Althouse

Sunrise — 6:47, 6:51, 6:52, 7:09.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 23:40:00 +0000

"Shabbat is one of the most radical things you could do. One of the reasons we have a climate crisis right now is a product of disconnection..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 16:14:00 +0000

"... the result of undervaluing life, especially nonhuman life. Shabbat is a time of remembering we’re not machines; we get to be human with all other life. That kind of connection is what powers environmental and climate movements."

Says Rabbi Laura Bellows of Dayenu, "an organization mobilizing the United States’ Jewish community to confront the climate crisis," quoted in "Why reviving a 2,600-year-old spiritual practice made my life better" (WaPo).

This essay, by Michael J. Coren, begins with a focus on his own psychological wellbeing, as the essay title suggests, but it quickly devolves into a discussion of climate change, replete with suggestions of compulsory observance of the Sabbath:

A universal period of rest and reset has reemerged again and again as a way to deliver a more just world. “It is a hard ask, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthy ask,” says [Jonathan Schorsch, a professor of Jewish religious and intellectual history at Germany’s University of Potsdam]....

In 2019, Schorsch founded the Green Sabbath Project to incite a “mass movement to observe a weekly day of rest” for the secular and religious alike. This is not a spa day, but a modern version of what the ancients practiced: avoiding work in factories and offices, or even in front of our laptops; opting out of driving or flying, or using engines of any kind for the day; putting off shopping; preparing food in advance; and ceasing incessant doing.

Incessant doing and incessant carbon emissions.

The immediate effect among millions of people, he calculates, could dial back emissions for at least one day a week with no new technology or spending....

“Ultimately, as a society, we’re going to need to have ecological practices,” [Schorsch] says. “It’s not enough to impose laws. Do we solve [climate change] through technocratic solutions and policy, or do we solve it through new cultural, even spiritual approaches? One without the other is not going to be enough.”

Schorsch isn't saying not to impose it through law. He seems to want coercion and spiritual awakening. We could call it a Schorsched-Earth policy.

The article ends with some personal-level ideas of the sort I thought I was going to hear about when I read the headline:

Pick something you love just for the pleasure of it. If something brings you unadulterated joy, no matter how small or silly, this is the time to do it....

That's got a Marie Kondo vibe. Limit your Sabbath to items that spark joy. But, of course, don't go there by car.

"Children at a Brooklyn public elementary school are being taught revolutionary politics and communist terms from a Black Lives Matter coloring book..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 15:17:00 +0000

"Last week, teachers at PS 321—the kindergarten through fifth grade school in Park Slope—supplied students with the coloring book, What We Believe, as part of a lesson for Black History Month.Lessons in the coloring book tell children to reflect on Black Lives Matter’s 13 principles. Some of the exercises, parents said, appear innocuous; a page about 'Restorative Justice,' for example, asks students: 'Why is it important to offer to forgive someone?' But another, entitled 'Transgender Affirming,' instructs students to read the book When Aidan Became a Brother about a girl who transitions to a boy, and then answer questions on a worksheet like, 'How do you feel when someone tells you what you can or can’t do based on your gender?'"

"Kids Get Schooled on Radical Politics/Students at a public elementary school in Brooklyn are learning revolutionary theory from a Black Lives Matter coloring book."

I don't see "transgender affirming" ideology in the question "How do you feel when someone tells you what you can or can’t do based on your gender?" The question strongly implies that you can do what you want regardless of gender and that it is ignorant to associate preferences and interests with gender. That undercuts those who think that that they have an inward gender that is different from their physical bodily sex. It seems to me that it is encouraging kids to see themselves and others as individuals with whatever feelings and behavior they happen to have. It seems to be attacking the motivation to take the transgender route.

Resigning, a UK transgender judge writes, "Rosa Parks’ choice of seat was political because of the colour of her skin. More prosaically, for me..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 14:59:00 +0000

"... I am now political every time I choose where to pee. Less prosaically, the judiciary by continuing to let me be a judge is now at risk of being political.”

