10/16 is World Food Day
10/16 is World Food Day
~~ Red Potatoes
World Food Day was created to commemorate the 1945 creation of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization. If you go to this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Day and scroll down a bit, you'll find a picture of the U.S. National Committee for World Food Day offices in Washington, D.C. It appears to be 12 stories tall.
According to the UNFAO, between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022. Furthermore, according to the USDA:
89.8 percent (118.5 million) of U.S. households were food secure throughout 2021. ...
Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.
10.2 percent (13.5 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2021.
Essentially unchanged from 10.5 percent in 2020.
Maybe the U.S. National Committee for World Food Day needs a bigger building?
Just so you know your place in the greater scheme of things, it is Boss's Day in the United States and Canada, something we clearly really need.
On this day in history:
1384 -- Jadwiga was crowned King of Poland, although she was a woman.
1841 -- Queen's University was founded in Kingston, Ontario
1843 -- Sir William Rowan Hamilton invented and described quaternions, non-commutative complex numbers
1847 -- Jane Eyre was published
1859 -- John Brown led a raid on Harpers Ferry
1869 -- Girton College, Cambridge, England's first residential college for women, was founded
1875 -- Brigham Young University was founded, before Lavell Edwards was even born
1916 -- Margaret Sanger opened the US' first family planning clinic
1934 -- Chinese Communists begin the Long March (alternate date)
1940 -- The Warsaw Ghetto was established.
1943 -- Raid on the Rome Ghetto
1946 -- Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders from the Main Nuremberg Trial
1950 -- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published
1964 -- China detonated its first nuke
1968 -- Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked off the US team for the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.
1978 -- Wanda Rutkiewicz was the first European woman to summit Mount Everest.
1984 -- Desmond Tutu got the Nobel Peace Prize.
1995 -- The Million Man March in Washington, D.C.
Some people who were born on this day:
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
~~ Oscar Wilde
1620 -- Pierre Paul Puget, painter and sculptor
1678 -- Anna Waser, painter
1679 -- Jan Dismas Zelenka, composer and viol player
1729 -- Pierre van Maldere, violinist and composer
1758 -- Noah Webster, lexicographer
1854 -- Oscar Wilde, wit, playwright, poet and novelist
1888 -- Eugene O'Neill, playwright
1898 -- William O. Douglas, jurist
1900 -- Primo Conti, futurist painter
1927 -- Gunter Grass, novelist
1931 -- Charles Colson, evangelical lawyer and criminal, Nixon's hatchet
1938 -- Nico, as in "The Velvet Underground and Nico"
1943 -- Fred Turner, bassist, singer, songwriter, co-founder of Bachman-Turner Overdrive
1945 -- Roger Hawkins, session drummer
1947 -- Bob Weir, singer, songwriter, guitarist
1952 -- Cordell Mosson, bassist, took over for Bootsy Collins
1953 -- Tony Carey, keyboardist
1960 -- Bob Mould, singer, songwriter, guitarist (husker du)
1962 -- Flea, bassist, Chili Pepper
1969 -- Wendy Wilson, singer and songwriter
Some people who died on this day:
Believe me, as one who has seen a number of international crises firsthand, they cannot be handled without an understanding of history.
~~ Pierre Salinger
1553 -- Lucas Cranach the Elder, painter
1959 -- George Marshall, general, planner, politician
1972 -- Leo G. Carroll, Topper
1973 -- Gene Krupa, Drummer
1990 -- Art Blakey, drummer, bandleader, messenger
1997 -- James A. Michener, author
2001 -- Etta Jones, singer, and songwriter
2004 -- Pierre Salinger, journalist and politician
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
World Food Day (International)
World Anaesthesia Day (International)
Teachers' Day (Chile)
Boss's Day (United States and Canada) - I shit you not.
Today's Tunes
John Brown
Jan Dismas Zelenka (Two-Fer)
Pierre van Maldere
Oscar Wilde
Nico
Fred Turner
Roger Hawkins
Bob Weir
Cordell Mosson
Tony Carey
Bob Mould
Flea
Wendy Wilson
Gene Krupa
Art Blakey
Etta Jones
"The Velvet Underground and Nico"
Bachmann-Turner Overdrive
Bob Weir
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
Open Thread, quaternions, Jane Eyre, Jadwiga, Desmond Tutu, John Brown, Margaret Sanger, Art Blakey, Flea, Nico, Boss' Day, Fred Turner, Gene Krupa, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bob Weir, Etta Jones
Comments
Ooh! Ooh! Mathematics-y stuff!
