I didn’t mean to imply that the size of the picture relates to the degree of culpability of the subject. War crimes and crimes against humanity committed on both sides are credibly alleged by the investigators from the International Criminal Court in their report. Requests for warrants were today addressed to a Court Judge. The subjects are three leaders on the Palestinian side and two on the Israeli side.
That means that both these sides are at fault in the atrocities which have been revealed to a horrified world by modern journalism. Yet both sides feel fully justified, even proud of what they have done and are still doing. Clearly, the minds of the participants are overtaken by delusions about what they are doing and why. I don’t want to say that the thing to do is put them on antipsychotic drugs, but that suggestion comes to mind.
On the other hand, Ukraine
This situation is entirely unlike that which is occurring in Ukraine. There, the Russian Army mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the flimsiest of pretexts two years ago. The Ukrainians have been fighting off the Russians although they are badly outnumbered and outgunned. Their equipment is mostly donated by friendly countries like us. It looks like in the long run, they will lose unless they get reinforcements.
The Ukrainians (who are at least somewhat democratic) had been relying on a treaty signed with Russia thirty-two years ago when Ukraine became an independent country. Russia promised never to violate Ukrainian territory in return for all of Ukraine’s nuclear missiles.
So I think the Ukrainians deserve all the help we can give. The Russian government is invading a smaller country and committing war crimes, and there’s already a warrant out for Vladimir Putin’s arrest. We have to stop him or he’ll keep doing it to one country after another.
Israel, Hamas, and Gaza
Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem by jdblack via pixabay.com
Aside from everything else going on in the Gaza strip since October 7, there is one thing the Israelis seem to have neglected: the infrastructure needed to supply millions of suddenly homeless Palestinians, a hostile and impoverished people.
There is no police presence in the areas the IDF has denuded of habitable dwellings; there is no count of the remaining population, there is no coordinated effort to supply the necessities of life to these people such as water, food, and shelter.
As a result, after six, then seven months of war, the Palestinian people of Gaza are suffering another catastrophe, this one worst than the first.
Whether they deserve what happened is hard to comprehend. After all, more than half of them are women with children. Surely, children under twelve cannot be held criminally responsible for what Hamas has done.
What has happened, I have to keep reminding you, is a tit-for-tat increase in violence that has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years. The perpetual war has been waxing and waning, but it clearly was ongoing in the second century AD (the Common Era), when the nascent Christians began to directly blame the Jews for the death of Jesus Christ.
I’m going to try not to get into first-century Jerusalem politics right now although it’s a fascinating subject. Suffice it to say that Jesus Christ, a legendary figure from the time the Romans occupied Jerusalem in about 30 of the Common Era. Many prophets were crucified during that period of time in Jerusalem. A single direct reference to Jesus is found in the History of Jerusalem penned by an eye-witness, Josephus Flavius. He also mentions several other martyrs to the cause of freeing Jerusalem from the Romans.
Nonetheless, a conspiracy theory grew up in the early second century that Jesus had been betrayed by his own people, the Jews (specifically the SanHedrin, a council of powerful locals) to be crucified. The Jews delivered him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who said what he said, offered the crowd Barabbas or Jesus (so it was the crowd’s fault, yes?) and then delivered Jesus to the Army to be murdered.
This conspiracy theory, that the Jewish “deep state” (the SanHedrin) had condemned Jesus for his anti-establishment teachings, has been orthodoxy in Europe since before the Middle Ages. The theory was only definitively shot down by a Pope in 1970. Many people still prescribe to it, including such far-right Republicans as Marjorie Taylor-Greene.
So, the revolt of Jerusalem occurred, and the Romans wiped the Temple off the face of the Earth in around 70 CE. A second, more desperate Jewish revolt occurred in the early second century, which was even more ruthlessly quashed. Nonetheless, Jewish people are reported to have lived in the Jerusalem area despite these thorough Roman military campaigns.
When the Muslims invaded shortly after their inception, they took over the site of the ruined temple in Jerusalem that had been destroyed by the Romans. They built a new complex of mosque and related buildings, including the Dome of the Rock shown in the photograph above. The Dome is said to contain the rock from which Mohammed ascended to Heaven in his final Night Journey. More importantly, it occupies the space previously held by the Jewish Temple and thus emphasizes the idea that Judaism is conquered.
