Metro because he seemed to be the archetypal Frenchman with that huge beret and Sartre glasses. He’s missing only a Gauloises ciggie, but il est interdit de fumer dans le Metró.

I love these old brass door knockers:

Shadows and light from a railing:

The roof of the Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde. The building was built between 1757 and 1774. As Wikipedia notes, it was:

 originally the home of the royal Garde-Meuble, the office managing the furnishing of all royal properties. Following the French Revolution it became the Ministry of the French Navy, which occupied it until 2015. It was entirely renovated between 2015 and 2021. It now displays the restored 18th century apartments of Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, the King’s Intendant of the Garde-Meuble, as well the salons and chambers later used by the French Navy.

The renovation was finished under Macron, and here’s the new open-air roof. It was too early for us to visit the museum, but, more important, we had to attend to matters gustatory.

The nearby Smith & Son bookstore has long been a home for Anglophones, with a great selection of books in English. In one corner they have food for homesick Brits and Americans. You can see that these people from the diaspora long for Bird’s Custard and Betty Crocker cake mixes!

Pour your own hot chocolate nearby. But it is not good to drink hot chocolate before a big French lunch, so we didn’t even try. Winnie ate a free Edwart chocolate that they gave her, and found it so-so.

Right next store to Edwart on the Rue de Rivoli is Angelina’s, a very famous and beautiful parlor to drink thick hot chocolate and eat homemade pastries. I’ve been there once and loved it: the hot chocolate is to die for, and their Mont Blanc pastries are made from one of my favorite treats: candied chestnuts:

A Mont Blanc (or Mont-Blanc aux marrons) is a dessert of sweetened chestnut purée in the form of vermicelli, topped with whipped cream. It was created in nineteenth-century Paris. The name comes from Mont Blanc, as the dish resembles a snow-capped mountain.

There is always–ALWAYS–a long line of tourists in front of Angelina’s, but if you crave the best sweet snack in Paris, don’t be put off. The line moves fast and the Belle Epoque interior is the perfect place to sip and munch:

We passed on the chocolate and pastries as we were having a long walk before lunch, but went inside the store to see what was on offer(we rarely pass a food shop without a peek). Here are several pictures of the pastries, one showing the regular and a new mango Mont Blanc (skip the mango!).

Varied pastries:

And the two types of Mont Blancs. You want the one on the left, along with a big pot of pudding-like hot chocolate. I’ve posted photos of the restaurant’s inside and the chocolate in previous years (try Feb. 2021).

With an hour to kill before our noon lunch reservations, we window-shopped around the Place Vendôme.  Here’s a weirdly-named place:

Reflection portrait of Winnie and me:

Reflections on three mirrors affixed to the exterior wall of the Louis Vuitton store:

Les flics were everywhere today, with all their guns and riot gear. It was a general strike day today, but we didn’t see any trouble. (But there was trouble; see at bottom). Still, cops everywhere, some with machine guns:

Les gendarmes, including a woman.

Lunch was at Chez Monsieur, a place recommended by one of Winnie’s friends. It’s famous for its onion soup, blanquette de veau (veal stew), and steak tartare. We had two of the three.

The next two photos aren’t mine, but come from here and here. I forgot to take an outside picture, and the inside photo, showing the intimate interior and banquettes, was better than mine:

Interior: we sat on the banquettes to the right. It has an old zinc bar and lots of atmosphere. The food was terrific. (The menu is here.) It also has a classic old zinc bar, which you can see at left.

This was the only place we’ve eaten together in Paris where we were the only tourists; it was totally French. But just as we left an American came in who had lived in Paris for three decades; he said this was one of his favorite restaurants. If you come to Paris, put it on your list. (But remember, restaurants can go downhill!)