Good morning lot, thanks for reading. Thanks also for
the numberphile clip on quaternions.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
(Below is my summary of
(Below is my summary of Ellsberg's moral argument about nuclear deterrence in his book, Doomsday Machine.)
The Luftwaffe's great fire raid on London Dec 29, 1940 was an incendiary attack which burned one square mile. Curtis LeMay's incendiary attack on Tokyo March 10, 1945 burned approximately 15 square miles. According to Ellsberg, the casualties were estimated at 80 to 100 thousand dead. LeMay claimed in six raids a million may have been killed. One prominent historian disputed the figure as wildly exaggerated. Truman did not flinch at using nuclear weapons because he was accustomed to killing more people with the firebombing attacks. According to Ellsberg-
Further-
In other words, the idea of killing civilians in densely populated areas evolved from the early German incendiary bombing of London, to the allied bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and finally the fire bombing of Japanese cities when US bombers got within striking distance. Ellsberg points out that US military planners had discussed the possibilities of this strategy against Japan as early as the thirties after witnessing the impact of the Kanto earthquake fires in 1923. Earlier in WWII some US bomber units had commanders who were against the fire bombing strategy and advocated precision targeting of war industry and infrastructure, in other words military targets. With respect to Japan, the commander who resisted adopting the strategy was relieved and replaced with LeMay.
These are the "moral standards" by which US military commands consider the risks of thermonuclear war which would be so much worse jeopardizing the entire concept of life on earth as we know it. Ellsberg considered it just fundamentally "evil." Who could take any risk of such an outcome?
語必忠信 行必正直
Interesting quandary you present
The fact that Japan was nuked and now they want to have that capability
rhymes with the jews getting moved to the desert and now want to kill
all the Palestines in the region because ? wtf territory
the Japanese died because of nuclear bombardment
the jews died because of the nazis
now the japs want to threaten neighbors
and the jews want to extinguish neighbors
forget who mentioned this, but the jews will repopulate
Ukraine as their new expansion project? After the nazis
have cleansed the region of those slavs.
just wondering how's and why's
thanks for posting
question everything
Along those lines
I know more about Yoon's approach to nuclear weapons than that of Japan. There's this today in South Korea-
So a series of so called "strategic assets" from the US have visited South Korea in recent months. This has to do with the US Consultative Group strategy, somehow associated in a very "clever" way with the "Spirit of Camp David." Yoon started out with the proposition how can we depend on US strategic deterrence? We should make our own nuclear weapons. I'm sure this is not his idea, but that of Kim Tae-hyo, his Deputy National Security Advisor, a US educated neo-con type. That's not practical for various reasons technical, tactical and legal (the NPT).
So Yoon/Kim then asked for the US to forward deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea, and let the ROK Air Force be involved in their use, like in Europe with a couple of NATO allies. US said no. But what we will do is bring our nuclear delivery platforms to South Korea, on a irregular schedule to demonstrate to North Korea that we are serious about extending our nuclear deterrence over South Korea (and Japan). Technically, I don't think Japanese law allows the deployment of nuclear weapons in their country, but there has been in the past, some Japanese and US weaseling around this restriction which I won't go into here because that's another topic that requires careful analysis.
So South Korea and Japan get the Nuclear Consultative Group strategy, and the "occasional" presence of US nuclear weapons platforms in South Korea. The Joongang Ilbo had an article (linked in Tim's twitter post) in which they asserted that the B-52 in South Korea today doesn't have a nuclear weapons capability. I looked at several open sources on google, and I don't find that assertion credible. That particular aircraft may not be carrying nuclear weapons or the paraphanelia that go with the delivery capability, but to claim that type aircraft doesn't have the capability, is not true in my judgement.
I watched a very interesting panel discussion on Japanese foreign policy recommendations particularly with respect to the US-Japanese military alliance, diplomacy in east Asia generally and Taiwan. This was a relatively enlightened group, compared to what I've seen before, but their views don't represent the right wing LDP in power today in Japan. It's about an hour. I found it worthwhile. It doesn't address the foregoing nuclear issue, but cautions Japan against taking an exclusively confrontational or military approach that the US appears hooked on for political reasons.
語必忠信 行必正直
Good afternoon QMS, very good questions. Thanks for the tune.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good afternoon Soryang. Great Pete Seeger song; new to me;
so extra thanks there.
Not sure that there is or can be a moral argument about US behavior, especially about our military behavior. I think back and all I see is "church morality", pray to the lord for success in your pre-dawn attack on the sleeping indian families in the nearby village, and thank him afterward for any good outcome. When we finally get gatling guns, we don't fret over it, we gleefully use them instead of rifles. We pray a lot. And DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. But, anything goes in war because the victims are bad people. I'm pretty damn cynical, but I've always considered Dresden and Tokyo to be logical predecessors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The firestorms in Dresden and other European cities didn't simply happen, the bomb loads had to be designed to create that effect. Pretty sure even Tokyo required intent, forethought and planning. Any weapon is just another weapon. The reason we don't already throw nukes around like crazy is the radiation. We can't just run in and start exploiting the survivors and their resources because of the radioactivity.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Yes that's it EL
Perhaps I didn't express Ellsberg's idea clearly enough. But you did-
That's exactly the point. Ellsberg is making the moral argument that targeting civilians deliberately and intentionally, on such a scale, in WWII, was evil. Planning the same with thermonuclear weapons is off the charts. He questions his own participation in nuclear war planning. I guess looking at the Geneva protocols which are supposed to protect civilian populations to the extent possible during armed conflict, (I was prompted by this current Israel-Palestine conflict) the rules against reprisal, punishment of civilian populations, etc., made me think to go back to Ellsberg's book, because nuclear war planning (and fire bombing) violates all of these Geneva protocol principles so as to render them meaningless. It is this immorality that makes our leadership so bad. I read once in a military journal that international standards of conduct are set by example.
My personal opinion is that the US massive bombing campaign against North Korea during the Korean conflict, which killed about 2 million people and destroyed virtually everything was a similar violation as the firebombing campaigns in Europe and Japan during WWII, and similar, if not greater, in scale. LeMay bragged about it. That's why North Koreans are paranoid to this day. Seeing a nuclear submarine or strategic bomber approaching triggers their worst nightmare. Gee why are the North Koreans "crazy" and continuously mobilizing their resources for war, even nuclear war?
Yes, I don't recall hearing Pete's Nuremburg tune before either. I saw it posted it somewhere, and thought it was great.
語必忠信 行必正直
This seems apropos. (sadly)
Food for me
but not for thee.
Two State Solution is the only solution.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
It may take some heavy lifting
to get to the two state solution
the heavy weight lifters there are now
Iran, Russia and China
(perhaps a few smaller states as well)
The Palestine people deserve their native lands
Perhaps Israel and US should reconsider their approach?
question everything
Good evening otc. Thanks for dropping by.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Wash up your red potatoes.
Cover them in oil and salt. Bake them 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, have some bacon sizzling in a fry pan. (halve or quarter the slices, at least the large ones.)
Bring some vegetable broth to boil, dump in the bacon, along with some of the fat. Dump in the potatoes, add salt, a tiny pinch of cayenne, some green beans, go sit on the porch and watch birds at the feeder. Curse at the trucks racing by with loud mufflers. Wander back into the kitchen, and if you can stick a fork easily into the red potatoes, the meal is cooked.
Serve with cornbread.
If you do not want a complete meal, just a vegetable side, omit the bacon, and serve with your meat choice.
The chef trick is the pinch of cayenne to spark flavor, not to add heat.
I have found myself cooking for 6 people without warning from time to time. I have never had a complaint.
Red potato skins have a powerful antioxidant property. Highly recommended by holistic doctors.
Ok. My simple, 30 minute meal to enjoy while murdering cancer cells.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Thanks, will try some time, especially the pinch of pepper. n/t
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --