Some Thoughts on Fish

[Jonah ordering fish]

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is giving away a little folding pocket guide titled "Seafood Watch, a West Coast Sustainable Seafood Guide". This is of note because it seems like every other issue of National Geographic or so has an article about the collapse of one oceanic fishery or another. The greatest of all, the one that probably led to the discovery of America by Europeans, the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, has been closed for years. There simply aren't enough fish left. It is the same story in fisheries all over the planet. In the 19th Century we wiped out the bison and the carrier pigeon. Now we're doing it to the world's fish. Here's what to do:

The guide consists of three lists: Best Choices, Good Alternatives, and Avoid.

** The double asterisks indicate "Limit consumption due to mercury or other contaminants". To the environmentalists at the Aquarium what matters is whether you harm the fish or the environment. Whether you suffer mercury-induced nerve damage in the process or are otherwise poisoned is an afterthought. Sigh.

# "Some or all of this fishery is certified as sustainable to the Marine Stewardship Council standard." Which I guess means that the people involved are considered affirmatively not schmucks.

BEST CHOICES
(abundant, well-managed, and caught or farmed in environmentally friendly ways)

Abalone (US farmed)
Arctic Char (farmed)
Barramundi (US farmed)
Catfish (US farmed)
Clams, Mussels, Oysters (farmed)
Cobia (US farmed)
Cod, Pacific (Alaska longlines) #
Crab, Dungeness
Halibut, Pacific #
Lobster, Spiny (US)
Rockfish, Black (California, Oregon) **
Sablefish/Black Cod (Alaska, BC)
Salmon (Alaska, wild) #
Sardines, Pacific (US)
Scallops, Bay (farmed)
Shrimp, Pink (Oregon) #
Striped Bass (farmed or wild**)
Tilapia (US farmed)
Trout, Rainbow (farmed)
Tuna, Albacore (troll/pole, US # or BC)
Tuna, Skipjack (troll/pole)
White Seabass


GOOD ALTERNATIVES
(are an option but there are concerns with how they're caught or farmed - or with the health of their habitat due to other human perils.)

Caviar, Sturgeon (US farmed)
Clams, Oysters (wild)
Cod, Pacific (US trawled)
Crab, King (US), Snow
Flounders, Sanddabs, Soles (Pacific)
Halibut, California
Lingcod **
Lobster, American/Maine
Mahi Mahi/Dolphinfish (US)
Pollock (Alaska wild) #
Rockfish (Alaska or BC, hook and line)**
Sablefish/Black Cod (California or Washington)
Salmon (Washington wild)**
Scallops, Sea (wild)
Shrimp (US, Canada)
Spotted Prawn (US)
Squid
Swai, Basa (farmed)
Swordfish (US) **
Tilapia (Central American farmed)
Tuna: Bigeye, Yellowfin (troll/pole)
Tuna: Canned Skipjack and Albacore **


AVOID
(for now, as these fish are caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment.)

Caviar, Sturgeon (imported wild) **
Chilean Seabass/Toothfish **
Cod: Atlantic, imported Pacific
Cobia (imported farmed)
Crab, King (imported)
Dogfish (US) **
Grenadier/Pacific Roughy
Lobster, Spiny (Caribbean)
Mahi Mahi/Dolphinfish (imported)
Marlin: Blue **, Striped **
Monkfish
Orange Roughy **
Rockfish (trawled) **
Salmon (farmed, including Atlantic) **
Sharks **
Shrimp (imported)
Swordfish (imported) **
Tilapia (Asia farmed)
Tuna: Albacore, Bigeye, Yellowfin (longline) **
Tuna: Bluefin **, Tongol, Canned (except Albacore and Skipjack)
Yellowtail (imported farmed)

For more information, or to print this list, see www.seafoodwatch.org and the Marine Stewardship Council at www.msc.org.


What the hell is barramundi? Or cobia for that matter?

As a bachelor and eater of sandwiches I am sorry that canned tuna is out, at least albacore. I don't what skipjack is, but the name sounds like a suggestion to me. Fortunately there are still Pacific sardines.

As a Jew I am delighted to see that salmon (read "lox"), at least Alaska wild salmon, is still OK.

As someone who pays in restaurants, I am glad Maine lobster is no better than an alternative. "Yes, honey, the lobster does look good, but it's ecologically dubious. Wouldn't you really rather have the catfish? For the sake of the environment?" A fortiori for caviar.

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Did Mossad Kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh?

[the House of Commons- not how they do it in Gaza?]

Let's hope so. According to Reuters, Al-Mabhouh was a founder of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, usually described as the "armed wing" of Hamas. One doesn't want to think how many Israelis and Palestinians have died at their hands.

It was the Izz el-Deen which recruited and armed the endless suicide bombers it sent into crowded Israeli marketplaces, pizzerias, and city buses before the security wall was built to keep them out. It was the Izz el-Deen which acquired, smuggled, and launched the 8,000 rockets which thundered down on civilian neighborhoods in southern Israel. It was Izz el-Deen which conducted the bloody civil war by which Hamas defeated the Fatah in Gaza. One doesn't want to even imagine what was done to the defeated Fatah fighters when Izz el-Deen captured them.

Even given that, it is not clear that either Mossad or Fatah were responsible for his death. I have read that al-Mabouh was the founder and "former" leader of Izz el-Deen. One is free to disagree with me here because I have no way of knowing this, but my guess is that struggles for leadership of organizations like Izz el-Deen are not conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order, but in some other fashion. Among people accustomed to using force both within and without their organizations, one is less likely to be eased out than rubbed out.

Nikita Kruschev, the former premier of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin, established a huge milestone in the transition from the outright gangsterism to which Stalin's Red Terror had degenerated by 1953. In 1956 Kruschev forced out Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's longtime Foreign Minister, and seized power himself. Molotov became the first Soviet politician in thirty years to lose power without shortly thereafter being shot. Not only did Kruschev not have Molotov murdered, Molotov actually outlived him by 15 years. Under Stalin every one of the Old Bolsheviks (who, along with Lenin, had actually conducted the revolution) except Molotov was murdered either with show trials or with no trials.