Neither of us having recovered fully from yesterday, we split an entrée: steak tartare, or “tartare de boeuf au couteau” (hand cut). It was fantastic, as Winnie said, “the hand cutting made all the difference”. It was served with greens and fries:

If you had told me when I was twenty that some day I would love a dish like this, I would have laughed at you. But it was fabulous! This is a half portion; it’s listed as a main course but we split it for the appetizer

The plat: the restaurant’s famous blanquette de veau, or veal stew, listed like this on the menu:

Blanquette de veau “Chez Monsieur” servie en cocotte

A “cocotte” is a covered pan (see below) but can also mean a high-class prostitute.  Our double portion (we each wanted it) was cooked in a luscious creamy sauce, just right for sopping up with bread, along with carrots, pearl onions, and potatoes:

My plate:

What was left in the cocotte after we had two heaping plates. We finished the entire cocotte but it was hard going as we were getting full. But, as I said, Winnie is a trencherman (trencherwoman?) and she not only finished this, but had dessert as well.

This was a splendid dish, and a classic of French cuisine. If you go there, get it, as portions of the other main courses aren’t all that large.

Winnie’s dessert: profiteroles stuffed with ice cream and served with a warm, thick chocolate syrup poured over the top.

We bought a bottle of water, which is against both of our principles, but the carafe d’eau (tap water) they brought us tasted bad. This is what we had: Chateldon, the oldest bottled water made, and pronounced as excellent by Louis XIV. It was very good, with a mineral tang and a slight sparkle. It’s bottled in the Auvergne.

Other stuff going on nearby: making crêpes suzettes, a laborious enterprise:

Slicing ham to make the entrée “Chiffonnade de jambon affiné de Parme de chez Franco Gulli, beurre demi-sel Au Bon Beurre”. These are thin strips of ham made from very thin slices.

I wanted to get an eclair for dessert, and not too far away was a fancy shop that sold what is reputed to be Paris’s best chocolate eclair, made in a shop at the spiffy Hotel Bristol. It had better be good for 15 euros! But I sprang for it, and it was excellent, loaded with Peruvian chocolate with a hint of cinnamon and other flavors.  It came in a fancy bag and a fancy box. The letters atop the eclair are made of hard chocolate.

One eclair in a box in a fancy bag:

A box with a fancy green tab that, when pulled, opened a drawer containing the eclair!

See above for the contents. Mine was half eaten before I thought to take a photo.

The eclair shop also had a pirate’s ship made ENTIRELY of chocolate except for the marble heads of the pirates at the bow. Even the cannons are chocolate. I wonder if anybody will eat this.

On the way back, cats: a bedroom shop with a kitty-embroidered pillow, and a cat poster:

And a shop that sold Chagall paintings—real ones. I can’t imagine the price!

We later found out that there was rioting in the streets today, which explains all the police. There were supposedly 400,000 people gathered near the Rue de Rivoli, and they set fire to the headquarters of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesey (LVMH) in the eighth.  There was also supposed to be a big gathering around the Bastille, where I’m staying, but we saw none of the riots—just the cops.

Tomorrow, one of my favorite bistros, famous for its ENORMOUS portions of cassoulet: L’Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes.

Harvard starts new faculty council to promote academic freedom

April 13, 2023 • 11:00 am

This is an op-ed from yesterday’s Boston Globe announcing the formation of a new organization devoted to promoting academic freedom and free speech at Harvard. When I wrote this last night the op-ed, written by Steve Pinker and Bertha Madras (biographical info at bottom), was paywalled, so I decided to just paste in the text.

This morning I find that the paywall was lifted, but I’ve left the text in anyway, or you can click on the headline/subheadline screenshot below and read it in the paper. At the bottom I’ve put a link to the council’s new webpage.

The article explains the rationale for the new council (so far about 50 faculty). While the members haven’t had trouble expressing their views, they formed the council to stave off the encroachment of censors on academic freedom and speech in general at Harvard, of which there are already signs. As the authors note:

Harvard ranks 170th out of 203 colleges in FIRE’s Free Speech Rankings, and we know of cases of disinvitation, sanctioning, harassment, public shaming, and threats of firing and boycotts for the expression of disfavored opinions. More than half our students say they are uncomfortable expressing views on controversial issues in class.

Three more points. The letter conflates academic freedom (the freedom for faculty and researchers to study what they want without suppression) and freedom of speech (the freedom to say what you want as an individual, though not necessarily in class!). These rights are, of course, closely connected, and the new council will fight to preserve both.  Thus they’re not distinguished in the letter, which would be pedantic.