From "UK’s only trans judge quits over risk of ‘politicising the judiciary'/Victoria McCloud said she had become a target and was forced to be political every time she chose ‘where to pee'" (London Times).

McCloud kept her trans identity out of the public eye for much of her time as a judge until her status was revealed by a national newspaper in 2016....

In her letter [of resignation], extracts of which have been leaked to The Times, McCloud says that the judiciary “has used me in social media,” which “has been rewarding and I will cherish the memories." But she said this “came at a cost because I became a public figure and a target.”

McCloud, an Oxford University graduate, said the rise of the “gender critical” movement — which holds to what she acknowledges is the “uncontroversial notion” that a person cannot alter their biological sex — has also meant that she can be referred to as a man, despite being legally female. She argues that as a result, “it has been open season on me and others”... [and] she feels that “the dignity of the court as well as personal dignity is at stake.”...

"Joe Biden’s dog Commander bit Secret Service agents 24 times."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 14:48:00 +0000

The London Times reports.

[N]ewly released documents... only cover a nine-month period and members of the Secret Service, rather than all presidential staff, the true number of incidents could be much higher than the documents reveal. Previous reports had put the number of biting incidents at 11....

Sunrise — 6:30, 6:44.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:29:00 +0000

"... Harvard interim president Alan M. Garber... said the cartoon depicted a hand labeled with a Star of David with a dollar sign in the middle holding nooses that were tied around the necks of an Arab man and a Black man."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 16:32:00 +0000

"Screenshots of the cartoon appeared to show that the men were boxer and antiwar activist Muhammad Ali and former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. [The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African American Resistance Organization] have since taken down the image and apologized...."

From "Harvard condemns ‘flagrantly antisemitic’ cartoon posted by student groups" (WaPo).

"What teenagers today are offered... is a hyperactive landscape of so-called aesthetics... including everything from the infamous cottagecore to, these days, prep."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 15:38:00 +0000

"These are more like cultural atmospheres, performed mainly online, with names and looks and hashtags, an easy visual pablum.... They have much content but little context — a lot to look at but a very thin relationship to any 'real life' anything.... On one end, even a distinctly in-the-world subculture (like, say, grunge) can be reduced to a vibe packet of anodyne references (cigarettes, grimy things); on the other, a mere mood tone can be elevated to something offered as lifestyle (there are girls who enjoy the color red and a certain Euro effortlessness, and they are called Tomato Girls, while others who prefer white are called Vanilla Girls). If two dozen things on a Pinterest page feel as if they go together, chances are someone, even just as a lark or experiment, is calling it an aesthetic.... Kids are not failing by wanting to be cottagecore or meatcore or this new preppy. It’s the culture available to them that is failing.... Kids... need more, deserve more...."

Writes Mireille Silcoff, in "Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids. Gorgeous, abundant visuals are just pale imitations of what young people used to have: an actual scene" (NYT)(free access link).

"The latest U.S. defense of Israel on the global stage came at the International Court of Justice in The Hague..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 14:29:00 +0000

"... where Richard C. Visek, the acting legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, urged a 15-judge panel not to call for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory.... On Wednesday, Mr. Visek asked the court to uphold the 'established framework' for peace that he said U.N. bodies have agreed to — one that is contingent on a 'broader end to belligerence' against Israel — rather than heed calls by other nations for Israel’s 'unilateral and unconditional withdrawal' from occupied territories.... On Tuesday, South Africa forcefully condemned Israel’s policies against Palestinians, calling them 'a more extreme form of apartheid' the race-based system of laws that deprived Black South Africans for decades.... The United States has remained Israel’s staunchest defender internationally. But the Biden administration, under increasing pressure from parts of the Democratic Party, has also shown signs of impatience with Israel’s conduct of the war...."

The NYT reports.

"Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Wrote Chief Justice Tom Parker, in a concurring opinion, quoted in "Alabama Rules Frozen Embryos Are Children, Raising Questions About Fertility Care/The ruling raises worrisome legal issues for would-be parents far beyond Alabama whose hopes for children may depend on in vitro fertilization" (NYT).

It has become standard medical protocol during in vitro fertilization to extract as many eggs as possible from a woman, then to fertilize them to create embryos before freezing them. Generally, only one embryo is transferred at a time into the uterus in order to maximize the chances of successful implantation and a full-term pregnancy.

“But what if we can’t freeze them?” [asked the head of a group that represents the interests of infertility patients]. “Will we hold people criminally liable because you can’t freeze a ‘person’? This opens up so many questions.”...

I'm seeing the idea that the economics of the infertility treatment business have been radically transformed (at least in Alabama).

"Cats and dogs have an outsize carbon footprint, mostly because of their carnivorous diet."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 13:38:00 +0000

"If the pet food industry, which mainly feeds dogs and cats, were a country, it would rank as the 60th-highest greenhouse gas emitter, equivalent to the Philippines. Rabbits, by contrast, leave a minimal pawprint. They eat small amounts of hay and otherwise discarded vegetables. Their waste can be used as fertilizer in gardens...."

From "Why you should consider bunnies as your next pet/'It’s like having a vegan cat'" (WaPo).

From the comments, from someone who said she had a rabbit as a pet:

Pros:
Insanely cute
Loveable
Easily Litter-box trained*
Cons:
Chewed every cable we had, power, speaker, didn't matter. Deterrents like putting hot sauce on them seemed to only enhance the flavor.
Berries everywhere. To rabbits, this seems almost unconscious - like passing gas. Our bunny always used the litter-box to pee, but would leave a trail of poo berries getting there.

IN THE COMMENTS: John Henry asks "Anyone else remember 'pets or meat'?"

I said:

Yeah, here at Meadhouse, as I was writing this [post]:

MEADE: And if you get tired of them, you can eat them.

ALTHOUSE: Pets or meat.

But Meade didn't get the reference, so let me make it easy for people, because this is a great and memorable segment of Michael Moore's great 1989 documentary "Roger & Me":

Sunrise — 6:40, 6:52.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:34:00 +0000

"All Washington does is divide us and talk about who’s to blame.... That’s not the country I know and love. I believe we need to come together and find common sense solutions to restore America."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:41:00 +0000

Says Eric Hovde, quoted in "Eric Hovde launches Wisconsin Senate bid, handing GOP a boost" (The Hill).

Hovde seeks the Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Democrat Tammy Baldwin.

Nate Silver poses "A simple challenge to the White House" to prove Biden's fitness as a candidate.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 12:19:00 +0000

At Substack:

Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with “non-friendly” sources....

For instance, Biden could pick... • A lengthy sitdown interview with the Washington bureaus of the New York Times or Washington Post. • An interview with 60 Minutes.... • An interview with some sort of center-right print or digital outlet... say the Wall Street Journal op-ed page.... • Wild card.... Go on Ezra Klein's podcast? Go on Rogan? Just kidding, I think. But Bernie Sanders did it....

This really isn't too much to ask.

Yeah, of course, it's not too much to ask, but I think we all know in our heart it is too much for him to do. It's hard to picture him even doing 2 of these things. Or one.

And the timing is urgent because he and his inner circle have to make sure that he's really up for a second term and that this is the best option for Democrats.

Why is it suddenly "urgent"? It's a chronic problem and Democrats have been plodding slowly into it for over a year. I think at this point, the best path is to silently endure his collection of delegates. After that, Democrats have until the August convention to devise a nomination for the best candidate. Biden can gracefully withdraw at the best time. There's no reason to put him to the test and degrade or humiliate him. Treat him with respect and replace him at the optimal time. May I presume this is in the works?

