News that Israel and the Gaza Palestinians were at war reached me late Saturday evening. It had a strange effect on my brain for some hours into the night: a sort of wordless mourning/praying state took over. Humans are murdering noncombatants, families, children, again. On a day so lovely as to be a kind of religious holiday, even for people for whom it was not a traditional one, humans are... News of war--organized fights among soldiers--as such doesn't affect me this way; news of murderous attacks on people who were praying does.
And life goes on. We eat, we sleep, we go back to work. Lot of foreigners killing each other, what's it to us? Well, it's Israel; it'll be made into a great big boondoggle for us. I just feel that the waste of money is the least of it. Humans ought to have reached, by now, a level of civilization at which Israelis would not even feel a need to declare war on the murderers' tribe, because other Palestinians would have gone after them first. But no, humans still think that the only answer to a mass murder is another mass murder, and another and another until they feel that all their money and young men are gone...Right. I'll stop now. I will try tp get back to work: reading some of this flood of e-books people keep sending me, writing new book reviews. Our Sunday book is an English translation of some of the writings of Oscar Romero.
Oscar Romero would have preached against this feeling that one ought to be able to identify with some other species than the species that murders people while they are praying, I think, probably because he would have felt it too.
And it doesn't help that this war is among children of Abraham. We as a nation feel bound to support Israel in whatever they do, which as we've already seen is to start bombing, because a critical mass of us believe that God will bless those who bless the children of Abraham, and curse those who curse them. But Ishmael was a son of Abraham too, and beloved, "his hand against every man, and every man against him" has to end somewhere...doesn't it? Isaac and Ishmael kept a distance from each other as each grew up to be the shaikh of his own tribe, but they recognized each other as half brothers. I can understand the feelings, but I can't believe God is pleased when other Americans express kindhearted wishes that all Muslims, or Arabs, or Palestinians be ground into the desert dust.
I wish the Arabs Enlightenment. It should fall on them suddenly; it should be a source of pain. It should lay them flat on the earth in attitudes of prayer and penitence, and when they stand up they should find themselves crying and praying and offering all sorts of concessions to show their sincere regret that this murder was done in their name. And then the same thing should happen to the Israelis.
Anyway the links were found, and the comments were written, before the war broke out, all but the category "Disgrace to Humanity" and the phenology links, saved for Saturday night and being added this morning. After that came links from people who wanted to observe a full day of mourning for this abomination. They have a point. My verbal brain is back in gear by now, but if people want to put off reading and mourn all day, I understand.
Animals
Baby chickens are called, among other things, peep-peeps, but the proper meaning of "peeps" is small shore birds, many of which are very small and look alike from a decent distance. We know there are different species because, centuries ago, people shot them. Anyway, here is a lovely collection of nice clear "shots" of peeps, taken the civilized way, with a digital camera.
Books
Last week, I mentioned that Luke I.T. Tarassenko was peddling a virtual basket of free and cheap new books? This week it's Fern Harlow with a basket of all new ones. So many older writers who don't think they have five or ten years to wait--it's now or never for their books. So many young writers who want to keep their homes, or at least get out of the horrible housing projects where they've been living since losing their homes. So many, many writers...and so many good books...and each of us with only the one pair of eyes. But use them as much as you can, please. I'm thinking seriously about putting the reviews of older books on hold. New writers need their chance. I do urge new writers to wait--if they can; but many of them believe they can't.
So go to Amazon and check what they're not promoting. Go to @BookTasters or another e-reading club for independent authors and publishers. Turn off the television and read.
Disgrace to Humanity
Once again the cousin nations in the Middle East are at war. Hard to blame Israel for declaring war when they were attacked on what was meant to be Simchat Torah, the happiest Sabbath of the year. This web site takes no sides, but that was low.
Google says the photo actually comes from last spring and reflects a happier occasion, but the Guardian used it as an image of Israel's readiness to defend itself by force. Over 200 Israelis were killed. Over 1500 were wounded. Within an hour their leaders had taken a vow of vengeance and were bombing Gaza...Body counts on both sides will be rising steadily.
Latest news report at time of posting: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-07/ty-article-live/israel-under-attack-terrorists-infiltrate-from-gaza-amid-massive-rocket-barrages/0000018b-088b-dae9-adcb-abbff50f0000.
Isaac generously conceded Ishmael the wells Ishmael's men claimed to need. Then again Ishmael asked for the wells, like a gentleman talking to his half brother, rather than sneaking up and killing Isaac's men from behind in an attack that fairly well defines the word "dastardly."