Despite all this, the remaining Jewish population of the world benefited from the Diaspora. Since everyone spoke the same language, they naturally preferred trading with their own, and formed huge networks.
The campaign to return to the historic land of Israel is not a new thing.
a 70-year-old’s pains
image from pixabay.com
Every morning by four or five o’clock I wake up with pain in my back, neck, and shoulders; I take some pain medicine and go back to sleep. By six I m fully awake. I get up slowly and stiffly. I have pain in my neck and shoulders especially until the medicine has really worked and it eases somewhat. I usually just sit on the porch and drink coffee with milk until it improves.
I have had pains in my midback since I was 18 and was involved in an accident. I was riding my bicycle when I was hit from the side by a small car (a Toyota Corolla), hit my back on the windshield/roof line, and catapulted into the street. I had some scrapes on my legs and a terrible pain in my back at the junction of the thoracic and lumbar spine (around waist level.) Xrays were negative– this was 1972, when CT scans were a distant dream.
I began having chronic back pain years later, but ibuprofen would usually help. I didn’t let it stop me from hiking, camping, bicycle riding, and generally being active, until around 2000. At that time, I was in another accident. I was driving a car that was T-boned from the right side by another driver who ran a stop sign. I was knocked out and bruised all over. The most serious problem was a concussion, and I have no memory of the two hours after the crash. Nothing about the ambulance ride or the first hour in the ER.
After that, I let the pain and the concussion limit my activity, which was a mistake.
Now, I’m disabled; I had major surgery in August 2016 to place titanium rods in my spine and cut away bone that was pressing on the nerves. The surgery gave me dramatic improvement, and I can now walk a mile or two. Every day walking is key to my continued improvement.
In other ways, though, the pain is worse. I have progressive arthritis in several areas– my left wrist, left ankle and foot, right knee, fingers, and so on. Thus, I have a lot of stiffness, especially in the morning. Stretching exercises (gently) do help.
So, at the age of seventy since about 5:30 PM on April 26, 2024, I am pretty fragile. What I’m doing now (typing) is a pretty low-stress activity. Pressure on the lower side of my wrists does induce intermittent numbness in my hands, but that’s something I can overcome by frequently lifting my hands off the keyboard.
That’s my story. I still enjoy life, but it’s a bit more circumscribed than it used to be.
Hamas in Qatar
vector art from pixabay.com
This is a post about the Hamas representatives who are living in Qatar. According to the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, in an article dated April 20, 2024, the Emirate (Qatar) has hosted representatives of Hamas since 2012.
Hamas is important because, since its founding in 1987, it has been by charter dedicated to destroying Israel and killing Jews. According to them, clearing Palestine of Jews is a religious duty. Their preferred method of accomplishing this is by bombings and terror attacks on civilians.
Qatar has been hosting top political leaders from Hamas on the request of the Americans and the Israelis. They find it necessary to keep an open channel of communication with Hamas to allow for negotiations, mostly over hostage exchanges. The Hamas members in Qatar were apparently “out of the loop” on the Hamas leadership’s planning for the bloody raid of October 7.
According to the newspaper, recently the Qatari government has tired of hosting Hamas representatives. The Hamas leaders have occasionally been accused of plotting terror attacks; once the Qataris deported one of them for this behavior. The newspaper describes the Hamas negotiators as being “obstinate.” In addition, Republicans have pressured Qatar to expel Hamas recently. Parenthetically, the largest American air base in the Middle East is in Qatar.
It is possible that “after the war ends” Qatar will get rid of the Hamas delegation. If so, there are few alternatives, all of them dangerous. The Israelis have pledged not to attack anyone in Qatar, but those in other countries are easy prey for Israel’s expert assassins.
The other members of Hamas leadership are in Gaza: the only name mentioned is Yahyah Sinwar, who the Israelis are trying to kill. They thought he was in Rafah, but the Americans have warned them that he is currently in Khan Younis. In any case, he is likely to be in a deep underground tunnel surrounded by hostages, according to military sources.
Recent outbreaks of fighting in northern Gaza have exposed the power vacuum there. They also demonstrate that Israel cannot wipe out Hamas, not even if they destroy Rafah and the tunnels. There will always be remnants that regenerate, possibly under new names, to fill power vacuums like the one in Gaza, wherever the Israeli army has been through.