Similarly Jimmy Hoffa's whereabout remain unknown.

My guess is that the internal processes at Izz el-Deen are more like those of the Soviet Union under Stalin and the Mafia in the time of Jimmy Hoffa, than those of Her Majesty's parliament in the time of Queen Victoria. Former leaders are probably dispatched rather more decisively than by elevating them to the House of Lords.

In any case, whoever did away with Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, he deserved it.

More Middle East Silliness

[Dubai Police Chief Dahi Talfan Tamim Cohen]

West Bank: Hamas Accuses Fatah of Links to Assassination in Dubai

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 19, 2010

Hamas asserted Friday that two former officers from the rival Fatah organization were involved in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai, while Fatah insinuated that Hamas members were the ones who collaborated with the killers. The Dubai police have two unidentified Palestinians in custody in connection with the killing of the official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, last month; 11 other suspects who had European passports are at large. A Hamas Web site, the Palestine Information Center, said the two Palestinians were Anwar Shheibar and Ahmad Hassanain, former Fatah security officers and current employees of a senior Fatah official. Hamas has accused Israel of the killing, but Izzat al-Rishq, a Hamas leader in Damascus, Syria, said the Palestinians might have been “small collaborators.”

A Fatah spokesman denied involvement in the killing and blamed Hamas members for any collaboration. “Hamas is the only one to know the movement of al-Mabhouh, and from there the information went to the Israelis,” said the spokesman, Adnan Damiri.

The two Palestinians (Mossad hires mainly Palestinians) detained were unidentified except for Hamas claiming to know who they are and giving their names. There are eleven suspects at large using European passports. Somehow the two Palestinians detained remain unidentified while the eleven suspects at large, though it is not known who they are, are known to be Mossad agents. Indeed it is so well established that these eleven unknown suspects are Mossad agents that the certainty proves that the passports they used must be false because they did not have Mossad passports. The certainty about these unidentified persons, in spite of no one apprehending them nor anyone knowing who they are, is so great that undergraduate cretins as far afield as Dublin know exactly who they are.

Clearly it was a conspiracy of Mossad, Hamas, Fatah, the Iranian Republican Guard, the CIA, Al Qaeda, the Vatican, perhaps Brazil, and The Three Stooges.

This story was run by people actually claiming to be a news reporting agency.

Humor in the Middle East

From Agence France Presse today -

Syrian President Bashar Assad met with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Friday and discussed a number of issues including relations with Israel. During the meeting, Assad said peace requires will – something that he said Israel is lacking. He stressed that European countries should take upon themselves an important role in the region and force Israel to commit to peace. He also reiterated the need for Turkish mediation in the peace process, and stressed the importance of France's support.

I hope Prime Minister Fillon was able to keep a straight face while President Bashar was telling him this. This is the same Syrian regime which invaded Lebanon and occupied it for decades and was not long ago implicated in the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. This is the same Syrian regime that provoked Turkish military action on their border. This is the same Syrian regime that funneled money and arms from Iran to Hezbollah. This is the same Syrian regime that alone among Israel's neighbors has not only not signed any peace treaty but has steadfastly refused to even enter into negotiations, even when urged by the other Arab countries and the Quartet. This is the same Syrian regime that has consistently endorsed the Rejectionist Khartoum Declaration of 1968. This is the same Syrian regime that massacred 20,000 of their own civilians during the military revolt at Hama in 1982.

This is who is lecturing Israel on peace?

But seriously, Bashar did not intend or expect to be taken seriously about Israel. His remarks are directed to the Turkish government. Since the Islamic National Salvation Party took power there, there has been an opening for Arab governments to improve their relations with Turkey, which is Israel's only explicit military ally in the Middle East.

Syria was excluded from this opening because of the border tensions caused by Syria giving sanctuary to Kurdish rebels who had committed guerrilla raids on the Turkish side of the border. Turkish troops actually entered Syria under the doctrine of "hot pursuit".

President Bashar's remarks about Turkish mediation appear an attempt to flatter the Turkish government and to unfreeze Turkish diplomatic hostility. And to undermine the Turkish-Israeli alliance.

A Step Up for the Gray Lady

from Wednesday's Santa Rosa Press Democrat -

Reporter Accused of Plagiarism
The New York Times is looking into the work of one of its reporters following accusations that he plagiarized from the Wall Street Journal and other sources.

The paper published an editor's note online Sunday and in papers Monday that said reporter Zachery Kouwe "appears to have improperly appropriated wording and passages published by other news organizations".

This is a huge improvement for the Times. Copying from the Wall Street Journal, which is more or less an actual newspaper, is a substantial improvement from the NYT's usual practice of copying from "The Eastern Establishment Handbook of Political Correctness, Veiled Antisemitism, and Anti-Israel Bigotry".

The Times frequently copies Palestinian sources verbatim and presents them as news. So one assumes it is not Kouwe's copying , but his copying from something other than 'the E.E. Handbook' which is the source of the Times' editorial wrath.

[full disclosure - the co-author of this blog had a rural bicycle delivery route for the Press Democrat during 1957-58. He was thus arguably an employee of the P-D. He denies being currently in their employ or otherwise in cahoots with them.]

Happy & Romantic & Belated Valentines Day

Watch more Moviefone videos on AOL Video

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The Dream

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Pleased with Myself

Just now back from Oregon. After over a thousand miles of driving without incident, while attempting to start my car in front of the UPS office in El Cerrito where I get my mail, it wouldn't start. It didn't turn over at all.

Rather than panic and even before feeling grateful that the tsouris came within sight of the repair place, it occurred to me what the problem might be. Since it had not made even a feeble attempt to start, it couldn't be the engine per se, nor even the battery. It had to be the connection to the battery. Out of an abundance of caution I had taken both metric and SAE wrench sets and a bag of other tools. I loosened and disconnected the battery connectors and used a screwdriver to scrape them and the battery posts free of the layer of blue-green copper sulfate (the copper from the battery plates, the sulfate from the sulfuric battery acid) that had accumulated. With high hopes I re-tightened them and turned the ignition key. It started more readily than it had before.