This web site takes no sides--but a side has been taken for us. It seems that Americans' pledges of loyalty mean more to us than some Arabs' pledges of peace. I have Arab connections too--not Palestinians, Saudis--and pray for their peace and enlightenment too. But how can Allah, Elohe, the Holy One, Al-Rachman Al-Rahim, bless desecration, treason, and murder? We all claim to serve the One God. Some of us have some feeble mortal idea what we are talking about. The Hamas murderers evidently have none.
Election 2024
The Democratic Party made a major mistake last week. Donald Trump was hated for, among other things, hijacking the Republican nomination by threatening to run as a spoiler in 2020. There is currently exactly one man in America who is in a position (I'm not saying capable, I'm saying in a position) to mirror that move. He is also the one man in America who is in a position to challenge Trump. His name is Kennedy; what else could it possibly be? The Ds missed their chance to rally around him. They'll probably end up voting for him anyway. Both maverick candidates look ominously "old," but if they run against each other, Biden (or Harris) will be the spoiler. And Biden (or Harris) will hand the election to Trump on a platter.
I don't know who needs these announcements, but someone Out There does:
In a Trump/Kennedy race, there might be some benefits from Trump winning...but Glyphosate Awareness is the issue on which I'll be voting. Though it's not too late for Trump to recognize the possibility that glyphosate may be involved in the only medical problems ever reported of his wife and son.
Glyphosate Awareness
Some people have suggested that this web site is "dull" relative to that New Lede article where I debated the haterboys on their own turf. Seriously? That sort of thing is fun, but how much does it accomplish? We did that, back before Twitter sold out and started censoring the live chat. We did it multilingually. For a handful of well educated, technologically sophisticated, privileged nerds it was terrific. And? Now? Even if Twitter hadn't destroyed the "reach" of the Live Chats, they were getting to be "preaching to the choir." Everybody who was following the Live Chats was familiar with the arguments and the documents. As soon as new documents came out, we were familiar with them too. You say "tumor growth," I say "Purdue study," they say "But it wasn't done with live human subjects so it could be wrong." For the people doing the debating it starts to feel like bleepin' reruns, and unlike politicians we do not have a special talent for repeating the same sound bites day after day. I would do that if it were getting the message out beyond the technorati--but it's not.
(One bit of evidence says a lot by its absence...Steve Milloy, the Debunker of Junk Science, has not been trying to "debunk" Glyphosate Awareness. Milloy is a fully qualified scientist, albeit a maverick; a MS from Johns Hopkins is pretty dang respectable, even if he then veered off into law rather than biology for his doctorate. He is well known for supporting corporations against Greens who've tried to use dubious or premature science. He came to the attention of Tea Parties and the Trump campaign because he draws a clear line between the real science and the politically motivated junk science around the topic of "climate change." Milloy has been reliably and consistently skeptical about gluten and glyphosate through the years I've been following his site. If the science behind Glyphosate Awareness were subject to legitimate doubt, and sometimes some of it has been, I rely on Milloy to debunk it. If he did feel too chivalrous to debunk me, because I'm female and/or younger and/or not a MS, he'd have no such qualms about pitching into some of the men in Glyphosate Awareness. And in fact he has challenged them from time to time. And I've gone to his site and challenged a few of his challenges; others I've accepted as valid. The paucity of scientific challenges from Milloy should tell everyone that there's very little junk about Glyphosate Awareness.)
You must understand, Gentle Readers--although probably most of us don't feel like a global elite group, although I'm a widow growing old in poverty and youall may be retirees with bad backs, or students with massive debts, or single mothers or whatever else--we are an elite group relative to the majoirty of humankind. We read serious nonfiction. Most of us read serious science--we can follow the arguments in those scientific studies, we can read and understand the full-length journal articles when we're on campus using the school computers. We read English--most of us with native fluency. We read serious science in English on computers. Right? Now go to the mall, McDonalds, most Starbucks (other than THE Starbucks on Dupont Circle, which may not be special any more but used to be where all the Bright Young Things in Washington hung out). Observe the people who come and go. How many of them read serious science in English on computers? Even if forced to do it for work or school? Not exactly a majority.
So, we are the technorati. Some among us may want just to make decisions among ourselves and hand them down to the peons who only use the Internet to watch TV reruns free on Youtube. I don't want that. I'm American. I want the non-technorati, whether they're old-school business tycoons who gained wealth and power before the Internet was invented, or the surfers and fashionistas on the mall, or the crew from the cotton mill, to be part of Glyphosate Awareness. I have no right to say to the left-wingers in the movement that they can't work for ways to gain political influence and impose Glyphosate Awareness on the world through bigger, more invasive government. If that's how we get total bans on glyphosate, that's how we save lives, so that's good! It's just not the way I think or work. I personally want to see more of us connecting with people who do not read science in English on the Internet, informing and involving those people. The articles have been written (and mostly censored) already, the debates have been done. The new challenge is, if the college near you offers courses in mining technology, can you raise the Glyphosate Awareness of those miners? What about the mall walkers?