Second, note the paragraph beginning “The counter-intuitiveness of academic freedom is easily reinforced by several campus dynamics”, which goes on to explain why a small group of loud activists can take power over an academic institution whose members are, by and large, in disagreement with the activists, but afraid to speak up.

Finally, note that the Council on Academic Freedom is going to take action; they’re not just a passive body to adjudicate claims. Their main activities will be seminars, workshops, lectures, and orientation of faculty about the meaning of free speech and academic freedom, as well as to provide a line of defense for scholars beleaguered by censors, Pecksniffs, and authoritarians on both Left and Right. (I’m pretty sure that at Harvard the repression has come mainly from the Left.) Students are mentioned several times, but it’s not clear whether they, too, will get orientation in freedom of expression.

I believe my own school is forming a group like this, though it’s only in the beginning stages.

Confidence in American higher education is sinking faster than for any other institution, with barely half of Americans believing it has a positive effect on the country.

No small part in this disenchantment is the impression that universities are repressing differences of opinion, like the inquisitions and purges of centuries past. It has been stoked by viral videos of professors being mobbed, cursed, heckled into silence, and sometimes assaulted, and it is vindicated by some alarming numbers. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, between 2014 and 2022 there were 877 attempts to punish scholars for expression that is, or in public contexts would be, protected by the First Amendment. Sixty percent resulted in actual sanctions, including 114 incidents of censorship and 156 firings (i44 of them tenured professors) — more than during the McCarthy era. Worse, for every scholar who is punished, many more self-censor, knowing they could be next. It’s no better for the students, a majority of whom say that the campus climate prevents them from saying things they believe.

The embattled ideal of academic freedom is not just a matter of the individual rights of professors and students. It’s baked into the mission of a university, which is to seek and share the truth — veritas, as our university, Harvard, boasts on its seal.

The reason that a truth-seeking institution must sanctify free expression is straightforward. No one is infallible or omniscient. Mortal humans begin in ignorance of everything, and are saddled with cognitive biases that make the search for knowledge arduous. These include overconfidence in their own rectitude, a preference for confirmatory over disconfirmatory evidence, and a drive to prove that their own alliance is smarter and nobler than their rivals. The only way that our species has managed to learn and progress is by a process of conjecture and refutation: Some people venture ideas, others probe whether they are sound, and in the long run the better ideas prevail.

Any community that disables this cycle by repressing disagreement is doomed to chain itself to error, as we are reminded by the many historical episodes in which authorities enforced dogmas that turned out to be flat wrong. An academic establishment that stifles debate betrays the privileges that the nation grants it and is bound to provide erroneous guidance on vital issues like pandemics, violence, gender, and inequality. Even when the academic consensus is almost certainly correct, as with vaccines and climate change, skeptics can understandably ask, “Why should we trust the consensus, if it comes out of a clique that brooks no dissent?”

There are many reasons to think that repression of academic freedom is systemic and must be actively resisted. To start with, the very concept of freedom of expression is anything but intuitively obvious. What is intuitively obvious is that the people who disagree with us are spreading dangerous falsehoods and must be silenced for the greater good. (Of course the other guys believe the same thing, with the sides switched.)

The counter-intuitiveness of academic freedom is easily reinforced by several campus dynamics. The intellectual commons is vulnerable to the collective action problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs: A cadre of activists may find meaning and purpose in their cause and be willing to stop at nothing to prosecute it, while a larger number may disagree but feel they have other things to do with their time than push back. The activists command an expanding arsenal of asymmetric warfare, including the ability to disrupt events, the power to muster physical or electronic mobs on social media, and a willingness to smear their targets with crippling accusations of racism, sexism, or transphobia in a society that rightly abhors them. An exploding bureaucracy for policing harassment and discrimination has professional interests that are not necessarily aligned with the production and transmission of knowledge. Department chairs, deans, and presidents strive to minimize bad publicity and may proffer whatever statement they hope will make the trouble go away. Meanwhile, the shrinking political diversity of faculty threatens to lock in the regime for generations to come.