Being able to solve one's problems unassisted is such a pleasure.

The Devil is in the Details

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Weird News

[Acting President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, second from right]

The President of Nigeria, Umaru Yar'Adua, was in ill-health and flew to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. That was almost three months ago. Since then no one in Nigeria has heard from him. In the meantime, there has been growing pressure for the vice-president to assume power as the acting president. The vice-president is Goodluck Jonathan - which sounds like he is from the same town as Cotton and Increase Mather.

The Wall Street Journal article went on to add --

Mr. Jonathan, who is often seen in a wide-brimmed Stetson hat, has been thrust into power before. In 2005 while he was deputy governor of Bayelsa state, the then-governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, was arrested in London on money-laundering charges. Mr. Alamieyeseigha jumped bail and, dressed as a woman, fled to Nigeria where he was impeached, arrested and sentenced to two years in jail, according to press reports. He was released within hours.

Mr. Jonathan, handpicked as vice president by Nigeria's former president and ruling party, was seen as someone who wasn't as corrupt as the country's other politicians.

Hopeful News

[17 year old Du'a Khalil Aswad being stoned to death for improper relations in 2007]

The news item here is that the Saudi Human Rights Commission (admittedly 'Saudi' and 'Human Rights' does sound like an oxymoron) intervened on behalf of the little girl, not of the Wahhabi religious authorities. If there can be even the beginnings of Islamic reform in Saudi Arabia, there can be reform anywhere.

from today's Times of London -

A 12-year-old girl fighting to divorce her 80-year-old husband in Saudi Arabia is to receive legal assistance from the Government in what could become a test case for banning child marriage in the kingdom.

The state-run Human Rights Commission has hired a lawyer to represent the girl when she takes her case to court in Buraidah, a conservative town near the capital Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has no minimum legal age for marriage and it is common in poorer, tribal areas for girls to be married off. However, it is rare for a child bride to challenge the match.

A draft law prohibiting child marriage is under discussion and activists hope that the case will be a watershed in the campaign to ban the practice.

The girl was married to her father’s cousin last year against her wishes and those of her mother. It was reported locally that the marriage was sealed with a dowry of 85,000 riyals (£14,500) and consummated.

The girl’s mother filed for divorce but withdrew her case without explanation this month.

This is the first time that the Human Rights Commission has intervened publicly in such a case.

Alanoud al-Hejailan, a lawyer for the commission, said: “Our main concern is to safeguard the child’s rights ... it is in the hands of the court but the commission is firmly on the child’s side.”

The court is expected to rule in the case within days. The commission has indicated that it will pursue the matter through the appeals court if a divorce is not granted.

The draft law is expected to establish a minimum age for marriage of between 16 and 18. As a short-term measure activists are pressing for the Government to ban notaries from sealing marriages of girls under 18.

The case has sparked debate in Saudi Arabia. Some judges and clerics have used the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a nine-year-old girl as justification of child marriage.

However, in January Sheikh Abdullah al-Manie, a senior Saudi cleric, spoke out in defence of the girl, declaring that the Prophet’s marriage 14 centuries ago could not be used to justify child marriages today.

Young wives

— In April 2009 a Saudi judge refused to annul a marriage between a girl, 8, and a man in his late forties, saying that she could not seek divorce until she reached puberty

— Anecdotal evidence suggests that Saudi Arabi’a child marriage rate is high, accompanied by a divorce rate of about 60 per cent

— Child marriage in Yemen became a cause célèbre in 2008 when Nujood Ali, 10, sought divorce from an abusive husband more than three times her age

— Marriage of young girls is most common in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. In Niger 77 per cent of 20 to 24-year-old women were married before 18 and in Bangladesh the figure stands at 65 per cent

A Reminiscence of 1977

[The Ghiberti Doors, Florence]

I lost my job, and ultimately my career, so I did what any strong-minded man would do - I ran away. Patty and I had planned to vacation in Portugal so I said, the hell with it, let's go anyway. We had a wonderful time in Portugal for a couple of weeks, then she flew home. I stayed in Lisbon and watched her plane leave. Not the best moment of my life.

I took a train to Florence but didn't realize that one had to buy a separate ticket for a seat. So I spent hours standing in the corridor, then sitting in the corridor, then lying. Amidst the dirt, cigarette butts, and one doesn't want to think what else. Get tired enough and one doesn't care.

Also in the corridor were a young English girl and a young Australian man who were not together. I was an elderly figure of thirty, so I took an avuncular interest in these tots of twenty-something. I pointed out truthfully, that a room in a pensione with three beds would be far cheaper than three rooms with one bed each. The English girl was very proud of how liberated and independent she thought she was and was not afraid to be in a room with the young Aussie and me, especially in view of my advanced age and chaperone-ish demeanor. The Aussie claimed to be liberated and egalitarian as well, but had merely read about it as something going on in the US and UK and had no clear idea what it was about.

What I omitted to tell my young acquaintances was that I was on my way to Jerusalem to meet my mother who happened to be there the same time I was in Portugal. So I left the next morning for Arezzo and the Adriatic ferry to Haifa, leaving the two green youths alone together in the room - quite a different proposition from being three in the room together. And could there be a more romantic city for young people to find themselves thrown together than Florence? My romantic prank.

My guess is that they live in a suburb of Melbourne, have three kids and by now five grandchildren and are expecting another any day.

The Deep Root of Jewish Humor?

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Not apropos of anything, just cool

[The New Horizons spacecraft is en route to Pluto]

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Even in Retirement

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Where Are They?

[M31, Andromeda Galaxy, is the Milky Way's near-twin and binary partner, that is, they are in orbit around each other. It is the nearest large galaxy to ours. It is 2.5 million light-years away so the picture is of how it looked 2.5 million years ago. The light from the far side is 100,000 years older than the light from the near side.]