I've been receiving headlines and links from Scott Adams' vlog ever since he moved from blog to vlog, mostly not clicking on the links, up until this year's flap, This year I've tried to listen to more of his vlogs, not really listen since I was not born with the ability to focus my attention on a talking head video, but at least play them as background noise while checking e-mail. I was doing that, and something leaped out at me. Even among the technorati--and Adams is obviously one of the technorati, a Real Geek--there are specialists who read only their science. Adams obviously has not developed any Glyphosate Awareness, because around minute 50 of this vlog he describes, with heartbreaking naivete, a pseudo-celiac reaction. Now there may be pseudo-celiac reactions to wheat gluten itself that are independent of glyphosate. They would have to be very rare, and consequently they should also be very interesting to medical science. Nature intended the majority of humankind to be able to meet a lot of their nutrient needs by eating wheat. But SA and, according to him, his sister need to demand that their doctors test samples for correlations between their symptoms, their symptom-free days, and their levels of glyphosate exposure. This at least sounds like a textbook case.
The majority of people aren't totally disabled, even by glyphosate. The majority of people who have glyphosate reactions that are visible to others still have subclinical symptoms--not "I was crippled by kidney failure" but "While doing my job or housework, I felt like a zombie." Not "My colon ruptured, and I was rushed to the hospital while delirious from blood poisoning, and my life was saved by emergency surgery" but "I felt sick, irregular, nauseated." Many a mickle makes a muckle and eventually, as these microtraumas recur, there will be fatal kidney failure, cancer from oxidative stress, ruptures of frequently lacerated colons, and more. That is why people need to be monitoring our tiresome little flare-ups of chronic conditions, saying consistently, "Whatever else may also be going on, I've had these reactions to glyphosate. No, they've not been fatal so far, but over time they may be."
There can be a temptation to go dithering off on these side issues. Plastic, e.g. I don't seriously think our world is going to stop using plastic. I think the impracticality of anti-plastic campaigns makes them a nice safe topic for students to discuss with strangers. Plastic pollution is real, and when the USPIRG and other groups send the kids out to talk about plastic pollution I think they do remind people to reduce, reuse, recycle, which is good. And I'm sure the microparticles of plastic and styrofoam that are floating around in our bodies aren't doing any of us any good. But seriously, dear children...Celiac disease existed before plastic did. Celiac reactions are triggered by gluten and/or glyphosate. Obviously plastic is unlikely to help, but people with celiac and pseudo-celiac reactions need to focus on gluten and glyphosate, which do trigger those reactions, and not be overly distracted by plastic, which does not. For students who are serious about keeping people mindful of the need tor educe, reuse, and recycle I suggest focussing on either the damage to wildlife done by plastic waste, or the very real problems of sewers backed up when plastic waste clogs drains. Those are real, indisputable, and not a distraction from other real indisputable issues that are of more urgent concern to some of us.
Health
Can you trust dietary guidelines handed out for everybody...from anybody? Not too far. Nutrient information is the same for everybody. Dietary guidelines are not. But it's worth knowing that, even beyond the idiocy of imagining that one diet is for every person, federal dietary guidelines are being generated by people employed by specific food and drug ompanies.
History
Glenn Greenwald's essay badly, needs a transcript. I can add that (1) Gore Vidal had more attractive boyfriends at the time, and (2) Vidal's views of federal overreach in the 1990s were independently reached and shared by many people, Left and Right, who didn't read the old contrarian's work. Of whom your Auntie Pris was one. Vidal's incorrigibly dirty mind may have entertained sex fantasies about, or on behalf of, the apparently asexual Timothy McVeigh, but no such fantasies were necessary to recognize that McVeigh was overreacting to ugly truths most people were just trying not to let themselves see. And Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace was still a good book that all Americans ought to read.
Phenology
In Virginia, at least, the weather finally turned today. The overnigt low temperature was only in the fifties, but then, although the sun shone brightly all morning, the mercury did not immediately begin rising steadily back above the eighty-degree mark. It barely made it past the sixty-degree mark. Fall has fallen. It should be reaching the Deeper South soon, too.
Less colorful photos from this lake in Michigan focus on a seldom photographed visitor: a Bald Eagle:
Leaves are still green, but squashes and sunflowers provide color, in North Carolina:
New York state:
Pattern? The places photographed have been part of the Northeast's mild, damp summer rather than the Southwest's brutally hot and dry summer. Even so, this is a late fall. Not record-setting late, but later than average. The Cat Sanctuary often sees first frost in the last week of September...
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