One kind of resistance will surely make thing worse: attempts by politicians to counter left-wing muscle with right-wing muscle by stipulating the content of education through legislation or by installing cronies in hostile takeovers of boards of trustees. The coin of the realm in academia ought to be persuasion and debate, and the natural protagonists ought to be the faculty. They can hold universities accountable to the commitments to academic freedom that are already enshrined in faculty policies, handbooks, and in the case of public universities, the First Amendment.

In this spirit, we have joined with 50 colleagues to create a new Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. It’s not about us. For many years we have each expressed strong and often unorthodox opinions with complete freedom and with the support, indeed warm encouragement, of our colleagues, deans, and presidents. Yet we know that not all is well for more vulnerable colleagues and students. Harvard ranks 170th out of 203 colleges in FIRE’s Free Speech Rankings, and we know of cases of disinvitation, sanctioning, harassment, public shaming, and threats of firing and boycotts for the expression of disfavored opinions. More than half our students say they are uncomfortable expressing views on controversial issues in class.

The Council is a faculty-led organization that is devoted to free inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse. We are diverse in politics, demographics, disciplines, and opinions, but united in our concern that academic freedom needs a defense team. Our touchstone is the “Free Speech Guidelines” adopted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1990, which declares, “Free speech is uniquely important to the University because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse. Free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching, and learning.”

Naturally, since we are professors, we plan to sponsor workshops, lectures, and courses on the topic of academic freedom. We also intend to inform new faculty about Harvard’s commitments to free speech and the resources available to them when it is threatened. We will encourage the adoption and enforcement of policies that protect academic freedom. When an individual is threatened or slandered for a scholarly opinion, which can be emotionally devastating, we will lend our personal and professional support. When activists are shouting into an administrator’s ear, we will speak calmly but vigorously into the other one, which will require them to take the reasoned rather than the easy way out. And we will support parallel efforts led by undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students.

Harvard is just one university, but it is the nation’s oldest and most famous, and for better or worse, the outside world takes note of what happens here. We hope the effects will spread outside our formerly ivy-covered walls and encourage faculty and students elsewhere to rise up. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and if we don’t defend academic freedom, we should not be surprised when politicians try to do it for us or a disgusted citizenry writes us off.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard. Bertha Madras is Professor of Psychobiology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Laboratory of Addiction Neurobiology at McLean Hospital.

The website of the Council is here; and its executive director is Dr. Flynn Cratty.

 

Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 13, 2023 • 6:45 am

Today we’ll have a truncated Hili dialogue because I’m in Paris. Bonjour on this Thursday, April 13, 2023: Parisian Lunch Day.

The brief Nooz

From the NYT: “Why we’re probably headed for a recession” by  columnist Peter Coy.

From the WaPo: “Appeals court temporarily keeps abortion pills available but limits access.”

A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a decision by a judge in Texas to suspend U.S. government approval of a key abortion medication nationwide.

The court’s decision makes mifepristone available for now, though the judges declined to pause another part of the Texas ruling that said the Food and Drug Administration wrongly expanded access to the abortion drug.

The court said a preliminary review suggests that a statute of limitations barred a challenge to the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug in 2000. However, it left in place parts of the ruling that targeted the loosening of restrictions by the FDA in recent years. These included a 2016 move to allow the drug to be used through 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of the initial seven weeks. It also included the FDA’s decision this year to further ease access to mifepristone by allowing retail pharmacies to dispense the pills.
Not good news, but it’s from the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is definitely headed to the Supreme Court, and so we’re in the position of having lawmakers control approval of and access to drugs.

Today Hili is bereft at her bowl:

Hili: Have you ever seen such an empty bowl?
A: It was just washed.
Hili: And it should be just filled.
In Polish:
Hili: Widziałeś kiedyś tak pustą miseczkę?
Ja: Jest świeżo umyta.
Hili: A powinna być świeżo napełniona.

From Divy, the definition of a kitten. Click to enlarge:

From Nicole, a Dave Coverly Speed Bump cartoon:

From Stash Krod, the Revolt of the Pedants:

From Masih, the Farsi translation:

Moments of singing by Amin Maroufi, a 16-year-old teenager who was killed by government agents in Ashnoye during the revolution *Woman_Life_Freedom. Ashnoye was the first city where the control of many parts of it was lost from the government’s hands and the people occupied the streets.  #Mehsa Amini

Barry sent an exchange about evolution on Twitter:

From Malcolm: Cat goes after virtual fish:

From gravelinspector, a tweet from. . . .. etsy???