I have never understood Enrico Fermi's question about extraterrestrials, "Why aren't they here?"

It is the same question as "Why haven't we ourselves sent starships all over the galaxy?" The answer is special relativity - it would require an immense and immensely powerful ship to accelerate to near-light speed and then to decelerate down from it at its destination. And seen from earth it would take thousands of years for such a ship to reach even the nearest star, 4 light-years away.

If the first people ever to live in a city, in addition to building the walls of Jericho 9,000 years ago, had built and sent out a starship to the nearest star at near light speed, it would still be en route today. Our galaxy is some 100,000 light years across. It is pretty damned obvious why extraterrestrials have not visited us. Even if it were physically feasible for them to do it, no small supposition, since the beginning of our civilization there has not been time enough for them to get here.

Yet Fermi was no fool. One of the leading scientists of the Twentieth Century (and, interestingly, an Italian Jew), he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938. He has a subatomic particle, the fermion, an element, fermium, a research laboratory, the Fermi Accelerator National Lab, and a space telescope, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, named after him. I on the other hand have a blog and a lot of opinions. Even so I am willing to bet that I am right and he is wrong. Unless there were money involved, of course. Then I too would bet on Fermi. So what am I missing?

My guess is that Fermi was not as impressed as I am with special relativity. He knew Einstein personally and perhaps understood him and his physics to be as fallible as anyone else's. My guess is that Fermi saw 20th Century physics as just that - a science that would be superseded in the centuries to come, just as 18th and 19th century science had been in his time. Otherwise his remark makes no sense.

We already have intimations of that in the study of quantum entanglement, effects that operate instantly over unlimited distances. Though these are wispy subatomic things, subtle quantum effects, they nevertheless reflect something about reality that doesn't give a damn about special relativity. So maybe during the coming century or the one after it, special relativity itself will be shown to be a special case of something larger, just as it did for classical Newtonian mechanics. If that should turn out to be true, where the hell are they?

Sacre Bleu!

After all my supposedly radically independent thinking and unconventionality, all my jousting with Irish lunkheads and Gaza screamers, it turns out that my notions are no more than conventional government policy in France. France, as in Europe, as in EU. How cool is that?

France bars citizenship over veil

The French government has refused to grant citizenship to a foreign national on the grounds that he forced his wife to wear the full Islamic veil.

The man, whose current nationality was not given, needed citizenship to settle in the country with his French wife.

But Immigration Minister Eric Besson said this was being refused because he was depriving his wife of the liberty to come and go with her face uncovered.

Last week, a parliamentary committee proposed a partial ban on full veils.

It also recommended that anyone showing visible signs of "radical religious practice" be refused residence permits and citizenship.

'Integration'

In a statement, Mr Besson said he had signed a decree on Tuesday rejecting a man's citizenship application after it emerged that he had ordered his wife to cover herself with a head-to-toe veil.

"It became apparent during the regulation investigation and the prior interview that this person was compelling his wife to wear the all-covering veil, depriving her of the freedom to come and go with her face uncovered, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women," he said.

Later, the minister stressed that French law required anyone seeking naturalisation to demonstrate their desire for integration.

Mr Besson's decree has now been sent to Prime Minister Francois Fillon for approval.

The interior ministry says only 1,900 women wear full veils in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority.

In 2008, a French court denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman on the grounds that her "radical" practice of Islam was incompatible with French values.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8494860.stm

Published: 2010/02/03 04:38:02 GMT

© BBC MMX

Whodunnit?

[Dubai's Burj al-Arab, the world's only seven star hotel]

From today's Wall Street Journal -

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic militants have escalated over the past week after Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior operative who Israelis say helped smuggle weapons into Gaza, was killed in a Dubai hotel room.

Hamas officials initially accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of the killing, while Israeli officials refrained from confirming or denying involvement. On Tuesday, Arab media outlets reported that Hamas officials were suggesting agents from Arab governments rather than Israel were responsible for the killing.

That is simply the unfriendliest room service I have ever heard of.

Economic Competition in The Old West

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A Common Problem

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Let's bash the Brits

Enough of this fighting among Jews and Palestinians. Let's find common ground, something we can all hate. English cooking.

If You Are What You Eat, What Are the British?

By Bruce Cameron

Recently I found myself arguing with a British friend of mine over which tastes better: English cooking or dirt.

According to a Feb. 10 report by news agency Reuters, the issue has been settled once and for all. It's dirt.

That's not what the article actually says — what it says is that according to Dr. Graham Clayton, a researcher at Leeds University, British potato chips combine the aromas of "butterscotch, onion, cheese and ... ironing boards."

If you've ever had these chips, you're probably thinking: "Wait, ironing boards? I don't remember tasting any ironing boards; what did they do, improve the recipe?"

British potato chips differ from the American version in that the English chips are grey and soggy, as if they were laundered with dirty socks. They can be delicious if you've taken complete leave of your senses; otherwise, you might be better off checking to see what else is in the dryer.

My friend takes exception to my description of his chips — but then, this is a guy who eats baked beans and hotdogs for breakfast. (He calls the hotdog a "banger," but I know a hotdog when I see it, even if it doesn't have a ballgame in front of it.)

English cooking was deliberately designed by an ancient English king to motivate his troops to invade France. That's why my British buddy drinks stout, which looks like a glass mug full of liquid interstate highway. The beverage's name is very descriptive: Drink enough stout, and that's what you'll be.

The British love plain labels: Open my friend's cupboard, and you'll find it stacked with cans that say simply, "beans." That's it — no clue as to the kind of bean, how they are cooked or why anyone would eat them for breakfast. He's also got "Heinz salad cream" — if you need to know what flavor cream, you shouldn't be eating it.

Nor should you eat "clotted cream" — or at least, not according to my mother, who always insisted that when the milk came out in clots, it was time to throw it out. The word "clot" is intentionally unappetizing so that you'll know not to eat one, yet to the British, it's a form of dessert!

Or how about my friend's bottle of "brown sauce?" Only the Brits would think that "brown" was a flavor.