"A quiet, introspective bachelor, who wore a signet ring with the Latin word for 'caution,' he hated conflict..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:56:00 +0000

"... and had the courtly manners of his Iberian ancestry. But his virtuous life only made religious believers even more furious: How could a Godless man be morally irreproachable? Here, then, was a clash which we can still recognize today, between those who believe that moral behavior can only come from religious belief, and those who think it can emanate from reason...."

Writes Ian Buruma, in "The 17th-Century Heretic We Could Really Use Now" (NYT).

"Spinoza’s insistence on the primacy of our capacity to reason would not sit well with the notion that our thoughts are driven by collective identities and historical traumas. He was against tribalism of any kind. And he would not have considered offended communal feelings as a rational argument.... One of his greatest fears, no less germane today than in his time, was that mobs, whipped up by malevolent leaders, would squash free thinking with violence.... Once again there is a conflict between the scientific and the ideological approaches to truth...."

Reginald presents a dramatic reading of "Fast Car."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:56:00 +0000

It's TikTok, so I will honor your sensibilities with this page break:

@willrubio Replying to @LilyRubio Reginald Remembers Driving in YOUR car! #tracychapman #fastcar #music ♬ original sound - Will Rubio

I look forward to more dramatic readings from Will Rubio. In the meantime:

@willrubio
Now they didn’t say anything about pooping… 💩
♬ Aesthetic - Tollan Kim

"I guess, as the famous saying goes, Democracy Dies in Discussion."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:46:00 +0000

Says Jon Stewart, on "The Daily Show" last night, responding to critics who accused him of "bothsidesism" for aiming some of his humor at Biden:

The test is whether Stewart can stand up to these critics or whether he will take direction from them. He makes a joke of apologizing to them and offering them a fresh slab of the kind of comedy they demand — he goes after Tucker Carlson. Fine. That was well done. But I don't want Stewart cowed by his critics, and I hope as last night's show proceeded, he made fun of some Democrats too. I can't tell you whether he did or not, because they didn't put the whole show on YouTube as they did last week, and I don't currently have the Paramount streaming service. I was considering subscribing just to get this show. I still am. I want what's going to make Democrats get haughtily indignant and say "bothsidesism."

Sunrise — 6:33, 6:37, 6:39, 6:40, 6:45, 6:56.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:02:00 +0000

"A lot of pro-Palestine stuff in Barcelona."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 17:47:00 +0000

Chris texts me from Spain, with 4 photographs:

"[Democratic Governor Tony] Evers signed the bill despite pressure from powerful Democrats in the state to veto it."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:54:00 +0000

"When the bill made its way through the legislature, Democratic lawmakers opposed it nearly uniformly, citing concerns... about possible future legal challenges to the legislative maps and general distrust of the Republican legislators who agreed to the law’s passage. 'If you believe that WI Republicans are planning to run on Gov. Evers’ maps in November, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you,' wrote Democratic state senator LaTonya Johnson on the social media site X. But it’s not clear exactly what those legal challenges would look like. 'I am extremely skeptical of this idea that there is a good basis for challenging the law, really on any grounds,' said Quinn Yeargain, a legal scholar who focuses on state constitutional law. 'I’m as much of a partisan Democrat and progressive as anybody else is, but being intellectually honest about what’s going on here is also important.'... The maps were heralded by anti-gerrymandering activists in Wisconsin as a win...."

From "Wisconsin adopts new legislative maps, giving Democrats chance to win state/Governor’s signature marks end of long fight over legislative lines and greatly reduces the Republican bias baked into current maps" (The Guardian).

How to be 14th best.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 15:22:00 +0000

"Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall."

Wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, who are responsible for the survey reported at "Poll Ranks Biden as 14th-Best President, With Trump Last/President Biden may owe his place in the top third to his predecessor: Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Donald J. Trump from the Oval Office" (NYT).

"I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:15:00 +0000

Said Governor Kathy Hochul, quoted in "Hochul tells NY businesses not to fear about Trump verdict: 'Nothing to worry about'" (The Hill).