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, the famous ice-channel duck train. I’m sure I’ve shown this before:

From a trail cam: a magnificent turkey display; he’s clearly looking for a mate:

 

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Hebrewski

April 12, 2023 • 1:00 pm

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “beer”, came with the note

That barmaid just won’t stop trying not to believe in things that aren’t true!

Of course the boys don’t like the atheistic barmaid denying their identities, but God’s messenger isn’t even supposed to drink.  (And yes, I did once see a real beer called “Hebrewski”, but I can’t find it on the internet now. There are only tee-shirts. I suspect it’s now ideologically incorrect.)

Second meal, Paris

April 12, 2023 • 11:45 am

NOTE: UPDATED IN LIGHT OF SOBRIETY AND NEW INFORMATION.

I’m writing this while I’m quite tipsy, as the two of us consumed two bottles of wine during a nearly four-hour lunch. That’s par for the course for such a long meal, and as one of my old friends used to say, “One bottle equals one serving.”

Be warned: there may be typos which I miss as I am writing the first post I’ve ever written when not stone-cold sober.

Unfortunately, our return to Cartet, where I had one of the best meals of my life in February, 2020 (see description here), was not as glorious as expected. The food was not served in the usual copious portions (only one pate instead of three for starters, and two desserts instead of six, plus fewer side dishes), though the owner/chef/server was as affable as ever.

Perhaps it was because the meal featured fish, and I’m not a piscivore, but Winnie agreed that this lunch didn’t come up to the standards of the last. We’re going again next week and asked for lamb, so I’ll report back. But see the link above for what we had during our meal three years ago..

Cartet has a forbidding exterior: it’s dark inside, you can’t see in, the door is locked, and there’s only a small sign saying “Cartet.”

Here’s Winnie in front of the place. We’ve had many meals together, here and in Hong Kong, and have similar but not identical tastes in food (she’s more adventurous than I am). Further, though she’s a small woman, she has a big appetite and can pack away more than I, yet never puts on weight. She cannot explain this phenomenon. But she’s a fantastic eating companion, deeply enamored of food, which of course is a requirement for such a niche.

The interior. Usually there are only two people for lunch or dinner. The maximum number of people Dominique (the owner) ever served was 29—a birthday party. That party was for Pierre Bergé, Yves St. Laurent’s business partner (and life partner).

The reservation book. You can see that there are at most two people per each meal. Our reservation is indicated with the red arrow.

The tiny kitchen. As I’ve said, the guy who bought the place is also the chef, and serves the food as well as cleans up. With only two guests per meal, serving is not onerous. Dominique is quite chatty, especially about his philosophy of running a restaurant (it involves no profit for him, only pleasure and the joy of making his customers happy). He is a very unusual restauranteur.

A luscious white wine made from Chasselas grapes, a grape I’ve never tasted before (we were told they’re mostly eating grapes). There’s not much online about it (try here) and I’ve never seen it in the States. But this was definitely a keeper, with a flavor of Granny Smith apples and a touch of lemon, and definitely a dry white.

The name of the wine means “a morning facing the lake,” and, according to the chef, the wine tastes like walking through an apple orchard.

The back of the label if you want to find out more. I’m too tipsy to Google further.

A lighter red from Vacqueyras from the Rhone in southern France. I’ve had wines from this appellation many times in the U.S.; it’s a go-to red if you don’t want to spend a lot of dosh on a Côte Rotie or Chateauneuf. This was a good wine but not as outstanding as the white.

The chef’s paté to begin with (the last time we ate here they had four entire patés waiting for us, so though this was good, it was a bit of a disappointment.

Entrée number 2: Quenelles de brochet, pan-fried cakes with pike (these are characteristic of Lyon, but in that city they are usually poached or baked and served with crayfish sauce). They rested on a bed of endives.

Dominique cooking the turbot.  He wouldn’t let me take his photo face on, but permitted me to take this one.