Brit: Today for lunch we've got some ironing boards in a delicate brown flavor, plus some gross clots.

Me: I think instead I'll just have a hotdog and some baked beans.

Brit: Sorry, we've stopped serving breakfast.

Me: Oh, OK.

Well, what color do the clots taste like?

Some of the labels, though, are completely incomprehensible. One small jar my friend has in his cupboard is called "Bovril," which sounds to me like something you'd take for a yeast infection. Turns out I'm wrong: Bovril is a "concentrated yeast extract drink." That's right, it doesn't cure a yeast infection, it is a yeast infection!

Another can is filled with "kipper fillets in sunflower oil." Not sure what a "kipper" is, I looked it up and came across this entry: "In the U.K., kippers, along with other preserved fish such as the bloater and the buckling ... ."

That's where I stopped reading, afraid I was going to throw a clot. Who would eat a fish called a "bloater"? That's how you describe a fish that has died from a yeast infection. One bite, and your knees will most certainly be "buckling."

For dessert, my friend has "rose-flavored jelly in milk chocolate." That's right, in England the cooking is so bad that people wander out into the garden to eat the flowers.

Brit: Do these roses taste red to you?

After munching on some ironing boards, bloating fish and clotted diary products, you might be, well, dead. If you're not, then you're probably British, which, given their diet, doesn't seem like that much of an improvement. You'll want to settle your stomach with either a good pumping or a handful of "digestive biscuits," a British cookie designed to help your body figure out what to do with all the stuff you've eaten.

Or here's an idea: Skip the meal. Catch up on your ironing, instead.

It's Here!

[Both sweetness and light]

The first buds of spring, pink and tender, have appeared on a Japanese cherry tree in my yard. The joy and beauty of rebirth and renewal are coming, are here already. In early spring it is easy to understand and appreciate the nature-cult elements of a Christianity which worships a god Who dies and lives anew in the spring. Early spring is happiness and elation and hope for the future.

Today is also the Jewish New Year of the Trees, Tu Bishvat. It is a day for planting trees, for giving money for the planting of trees in Israel. It is observed by eating tree fruits and nuts characteristic of the land of Israel, with appropriate brachot. Historically it was the day from which the fruit offerings, brought to the ancient temple in Jerusalem from all over eretz Yisrael, were dated.

The Kabbalists in Tsfat in the 1600's, led by Rabbi Isaac Luria, instituted a short seder for it, called Hemdat he-Yammim . I wonder what Haggadah they used? And whether it is still extant?

The Israel Defense Force teams in Haiti

According to the racists and hypocrites of the fake Left this was a publicity stunt. I doubt the poor bastard on the stretcher thinks it was.

Eclipses and the Future

I was looking at the NASA website for information about future total eclipses. There is a total solar eclipse in Gabon (equatorial Africa) in 2013, another in Svalbard (a Norwegian arctic island) in 2015, in Indonesia in 2016, in the United States in 2017. There is one in 2019 and then 9 during the 2020's. There is one in Australia on November 23, 2030, a week after my 84th birthday. There are six more during the 2030's. I copied down their dates and locations with progressively failing confidence. I ran out of lines in my daybook to write on with the eclipse in the Congo, Rwanda, and Kenya on April 30, 2041. The last few held less and less interest and little belief that I would see them. In 2041 I would be 94 years old. My people, particularly the men, die in our 70's.

As the dates mounted, the credibility of planning or even hoping to see them, waned. I found that I felt lonely and abandoned by the future. It would move ahead without me, cast me off without a thought. A perfunctory service, a stone, and then the business of the world, the business of the living, and more eclipses, ad infinitum. Without me.

In contemplating the world of the eclipses of the 2030's and after, I felt lonesome. I missed me.

Harvey's daughter, my niece Lucy, is two years old. She is a girl, healthy, and has good genes. She will live a long time.

Most of what kills us is no longer pathogens. We do not die of plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, as people did a century ago. Instead we die of auto-immune diseases. Diabetes is caused by an autoimmune response which destroys the insulin-producing Isles of Langerhans. Alzheimer's is caused by an auto-immune response which destroys the brain. Much heart disease is either caused or exacerbated by inflammation of coronary artery linings which is typically an immune response. Most arthritis is also an inflammation that is not a response to an injury or a pathogen and could also be said to be an auto-immune response. Cancer, though not an immune response disease, is analogous because it too involves the body destroying itself rather than being attacked by an external pathogen. Most degenerative diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and Lou Gehrig's disease are also immune response diseases.

With the continuing progress of molecular analysis of proteins and such, it seems likely that during Lucy's lifetime auto-immune diseases will become readily treatable. Without pathogens or auto-immune and analogous diseases, life expectancies for Lucy and her peers will be long. Without degenerative diseases, their quality of life will be good.

Hey Lucy! There is a helluva good eclipse passing over Maui and most of Big Island on March 10, 2100. Have a good time and tell 'em Uncle Jack sent you.

Hard to Believe but....

[Catholic Relief Services helicopter bringing emergency supplies to Goncaives, Haiti. Catholics don't actually care about the Haitians, they are just sending aid to make themselves look good.]

There has been a lot of criticism of Israeli aid to Haiti coming from exactly those from whom one would expect it to come. The argument is made that Israeli aid is merely done to be seen to be doing good, not to aid the Haitians.

This is a good example of the intellectual dishonesty of Israel's enemies. I do not say "critics" because being a critic implies good faith.

Does one imagine that these soi-disant "critics" would have been kind to Israel if she had sent no aid? I don't think so. Yet they are silent about the glaring omission of the wealthy Arab states to send a dime or a box of bread. At the same time the Arabs are sending nothing at all, Israel is sending more, proportional to her population, than any other country.

The United States and Canada are sending aid. Every country in Europe is sending aid. Mexico and Turkey which both have experience of devastating earthquakes, are sending aid. Cuba and Venezuela are sending aid. China and Japan are sending aid. The UN is sending aid. Yet only Israel's motives are questioned.