Why are we here?
Billy the dog when he was young.
Billy and I go for a long walk almost every day. He tries to be around me as much as he can. When I’m at the computer he lies on the floor right behind me. He’s been that way ever since his buddy Boris died suddenly (a stroke) two years ago. He appeared on our driveway in 2016, about a month before I had spinal surgery (August 7). Boris was a dog that was supposedly owned by a lady who lived across the street, but Billy lured him away when we went for walks past his house. We never trained either dog to do anything but sit, and they were never interested in playing fetch. Billy is a very intelligent dog just the same. Boris was very loyal to him (and us).
But that’s not what I want to talk about. No. I want to know, why do we exist? Well, if we didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here to think about it.
On the other hand, Copernicus (a Polish astronomer from the 1500s) suggested that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Sun revolving around the Earth. This thought started a landslide that has resulted in the opinions of astronomers and cosmologists in the 2020s being a little different. We now hold that not only are we not at the center of the galaxy, much less the Universe, but that in fact the Universe has no center.
Thoughts of this sort are addressed in an article by Tim Andersen published online in Popular Mechanics on May 10, 2024. His conclusions are a little surprising.
Tim Andersen first addresses the tension between the so-called anthropic principle and the Copernican principle. The anthropic principle holds that we are here, i.e. we exist, because the Universe is specially tuned for our existence. All of the basic physical laws and measurements, such as the weight of the neutron and the speed of light, are that way because they make it possible for us to exist.
The Copernican principle demotes us to a not-special place and its mechanism for producing us is natural selection or evolution– notoriously a blind, stochastic process. The principles of natural selection were formulated by Charles Darwin in the 1800s. The beauty of natural selection is that it inevitably produces more and more complex organisms over time, eventually leading to us (and possibly beyond in the future, if we don’t blow ourselves up).
Tim Andersen says this tension can be explained by using the concept of the multiverse. In multiverses, there are infinitely many possible “setups” for the cosmological constants, and we just happen to live in a multiverse that supports human life. There are many multiverse theories, but the one he wants to explore uses what is called the theory of cosmological natural selection. This was first proposed by physicist Lee Smolin in 1992.
In this theory, the appearance of a black hole actually enables the birth of a baby universe. In this new universe, time stands still and the density of matter is infinite at the central point (the only point that exists initially). The point immediately begins to expand, “creating new matter and energy.” (In fact, the infinitely dense matter degenerates to finite density and releases energy from the transition.)
Just as our universe started at a single point as the Big Bang, every black hole starts anew. In the baby universe, black holes appear which are yet new universes, and so on. This is a bit speculative.
Andersen goes off on another tangent: carbon. Carbon monoxide is the second most common molecule in the visible universe, after molecular hydrogen, even more common than water.
In collapsing proto-stellar clouds of space gas formed in supernovae (explosions of large stars), stars form from the hydrogen and the carbon monoxide acts as a coolant, keeping the star from igniting until it is large enough. (Graphite– pure carbon– is used in nuclear reactors to slow down energetic neutrons resulting from fission and thus keep the reactor cool.)
It happens that carbon is also essential for all known life. Our bodies are mostly made of long chains of carbon with hydrogen on the side. So Andersen says that life is a byproduct of the formation of stars, which is a consequence of the universe’s evolution to create more black holes.
This is all a little hard to understand. At the end, Andersen says that it is possible that the Universe itself is alive. It’s like artificial intelligence (AI) in a way, only in a universe, not in a computer. At least it sounds good, better than an old man with a long white beard called G-d.
Two Thousand Pound Bombs
vector graphic from pixabay.com
Will someone please explain to me what is the practical use of a 2,000 pound bomb in urban warfare?
Until it is explained to me, I have to assume that the purpose is to destroy an entire multi-story apartment building, or at least to render it uninhabitable.
President Biden made a decision, announced this week, to no longer supply Israel with 2,000 lb. and 500 lb. bombs. He is also, apparently, going to embargo 155 mm howitzer and tank cannon rounds. He is applying the only form of leverage available to our government. Previous Presidents have done the same thing to signal their displeasure to Israel.