The turbot. I’m not a piscivore, and didn’t expect fish, but the chef cooks according to the season, and I guess this is fish season (i.e., warmer weather). It was okay because it was not a fishy fish (my theory, which is mine, is that people prefer fish only when it tastes un-fishy).

“Snowball potatoes,” so called because they’re crunchy outside but softer inside, like a hunk of snow. These were terrific, and we polished them off.

We had 1.5 desserts as opposed to the six or more we had last time. Here’s the tarte citron: a lemony tart. Two large pieces each.

And chouquettes, a subspecies of creampuff covered with grains of sugar. They are usually hollow but these were stuffed with a rich cream filling.

I know that you’ll tell me that this was enough to eat, but it wasn’t, because while we weren’t starving at the end of the meal, neither were we full to satiation: my hallmark for a great meal.

Dominique’s card (he’s from Brittany). He also has another one that simply says “Cartet.” He’s a bit of a Luddite, and has, he said, “never opened a computer.” There’s a phone number, but no internet website; if you want a reservation, you have to reach him by phone, which is not always easy!

This is proof that neither of us were full: we repaired to a local ice cream place/wine bar, “Folderol“, after lunch. I had the matcha ice cream on the left; Winnie had olive oil ice cream (I tried it; it’s not as dire as it sounds) and a scoop of chocolate.

We discussed canceling our reservation for next week, but decided to give it a try but specifying what we wanted to eat, which was lamb with turnips (“navarin“), a French lamb stew traditionally served in Spring. If this next meal isn’t spectacular, I’ll be heartbroken. Today I’m just dysthymic.

Six more meals to go!

Elizabeth Holmes to be locked up this month

April 12, 2023 • 10:00 am

For a while I’ve been writing about the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, who started up the “blood testing” company Theranos and, along with her business and romantic partner Sunny Balwani, was convicted of several counts of wire fraud.

She was sentenced to 11 years in prison but more likely will serve 9½ (federal crimes don’t allow you much time off for good behavior). Reader Simon just sent me a link to this BBC article noting that her request to the judge to remain free while she appeals—a process that could take years—has been rejected. She’ll go into a minimum-security federal prison this month.

Click to read:

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will report to prison at the end of the month after losing a bid to remain free while she appeals against her convictions.

Holmes was sentenced to over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in her blood testing start-up.

A federal judge on Monday said Holmes failed to prove her appeals process would lead to a reversal of her case.

She is scheduled to go to prison on 27 April.

Holmes had said she would raise “substantial questions” that could warrant a new trial. Her attorneys also argued she should remain free to care for her two young children, including one who was born this year.

But in the Monday ruling, US District Judge Edward Davila said Holmes had not proven her appeal would result in a new trial.

“Contrary to her suggestion that accuracy and reliability were central issues to her convictions, Ms Holmes’s misrepresentations to Theranos investors involved more than just whether Theranos technology worked as promised,” he said.

I still think she’s going to take it on the lam: Holmes is entitled, narcissistic, and previously made one attempt to leave the U.S. while on trial:

Prosecutors, meanwhile, had argued Holmes was a flight risk because she had booked a one-way plane ticket to Mexico during her trial.

Homes’ attorneys said she and her partner Billy Evans were planning to attend a wedding and hoped she would be acquitted.

The ticket purchase was “ill-advised”, Judge Davila wrote in his ruling, though he added it did not constitute an attempt to flee.

“Booking international travel plans for a criminal defendant in anticipation of a complete defence victory is a bold move, and the failure to promptly cancel those plans after a guilty verdict is a perilously careless oversight,” he said.

If this was a trip to a wedding, why did they buy one-way tickets?  Nobody has explained that. I’m thinking that she can’t bear the idea of a decade in jail (she now has two infants) and will try to flee again. But that’s just a guess.

If you’re interested in this case, which is fascinating, read John Carreyrou’s book on the startup and downfall of Theranos, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. It’s a page-turner. Carreyrou, at the time writing for the Wall Street Journal, broke the story and it was his reporting that ultimately got Holmes and Balwani indicted, tried, and convicted. A great read, you’ll see how charismatic Holmes was, managing to convince a gaggle of rich and famous people to give her startup money without having the device that was supposed to diagnose many diseases from a single drop of blood.