What is the "extraordinary, unusual circumstance"?

Being Donald Trump? If so, she's revealing that she believes the prosecutors went after the man, not the crime, an abhorrent abuse of power.

So, whatever she thinks, she can't mean to be saying that. What else is there?

There's the classic unbelievable assurance that if you don't break the law, you've got nothing to worry about. If you're "law-abiding and rule-following," then you're not in the category with Donald Trump. Trump did something "extraordinary" and "unusual." Or did the prosecution do something "extraordinary" and "unusual"?

It's not reassuring.

ADDED: This post got me reading the Wikipedia article "Give me the man and I will give you the case against him":

The saying is commonly attributed to the Stalinist-era Soviet jurist Andrey Vyshinsky or the Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria... [There are] older similar sayings in English, such as 18th-century Scottish jurist Lord Braxfield's "Let them bring me prisoners, and I will find them law" and the Russian proverb "If there is a neck, there is a collar" (Была бы шея, а хомут найдётся; or Была бы голова, а петля найдется).... A similar quote has also been attributed to 17th-century French statesman Cardinal Richelieu ("Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I will find something in them which will hang him"). A related American saying is "A prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich." Polish writer Henryk Pająk summarized the saying in four words: "person exists, [their] crime exists" ("jest czlowiek, jest przestępstwo").

"Game on, Don."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 13:43:00 +0000

Game on, Don. pic.twitter.com/90vI9nK92B
— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) February 18, 2024

"Mr. Navalny was able to send hundreds of handwritten letters, thanks to the curious digitalization of the Russian prison system..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 12:10:00 +0000

"... a relic of a brief burst of liberal reform in the middle of Mr. Putin’s 24-year rule. Through a website, people could write to him for 40 cents a page and receive scans of his responses.... In a letter... Mr. Navalny explained that he preferred to be reading 10 books simultaneously and 'switch between them.'... Describing prison life... he recommended nine books on the subject, including a 1,012-page, three-volume set by the Soviet dissident Anatoly Marchenko. Mr. Navalny added in that letter that he had reread 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'.... the searing Alexander Solzhenitsyn novel about Stalin’s gulag.... 'Everyone usually thinks that I really need pathetic and heartbreaking words,' he wrote... 'But I really miss the daily grind — news about life, food, salaries, gossip'.... 'I really like your letters,' Mr. Navalny wrote in the last message that [his friend, the Russian photographer Evgeny Feldman, received. 'They’ve got everything I like to discuss: food, politics, elections, scandalous topics and ethnicity issues.'"

Writes Anton Troianovski, in "Inside Aleksei Navalny’s Final Months, in His Own Words/Trump. Indian food. Matthew Perry. And books, books, books. Excerpts from letters obtained by The Times show Mr. Navalny’s active mind, even amid brutal prison conditions" (NYT)(free access at that link).

Why is Matthew Perry in the headline? We're told that Navalny had never watched "Friends" — a show with plenty of food, gossip, and scandalous topics — but he'd read the actor's obituary in The Economist, "Matthew Perry changed the way America spoke" ("[I]n the audition it was he who had nailed it, reading the words in that unexpected way, 'hitting emphases that no one else had hit'; making everyone laugh. It was less that he, Matthew Perry, could play Chandler than that he was Chandler. He changed the part—and then the part changed him").

The NYT piece tells us that that Navalny's prison library had the classics — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Chekhov — and “Who could’ve told me that Chekhov is the most depressing Russian writer?”

There's also some material here about Trump, but it's a little hard to understand. Perhaps it was enigmatic in the original. There's "Mr. Navalny confided that the electoral agenda of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump looked 'really scary.'" Not the man, the "electoral agenda"? And then he went on to say "Please name one current politician you admire."

Sunrise — 6:53, 7:00, 7:01.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:19:00 +0000

Western view: