The nooz and other stuff

Greetings on Wednesday, January 15, 2025, and National Bagel Day. You have the Jews to thank for this now-ubiquitous breadstuff: A bagel (Yiddish: בײגל, romanized: beygl; Polish: bajgiel [ˈbajɡʲɛl] also spelled beigel) is a bread roll originating in the Jewish communities of Poland. Bagels are traditionally made from yeasted wheat dough that is shaped by hand into a torus or ring, briefly boiled in water, and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with … Continue reading The nooz and other stuff

Jan 15, 2025 - 17:26

Greetings on Wednesday, January 15, 2025, and National Bagel Day. You have the Jews to thank for this now-ubiquitous breadstuff:

A bagel (Yiddish: בײגל, romanized: beygl; Polish: bajgiel [ˈbajɡʲɛl] also spelled beigel) is a bread roll originating in the Jewish communities of Poland. Bagels are traditionally made from yeasted wheat dough that is shaped by hand into a torus or ring, briefly boiled in water, and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior.
Linguist Leo Rosten wrote in The Joys of Yiddish about the first known mention of the Polish word bajgiel derived from the Yiddish word bagel in the “Community Regulations” of the city of Kraków in 1610, which stated that the food was given as a gift to women in childbirth. There is some evidence that the bagel may have been derived from pretzels made in Germany brought by immigrants to Poland.
In the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, the bajgiel became a staple of Polish cuisine. Its name derives from the Yiddish word beygal from the German dialect word beugel, meaning ‘ring’ or ‘bracelet’.

I have long mourned the degeneration of the bagel in America from the dense and chewy palm-sized vehicle for lox or a schmear into a huge and fluffy torus made of Wonder Bread. There are still places in NYT and Montreal where you can get the real thing, but they are thin on the ground.

Here’s the best way to eat a bagel: with lox and a schmear. (Poppy-seed and plain bagels are permitted, but no others!)

Helen Cook, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I am flying home from Burbank tomorrow morning, and so my California interlude will end. Despite the fires, the weather where I am (now Pasadena) has been lovely, with warm sun and clear blue skies.

Yesterday I tooled around Pasadena with my friend Ben, who lives here and gave me the Grand Tour. It’s a lovely city with some gorgeous houses ($2-3 million each) and, of course CalTech, a university with fewer than a thousand undergraduates and about 1400 graduate students. Yet the campus is large.

I had dinner with Bob Lang and his wife Diane at at the Green Street Restaurant, an excellent venue, and learned about their fire saga over a carafe of zinfandel. Luckily, they had fire insurance for both houses and the studio, so they will be rebuilt, though, depending on the cost, one burned home may be left as a lot for sale. But rebuild they will, as they love this area. Here’s my dinner: a flank steak, cooked rare, of course, and a copious salad Dianne on the side. The salad, a local speciality also called a “Pasadena salad” was terrific (the ingredients are described here).

Today will be a day of gluttony with my friends Justin and Michelle, including a visit to the famous Blinkie’s Donuts in Woodland Hills, other homemade baked goods whose identity this morning is mysterious, a visit to In-N-Out Burger for lunch, and a yet-to-be determined dinner. I have eaten fairly abstemiously

Da Nooz;

*Yesterday Pete Hegseth, Trump’s controversial choice for Secretary of Defense, faced a stiff grilling from a House committee. I predict he’ll get through despite the fact that he lacks the requisite experience, but what do I know? Highlights from the NYT (more hearings to come):

Pete Hegseth’s four-hour hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday was strikingly contentious. Democrats derided him as blatantly unqualified to oversee the Defense Department’s three million employees and $849 billion budget. Republicans acknowledged that he was an unconventional pick, but said he was just what the Pentagon needed. And Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican who is an influential member of the panel, said after the hearing that she had been won over.

The four takeaways from the NYT: “Hegseth looks as if he has the votes to get out of committee,” “Hegseth portrayed his life as a redemption story” (barf!), “He faced fierce queries over his views on women in combat” (he said earlier he didn’t think women should serve in that role), “Republicans praised his communication skills, honed as a television anchor,”

And get a load of this (bolding is mine):

Mr. Hegseth repeatedly refused to say whether an accusation of sexual assault or excessive drinking or marital infidelity should disqualify someone from leading the Pentagon. He also did not promise that he’d resign if he were to break his promise not to drink if confirmed.

In general, he skirted specific allegations about his personal conduct, simply claiming that he had been the victim of false allegations by anonymous sources, circulated by media organizations he said were determined to destroy him.
“I’m not a perfect person, but redemption is real.” he said at one point. He also said, “I have failed in things in my life, and thankfully I’m redeemed by my lord and savior Jesus.”

Jesus will be running the Defense Department! Fasten your seat belts. . . .

*Tulsi Gabbard is a Hindu, so if she’s confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, it will be Shiva and not Jesus who takes the wheel. However, her nomination has also run into a bit of trouble:

Some Senate Republicans left recent meetings with former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard with reservations about the qualifications of the person President-elect Donald Trump chose to oversee the U.S. intelligence community.
Those concerns have largely remained private, and GOP lawmakers are expected to publicly support her despite their misgivings. But further missteps could jeopardize her nomination as Trump prepares to take office.

In her meeting with Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.), Gabbard couldn’t clearly articulate what the role of director of national intelligence entails, two Senate Republican aides and a Trump transition official said. When she met with Sen. Mike Rounds (R., S.D.), Gabbard seemed confused about a key U.S. national-security surveillance power, a top legislative priority for nearly every member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, conflating it with other issues, the aides said.
Senators are under pressure from Trump and his allies to vote in favor of his nominees. After a Tuesday confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to the president-elect, signaled his support for launching primary challenges against Republican senators who oppose the nomination.
No Republican senators have said they would oppose Gabbard’s nomination, but Sen. John Curtis (R., Utah) said during an event hosted by Politico on Tuesday that he needs more information about Gabbard before she can win his vote. Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) told reporters last month after their meeting that she would wait for Gabbard’s background check and hearing before making any decisions about her candidacy. Gabbard, a former Democrat turned MAGA loyalist, endorsed Trump in August and became an outspoken surrogate for his national-security agenda during his 2024 campaign.

*The House voted yesterday to ban trans women from participating in women’s sports.

The House on Tuesday passed legislation banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports in elementary school through college, elevating a top GOP campaign issue to one of the first priorities in the new Congress.

The bill passed 218-206, with all Republicans present voting yes and all but two Democrats voting no. If the measure becomes law, schools that allow trans girls or women to compete could lose federal education funding.

The measure was last debated in 2023, when not a single Democrat voted yes. Since then, Republicans have repeatedly pressed the matter as a threat to girls’ and women’s sports, spending at least $111 million on political ads making the case last year.

On Tuesday, Republicans argued that female athletes face unfair competition and are not safe when transgender girls and women are allowed to participate in girls’ sports, and they rejected the idea that someone born one gender can change to another.
. . . . Democrats called the bill harmful to children, logistically impractical and distracting from more important matters. Some noted that the bill would apply to young kids playing for fun as well as highly competitive college athletics, saying those situations should be treated differently.

I’m afraid that the Democrats, striving to be avatars of equity, got it wrong on this one, and it won’t make them look good in further elections. Perhaps there can be mixed-sports teams in elementary school, but once you get to high school and college, and trans women have experienced male puberty, the whole game becomes unfair to women. I am amazed that the Dems voted as a unit to approve of trans women competing against natal women in high school and in college. Do they not know the athletic advantages of male puberty? I must add the requisite disclaimer that sports is one of the few exceptions in which trans people do not have the “right” to be treated precisely as the sex they claim to be rather than the sex in which they were born. In nearly all other areas, trans people should be treated with dignity, respect, and have the same rights as everyone else. But of course even approving of a sports carve-out will get you labeled as a “transphobe.”

The fate of this bill in the Senate hasn’t been determined, but given the party makeup, I predict it will pass there, and, if so, Trump will sign it.

*Reader Bat informs us of a space launch today:

Just a heads up that Musk’s big Starship rocket is scheduled for a test flight today with a one-hour launch window opening at 5:00pm EST. (4PM CST at the Boca Chico TX launchsite). This permits a daylight launch and daylight landing of the starship vehicle in the Indian Ocean. They will again try to catch the spent booster in the “chopsticks” on the launch tower. Last time, damage to the tower during launch precluded a catch attempt. Hopefully, what they learned from that will help with this next launch. I do not think that there will be anything new of obvious note to us casual viewers…mainly hardware and software tweaks from what they learned with the previous test. They should cover the Starship re-entry and landing in the Indian Ocean from buoy-mounted cameras at the landing zone. I usually get my news updates and access to live coverage by trolling around the Space.com website.

He adds this:

In addition, it looks like Jess Bezos’ Blue Origin big rocket flight from the Cape has been delayed again to at least early tomorrow morning, but likely even later due to unfavorable seas in the booster recovery area. They want to land the spent booster upright on a barge in the ocean….as Musk has done before with his rockets.

*From the AP’s “oddities” section, we have big doings in an Italian soccer club, S. S. Lazio.

Lazio has fired the man who handled the Italian soccer club’s eagle mascot after he posted photos and videos online of his own prosthetic penis.
Falconer Juan Bernabé shared the images on his private social media accounts after undergoing surgery for a penile implant, which he said was for non-medical reasons.
Bernabé also gave an interview to controversial Italian radio show La Zanzara on Monday and elaborated on his reasons for undergoing the procedure.
Bernabé added that he felt “very proud” and “more masculine” being part of Lazio. The Serie A club clearly did not feel the same as it fired the Spaniard shortly afterward.
“Shocked to see the photographic images and video of Mr. Juan Bernabè and to read the statements that accompanied them, Lazio announces that it has stopped, with immediate effect, all relationship with this person, given the seriousness of his behavior,” the capital club said in a statement.

The eagle — a bird that symbolizes ancient Rome — traditionally flies over Stadio Olimpico before home games.
Bernabè said he had no regrets about sharing the images.
Lazio suspended Bernabè in 2021 when he was filmed performing a fascist salute at the end of a match and chanting “Duce, Duce,” which was the name used to praise former fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini.
“I admire him so much,” Bernabè added in Monday’s radio interview.

What can one say but “Oy!”?

From Pyers, a temperature comparison:

From Nicole: a Facebook video of cats who have probably never seen snow:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

Three Iranian operatives who planned to assassinate Masih in the U.S. are going on trial (long tweet):

These 11 individuals, charged by U.S. law enforcement, include members of the Revolutionary Guard, assassins, and facilitators of money laundering—all connected to efforts to kidnap and kill me on US soil. While the U.S. pursued a nuclear deal with Iran, these operatives worked… pic.twitter.com/Q6UVbjy3qn
— Masih Alinejad Read More

The nooz and other stuff

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