A hundred countries send aid, yet the pseudo-Leftist enemies single out Israel's program, generally agreed to be among the fastest and most effective in delivering emergency aid, to deny the decency of their motives.

Nothing explains this enmity to the Jewish state except hostility to Jews. It is customary to close our eyes and pretend that "criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-semitism". But neither is it necessarily not anti-semitism.

This is an example of Israel's enemies on the pseudo-Left inadvertently showing their true racist faces by omitting to connect their hostility to Israel to even a putative issue.

Observations from Real Life

If you have persistent problems with your underwear, it is possible you have them on backwards.

Ross claims this is true

Ross' mother-in-law is a lady of a certain age who regards Ross and Faith's home in the El Cerrito hills to be on the benighted frontier as compared to the more settled parts with which she is familiar. Such as Brooklyn. Consistent with her attitudes about El Cerrito and California generally are her attitudes about Ross whom she considers to be little better than a savage.

Ross spends his days rectifying torts the polyglot denizens of Fremont inflict on each other by recovering damages for them from their respective insurance companies. He also wears a large fedora which he never takes off unless he is in the shower or in bed. For the usual reason. He prays as fervently as the others in the schule and as sincerely partakes of the iced vodka shots at the oneg shabbat afterwards (one of the perks of Orthodoxy) and the occasional surreptitious toke.

Ross would be the first to admit that his mother-in-law may have a point that there more than a few places about him where the veneer of civilization runs thin. But withal he is an attentive family man unto uxorious.

Anyway, his kids have a pet bunny, an enormous Belgian Giant the size of a cocker spaniel. In the usual laissez faire manner of the Meltzer family, the bunny is not restricted to his cage but wanders the house freely, usually behind the furniture. In summer the doors are left open for the bunny to nibble the outdoor foliage at his leisure.

Ross' mother-in-law, unexpectedly seeing the bunny emerging from behind a sofa was heard to remark disapprovingly, "See, if you leave the doors open, eventually you get rabbits."

The Connecticut Compromise in Action

[Strom Thurmond filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights bill]

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which at the time was only a constitutional convention, the small states feared a federal government dominated by the big states. The big states thought it only fair that representation be by population.

After much wrangling, now called Debate, they settled on the Connecticut Compromise. The House of Representatives was to be elected by the people and apportioned by population. The Senate was to be elected by the state legislatures, two by each state. This arrangement now appears in Article 1 of the Constitution.

In 1911, during the Progressive Era, the 17th Amendment changed this to election of senators by the people of each state, but affirmed that each state would continue to have two senators regardless of population.

The results of the Connecticut Compromise today are that the ten largest states have half the US population but only 20 senators out of 100. The twenty largest states have 70% of the population and 40 senators, not even enough to break a filibuster. 77% of the population have half the votes, 23% the other half. California, the largest state, has as many people as the 20 smallest states combined. They have 40 senators; we have 2.

Populations of small states tend to be more rural, more conservative, more religious, less educated, more Republican, and more white than big state urban populations.

The Senate has a rule that a supermajority of 60 votes are needed to end debate on a measure though only 51 are needed to pass it. "End debate" is a euphemism for breaking a filibuster(defeating a measure by preventing it from coming to a vote). Until 1975 a two thirds supermajority was required to end debate.

Thus the Senate, in which a majority of the senators are elected by a minority of the people, can be obstructed by a minority of the senators. Such a minority within a minority is what, a superminority?

I read this remarkable paragraph in Wikipedia,

Current U.S. practice

Budget bills are governed under special rules called "reconciliation" which do not allow filibusters. Reconciliation once only applied to bills that would reduce the budget deficit, but since 1996 it has been used for all matters related to budget issues.

A filibuster can be defeated by the majority party if they leave the debated issue on the agenda indefinitely, without adding anything else. Indeed, Strom Thurmond's own attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act was defeated when Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield refused to refer any further business to the Senate, which required the filibuster to be kept up indefinitely. Instead, the opponents were all given a chance to speak, and the matter eventually was forced to a vote. Thurmond's afore-mentioned stall holds the record for the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history at 24 hours, 37 minutes.

Even if a filibuster attempt is unsuccessful, the process takes valuable floor time. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened and attempts to achieve cloture have failed.

In the modern filibuster, the senators trying to block a vote do not have to hold the floor and continue to speak as long as there is a quorum. In the past, when one senator became exhausted, another would need to take over to continue the filibuster. Ultimately, the filibuster could be exhausted by a majority who would even sleep in cots outside the Senate Chamber to exhaust the filibusterers. Today, the minority just advises the majority leader that the filibuster is on. All debate on the bill is stopped until either cloture is voted by three-fifths (now 60 votes) of the Senate. Some modern Senate critics have called for a return to the old dramatic endurance contest but that would inconvenience all senators who would have to stay in session 24/7 until the filibuster is broken.^[27]

It would inconvenience them? That is why we don't have a medical insurance reform bill? Because it would inconvenience the senators? Wikipedia articles,including this one, generally seem pretty level-headed and reasonable. But I cannot believe that that is all there is to it. But that is what the current practice seems to be. There is no C-Span footage of senators making fools of themselves reading endless nonsense into the Congressional Record so as to stay at the podium indefinitely, as there was during civil rights era filibusters. Just bloodless vote-counting without the filibusterers being forced to filibuster.

With this week's election in Massachusetts, the issue has come sharply into focus. With the election of a Republican to fill the late Ted Kennedy's senate seat, the Democrats now have 59 senators, one short of the number needed to vote cloture.

In the civil rights era when a two-thirds majority was required to break a filibuster, filibusters were eventually broken and the Civil Rights bills of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights bill of 1969 were all passed over bitter Southern opposition.

The ability of the majority of the people of the United States to express their will and, one might say, to govern themselves, has come down to the nicety of whether filibusterers must literally filibuster or can do it by senatorial courtesy.

For once not a laughing matter

[High winds in northern California have blown down many trees]

If hazardous tree failure for once is not a laughing matter, then why are we laughing?

Hi-tech incomprehensibility edging closer; actually intruding

My house is rented for the week to a software company that does not have a brick-and-mortar office. They all work out of their houses and do everything they do online. On the rare occasion they get together for facetime they rent a house like mine. I looked at their website and it said they do cloud computing for medium size companies. WTF is cloud computing?

NASA thinks this is cool; I do too

Click on the arrow

Welcome home

As I rolled my suitcase up the BART path, having taken the last train from the airport, under the salmon lamplight I heard the sweet high-pitched chorus of the thousand little frogs who during wet weather live in a muddy weed patch between the path and a high concrete retaining wall. There was something so merry and joyful in the chorus that I was even more glad to be home. Given the unexplained worldwide die-off of frogs this was a happier chorus still.

Though it was after one am there was warm light from an upstairs bedroom where one of the software engineers/programmers who have rented the house for a week was keeping late hours. The welcome became problematic when I discovered that the windstorm had broken off a huge branch from Gus the Redwood Tree. It missed smashing the car but is blocking the driveway, giving me something to do first thing in the morning. Welcome home.

Dead Pool 2010 - Harvey's Picks

Here they are, read 'em and weep. 1. Stephen Hawking 2. Annette Funicello 3. Steve Jobs 4. Billy Graham 5. Kim Jung il 6. Ariel Sharon 7. Kirk Douglas 8. Elizabeth Edwards 9. Amy Winehouse 10. Rush Limbaugh (wishful thinking) Harvey

Jack's picks -

1. Pope Benedict XVI
2. Elizabeth II
3. George H. W. Bush
4. Nelson Mandela
5. Jacques Chirac
6. Robert Downey, Jr.
7. Hugh Hefner
8. Henry Kissinger
9. Tony Bennett
10. Mir Hussein Mousavi

Harvey and I have both been conservative and picked mainly dying hulks. Sharon and Hawking literaly. But his pick of Steven Jobs and mine of Robert Downey, Jr. are daring stabs at middle-aged people. I narrowly escaped making a fool of myself by picking Andy Warhol. Warhol died in 1987.

The Sixties

It is said that if you remember the Sixties you weren't there. Too late we realize they weren't talking about the Nineteen Sixties.....

Yet Another Amazing Coincidence

[Delta flight 253 - Amsterdam ==> Detroit]

We all know that it is Islamophobic racism to imagine a connection between Islam and terrorism. So it came as a great surprise to all that the man who attempted to kill himself and 283 other people aboard an Airbus-300 jetliner, just happened to be a Muslim.

A 23 year old Nigerian, Abdul Mudallad set off an incendiary device strapped to his leg. during the flight. Apparently a devout practicing idiot, Mudallad succeeded only in setting fire to his trousers and leg before flight attendants put him out by throwing water on him.

Is there something odd about Muslims getting upset about Islamophobia and demanding full and generous tolerance of themselves and their religion, yet themselves tolerating no one? Until Jews and Christians have equal rights and status with Muslims in Muslim countries, I see no reason why Muslims are entitled to ask for equal rights and status in western countries.

We may want to extend equal rights to all for reasons of our constitution and our own notions of equal treatment. It does not follow that Muslims have any right or moral standing to ask for equal treatment, let alone demand it. The correct answer to charges of Islamophobia is to laugh in the hypocrites' faces.

RTFM

Click on the cartoon to enlarge.

Consumer Product Information

Water stains on plaster are a common annoyance of old houses. They have to be primered before they can be painted over.

I bought the most widely used primer paint, which is also the cheapest, Kilz II. I tried it and it didn't work. The stain went through it like prunes through a baby. So I went back and got the Glidden primer. It is a few dollars more but one can see right away that it is much better paint.

It doesn't work either but you feel much better about yourself after you use it. The stain went through it like the government through money. When it is dry I will go back and get oil-based primer.

Wafa Sultan

Can a religious culture with 1.3 billion adherents be defeated? Can it be radically transformed? Perhaps, if it has 650 million internal opponents. Doctor Sultan shows how.

Sad News

[Oral Roberts]

Long-time evangelist Oral Roberts has died at 91. He is survived by his brother Anal and his sister Vaginal.

In Yet Another Amazing Coincidence....

[a short bald squat bespectacled man in a sweater-vest]

I was as astonished as anyone that, amazingly, the man who murdered a woman and shot five others at a Jewish Federation office in Seattle just happened to be a Muslim. Just as Major Hasan just happened to be a Muslim. And AbdulSalam Zahiri who murdered his professor at Binghampton who just happened to be a Muslim. And John Muhammad, the Viriginia overpass sniper, just happened to be a Muslim. And the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 massacres in New York and Washington just happened to be Muslims.

From today's Seattle Times-

Haq convicted on all counts in Jewish Federation shootings

A King County jury this morning found Naveed Haq guilty of eight counts, including aggravated first-degree murder, in the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. The murder verdict carries an automatic life sentence for Haq.

The jury also found Haq, 34, guilty of five counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of unlawful imprisonment and one count of malicious harassment, the state's hate-crime law.

Haq showed no reaction as the verdicts were read, but several people in the courtroom tearfully hugged.

Several of the victims were seated in the courtroom this morning as the verdicts were read. They testified during both trials, reliving what happened when Haq walked into the federation offices on July 28, 2006, and started shooting indiscriminately at employees. Killed was Pamela Waechter, 58, and wounded were Cheryl Stumbo, Carol Goldman, Dayna Klein, Christina Rexroad and Layla Bush.

Prosecutors said he was driven by a hatred for Israel.

Prosecutors also introduced as evidence audio recordings from 10 phone calls Haq placed to his family after his arrest. In the calls, recorded by the King County Jail, Haq told his mother he was "a soldier of Islam."

Witnesses testified that Haq, who is of Pakistani heritage, railed against Jews and U.S.-Israeli policies as he opened fire in the Jewish Federation, an umbrella organization for the local Jewish community that raises money for social-welfare organizations, runs youth and adult educational programs, and engages in efforts in support of Israel.