If you consider refusing to support Mr. Biden in November because of the plight of Gaza, be aware that the former guy would be immeasurably worse. He was, after all, the guy who moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and called Democratic Jews “traitors” to Israel.
The pro-Palestinian bias of Tik Tok (which is only natural because Tik Tok is so popular in Arab countries) accounts for the striking disconnect between young American’s attitudes towards Gaza and the attitudes of adults who don’t watch Tik Tok. Remember, there are only 170 million Americans who watch Tik Tok versus 2 billion people worldwide.
You could say that the unrest on campuses is a direct result of Tik Tok and the reactions of school authorities to anti-semitic protests.
Robert F Kennedy Jr photo by Gage Skidmore
Here’s the thing. Mr. Kennedy is seventy years old. Mr. Trump is 77. Mr. Biden is 81. Actual comparison shows that Mr. Biden is the sharpest of the lot. Watch his State of the Union speech if you don’t believe me.
I am 70 and I wouldn’t take the job if you paid me. I would suck at it.
Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, is apparently keen on becoming president.
There is, however, a small problem. It seems that he has a dead worm in his brain. This does not explain his affection for conspiracy theories. He did complain in a divorce action in 2012 that it was impairing his ability to think and do his job, i.e. deliver speeches.
Now, neurocysticercosis (having a dead worm in your brain) is not rare. The common pork tapeworm will do that sometimes, penetrating into the brain and encysting itself before dying. Usually this does not cause mental problems. If the worm should happen to penetrate one of your muscles, however, it will cause intense pain. This should give you a motivation for cooking your pork dishes thoroughly.
Mr. Kennedy, however, believes that this and other matters, like mercury poisoning (which he apparently really has, from eating too much tuna) have affected his ability to think.
What is worse, he has spasmodic dysphonia, which periodically makes him so hoarse he can barely speak. It is said that he had titanium implants in his vocal cords to counteract this. At his recent interview on Bill Maher’s show, his hoarseness was so bad even I could hardly understand him. So I don’t think the titanium implants are helping much.
Why, then, would he even consider running for President? He has to self-reflect a little bit, and realize that he’s not a good candidate. He has a florid case of narcissism that is driving his quixotic quest.
Another lump
Here’s the thing: I have this lump on my finger that appeared one morning about a month ago. It’s raised, about 1×2 cm, on the proximal phalanx of my left second finger. It’s hard, smooth, and it hasn’t gotten bigger in the last month.
I went to the doctor and he said, “I don’t know what it is either.” He ordered an Xray, which just showed arthritis in the base of my thumb. No calcifications in the lump, which is just barely visible as a soft tissue shadow.
So he sent me to a hand surgeon. I haven’t seen him yet.
Eventually, someone is going to have to cut it off and look at it under the microscope.
It doesn’t act like a malignant tumor; it’s not growing nor painful.
Just one more consequence of having turned 70 years old on April 26.
A personal note #9
There’s a long list of reasons why I haven’t posted since September 2022. Let me count the ways:
- The risk of getting threatening emails or worse. This risk may seem extremely slight since no-one reads my blog, but things have changed a lot in the last few years. Especially since the presidential election in 2016 and worsening since 2020. This year is already setting records for online abuse. Even right-wing Republicans have been subjected to torrents of abuse for deviating from the party line.
- The COVID pandemic is officially over (although in reality, it has only mutated). So I don’t need to post about new research and other developments. See also 1., where there could be trolls putting down what I say about COVID.
- I’ve been sick. I won’t go into details on that now.
- I’ve been depressed. I won’t go into that now.
- My cats require attention.
- My dog requires attention.
- I have to go for a walk. This is usually good for a couple of days, repeat as necessary.
- I’ll be right back. [never comes back.]
COVID-19 was one of the top three causes of mortality in the US and number one in ages 40-54, according to a study of the leading causes of death during the eighteen months starting in March 2020 and ending in October 2021. Out of six million total deaths, over a million were ascribed to COVID. Among the most significant findings:
“Among people who were 85 or older, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death during the first 9 months and the third leading cause during the second 9 months.”
“Among middle-aged people (age range, 45–54), COVID-19 was the fourth leading cause of death during the first 9 months and the top cause of death during the second 9 months.”
“For every age group from 1 to 44, accidental death was the top cause of death for both time periods.”
So, during the period January-October 2021, the leading cause of death among middle-aged people was COVID-19; accidental deaths outnumbered COVID deaths among younger people. The deaths among those 45 to 54 are partly related to the low uptake of coronavirus vaccines in this age group.
Only 56% of all adults in the US were fully vaccinated by October 2021. The other big cause of mortality was poor compliance with mask-wearing among the middle-aged population (this is my anecdotal opinion.)
Vaccine rates among the elderly have been as high as 92-95%, which helps to account for their dropping death rates from infection despite their poor immune systems and high death rates once infected. Uptake rates among younger adults ranged between 70 to 65%.
That’s good rates, especially among the elderly, but it’s not enough. Experts have estimated that vaccine rates of over 90% are needed to really arrest a pandemic as contagious as COVID. As a result, COVID was the leading cause of death among those 45-54 during January-October 2021. Why has the vaccine not gotten universal acceptance among the young and middle-aged?
One answer is that there is a concerted disinformation campaign by a large group of vaccine deniers, especially on social media and through lawsuits to prevent mandatory masking and shots. Content on social media comes from the opinions, ramblings, and delusions of uninformed people– there is no special emphasis on the opinions of people who really know what they are talking about.
The opinions of those who really understand the underlying science and the hard numbers are not given any platform or special emphasis. Instead, the opinions of ignoramus types are equally represented without any information about whom to believe.
The former guy was a master at exploiting the lack of emphasis on informed opinion on Twitter, for example. He used Twitter and Facebook to spread lies that minimized the risk, failed to push the population to set themselves on a war footing against COVID, boosted useless or dangerous remedies like hydroxychloroquine and bleach injections, denigrated experts like Dr. Fauci, ridiculed masks (and lied that they didn’t work) and on and on.
The former guy could have made a public media event out of getting his vaccinations, but he didn’t– he did it in secret. All the other presidents publicly got their shots and made sure the media was informed.
If you looked in the right place, you could find the warning that everyone should get his shots as soon as possible, and everyone should wear a mask in public. But that information was not emphasized in a consistent way– it should have been presented to all users as soon as they signed in on the web sites. At best, some of the gross disinformation was treated with a tepid warning box that linked to accurate information.
Only the worst of lies about COVID was removed by Twitter “censors”, and even then, the work was spotty and incomplete.
Why didn’t Twitter (for example) put up information boxes for everyone to see first every time they signed on? Before they were exposed to disinformation from all sides?
There are so many simple things that could have been done, that would have made things better. Another example would have been if the former guy took the initiative in March 2020: if he had told everyone to wear masks and took the time to walk around in public with a mask on. Masks would have obviated the need to close down all the schools for so long (another disruptive move, which has resulted in massive losses in education levels.)
That one failure, to promote mask wearing, dramatically worsened the spread of COVID throughout the US. Some countries are accustomed to wearing masks in public (Korea and Japan, for example) and they have had much better experiences with COVID, even without sufficient vaccines. We should have had a big campaign to make masks popular, fashionable, and even de rigueur, led by the President, who should have worn a mask everywhere, even while giving speeches.
Hindsight is 20/20, but we can learn from our mistakes. We can get our shots and wear masks all the time in public. We are facing a potential spike in COVID-19 Omicron B.5 this winter, and the new vaccine just approved by the FDA could arrest it– but only if everyone gets their shots. The only difference with Omicron that we know for sure is that it is much more contagious than the original coronavirus– making cloth masks obsolete and N-95 respirators de rigueur. (sorry, no references at hand for the differences between old and new.)
Remember that the more people who get COVID infections, even if they are mild, the more chances the virus has to mutate into a more infectious and more efficient predator. Minimizing the total number of infections is extremely important, even among the very young (who are efficient spreaders because they usually have mild disease and interact with many other children.)
I have an appointment on September 15 to get my fourth vaccine– this time against Omicron. I urge you to do the same, and if your primary series isn’t complete, get that out of the way (although the new shot, given twice, should substitute for the primary series of shots. Sorry, I can’t make the rules about things like that.)
photo by anastasia gepp courtesy of pixabay.com