On the 911 tape, which the prosecution played for jurors on Oct. 21, the opening day of the trial, Haq said he was tired of the world ignoring the Muslim point of view.

"I don't care if I die," Haq said to the dispatcher. "This is just to make a point."

Haq made a point, just not the one he intended. How many murders will it take before we take Naveed Haq's point to heart? His unwitting point is that no matter how seemingly harmless an individual Muslim might seem, murder is never far away.

It would be politically incorrect to say Haq's motive for murder and attempted murder was Islam. It would however be correct in every other way.

At what point do we drop the fig leaf of pretending away the obvious? This just has to stop. Immigration from Muslim countries to the US must be restricted.

Buddy Greene

Getting Naked

[In the beginning....]

Today I was in the shower thinking about the meaning of it all. I used to think about stuff like that more when I was younger but I gave it up because it always led to the same set of conclusions - that underneath appearances, things are really patterns and processes. But now I am starting to think about those kinds of things again.

It occurred to me once that the Big Bang means that everything has a common origin, that everything that happens is a common process. That the universe is all one big thing, not a bunch of smaller things. It means that only one big thing is happening, not a bunch of smaller things. Or at least that that is one legitimate way to look at it. In our tiny part of it, all life has common ancestors. All living things are cousins.

And our individual lives are not just patterns and processes, in modern parlance they are programs running on the matter of our bodies. Death is when the matter reboots and the program and data ones and zeroes are simultaneously set to all zeroes. Where we go after death is where that email message you worked on writing for an hour goes when your pc crashes. We don't go anywhere. Like your email message, we just aren't there any more.

And at last, in the shower I understood a passage in Spinoza that had gone over my head when I read it. I had thought that Hashem is the universe, the entirety of everything that is, and everything that has ever happened, and the entirely of everything that ever will happen. The short expression for that is the whole space-time continuum from the Big Bang until the end of time. In scientific terms, it is the synclastic infidibulum, or SI.

But I never much liked that formulation because it is both materialist and pantheist. Those are both deadend philosophies and unsatisfying because they don't help one understand things any better than one already does. They don't lead anywhere.

Spinoza described that Everything that ever was, is, or ever will be, as the face of G_d. But that face he said, was only a part of the whole, the way a surface is only an aspect of a solid object.

So what the hell is the rest? What is Hashem? In the shower it occurred to me that the entirety of all that ever was, is, or will be - the SI - is what is or can be known by human beings. And the rest, presumably vastly more, is the unknowable. The sum of the knowable and unknowable is Hashem.

What is peculiar about this definition is that it depends in part on human beings. The boundary between the two realms within Hashem is set by human intelligence and by human history. We can only know what we can understand with our intelligence. And we can only know what we have found out so far in our history.

The common scientific (a pretentious word for materialist) atheist explainer says that nothing is unknowable. In the end everything will yield to human intelligence and inquiry. This is a grand statement, coming from a ground ape. And flatly contradicted by quantum mechanics.

But Hashem in a sense is no different than people. At first all one knows of them is their surface, their face. As one gets to know them better one learns more about them, begins to see beneath the surface. When one develops an intimate relationship, comes to love them, one sees deeper still. One accepts them, and feels their nature more even than one understands it.

I remember one time actually listening to the Jewish liturgy rather than just stumbling through its seemingly endless pieties. And what struck me how emphatically and persistently it expresses the love of life and of the world. Much of our liturgy is ancient, written in times when brutal persecutions and the worst imaginable miseries were not history nor somewhere else but here and now and every day. And it was those very people who wrote that liturgy. How was that possible? Was it just fantasy and escapism? Were they crazy and in denial? No, they were the most reality-oriented people of their time - merchants, doctors, lawyers, scholars, advisers to princes.

I think they must have regarded the pogroms, inquisitions, expropriations, expulsions, plagues, and famines that befell them as we regard the tantrums of a beloved child. Their love of the world ran deeper than the current woe.

My Time in Life

Click on cartoon to enlarge it.

Once, after my father died, I had a powerfully disturbing dream about him. He was in some semi-other world and was becoming more remote because he was losing interest in this world, and in me. He was becoming detached. He was drifting away and would never return.

Lou Grant wearing a tuxedo, drinking heavily in a bar, to Mary Richards: "First came the separation. then the divorce. Now she's remarried. Mary, don't you see what it all means?"
Mary: "No. What?"
Lou: "It means Edie and I are drifting apart."

Only later did I realize that I felt that he left me because he didn't love me enough to stay. And that it was my fault for not having been a good enough son nor a success for him to want to stay. I woke up devastated.

That day Harvey and I were playing tennis and I told him about my dream.  Harvey said that learning how to die was our task in life as we got into (and now beyond) middle age.

The death of my friend Jay Trachman two weeks ago has brought mortality sharply to the front of my concerns. And I know what to do about it too. Harvey more than once has told me what to do about life, and thus how to get ready for death - "Get on with it"

from today's New York Times:

A 46-year-old Binghamton University graduate student from Saudi Arabia was charged on Saturday with killing a retired anthropology professor, a specialist in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, with whom he had worked, the authorities said. The student, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of the professor, Richard T. Antoun, who was stabbed in his office in the university’s Science I building on Friday afternoon

Since we know from frequent reassurance that there is no connection between Islam and violence, this was yet another in a seemingly endless string of amazing coincidences reaching back to the time of Muhammad.

Here is a quote from SUNY-Binghamton's website:

Shaping Your Future

Binghamton University offers over 55 graduate programs within an exciting, culturally diverse community. The University’s suburban and urban campuses foster world-renowned research, scholarship and creative exploration, augmenting the already distinguished legacy and international reputation of the Graduate School and its world-class scholar-teachers.

Perhaps it is time to reconsider this conventional fantasy about multiculturalism and diversity in light of persistent Muslim violence. Diversity is good if it produces benefits to the community. Muslims are demonstrating that diversity is not a good in itself.