RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/06/01/the-code-and-the-key/

Lessons from human nature about writing, politics, and Donald Trump

I  worked one summer as a kitchen boy in a Wisconsin summer camp. It was one of those jobs from which you fall down at night near too tired to sleep. A previous occupant of my bunk had left behind a copy of Atlas Shrugged. So I spent the summer, between work and sleep, reading the perfect companion for my teenage summer.

I don’t care for short stories. I prefer the heft of the doorstop book, reassuring me that I can immerse myself in the fantasy for a good long time. “Yes, yes,” I think. “Thank you. Take me. Anywhere but here . . . ”

My companion for the lockdown is The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, written by David Kahn in 1967 and updated by him in 1996. One thousand pages so interesting that my mind will not reject them even though they are informative.

My new novel, not yet released, is Forty Years at Anstett, a fictional account of one man’s life at a New England prep school. In it, a young man returns from imprisonment in Japan during the Russo–Japanese War. The fellow applies for the job of instructor of languages. He has no academic credentials, but a very practical one: He was forced, in prison, to learn Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and, more important, how to learn languages. He challenges the Head (my protagonist) to point out the dullest lad in the school, to name a language, to leave the applicant alone with the boy for an afternoon, and then to assess his progress in the new tongue.

“Well,” the Head says, “Latin or Greek. I’d say Latin; it’s simpler as it shares our alphabet.” “No,” the applicant says, “it’s simpler to teach Greek. A new alphabet is a code. What twelve-year-old boy has ever been able to resist a code?”

Not I, certainly. It seems I’ve spent my professional life fashioning them and solving them, and have found the process commutative, which is to say, the study of one is the study of the other—it works in both directions.

Here’s what I mean. Raymond Chandler wrote, in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder” (1939), that it is near impossible to craft a good murder mystery, as it requires two otherwise unconnected skills: the ability to write beautifully and the ability to fashion a code.

He is near right in his observation. The two skills—while not mutually exclusive per se—are unlikely to be found fully developed in any practitioner, because to achieve excellence, he or she would have to devote all energy to one or the other. I know of no great contemporary instrumentalist who is also a great composer.

This week’s newsletter is full outsize  Israeli solutions to global problems.
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www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Detecting heart problems in coronavirus patients. Israel’s DiA Imaging Analysis (reported here previously) uses its AI image analysis of ultrasound scans to detect cardiac problems.  DiA has received a NIS 2.5 million grant from the Israel Innovation Authority to roll out its system to hospitals treating coronavirus patients.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3822032,00.html
 
Recovered. The 22-year-old critical coronavirus patient (see here) who woke from a 3-week coma in April has now begun rehabilitation at Sheba hospital.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-virus-sees-few-new-cases-a-once-critically-ill-22-year-old-recovers/
 
US approves Covid-19 imaging tech detection. The US FDA has allowed the use of previously cleared technology developed by Israel’s Aidoc Medical.to detect lung anomalies in CT-scans that are associated with coronavirus (Covid-19). It provides early detection of infected patients who show no coronavirus symptoms.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3820032,00.html
 
How MDA prevented an even larger disaster. (TY Stuart Palmer) Emergency service Magen David Adom and its 24,000 volunteers were critical to Israel’s pandemic strategy. Its trained volunteer call center handled over 100,000 calls a day and it minimized hospitalizations by testing 240,000 patients away from hospitals.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/how-israel-prevented-an-even-larger-covid-19-disaster-627486
 
New crisis ICU for Sheba hospital. (TY Hazel) Israel’s Sheba Medical Center has inaugurated a new intensive care unit with hundreds of beds to provide crisis response in future national emergencies. A significant donation for the unit was received from philanthropist Roman Abramovich, a long-time donor of Sheba Medical Center.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/in-wake-of-corona-crisis-sheba-inaugurates-new-icu-627274
 
Good news for bone-marrow transplants. Israeli biotech Gamida Cell (see here) published positive results in its Phase 3, 50-center trial of NiCord (now called Omidubicel) that aims to increase the success of bone marrow transplants in blood cancer patients. The stem cells were established much quicker than alternatives.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/cell-therapy-firm-boosts-odds-for-blood-cancer-patients-as-key-trial-succeeds/
 
Surgeons save Arab with rod through his head. (TY IsraPundit) Kamel Abdel Rahman fell from the second floor of the apartment he is building. He landed on a metal rod that penetrated his head from left cheek to right ear. Surgeons at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital extracted the rod in two nail-biting operations.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/medical-miracle-in-jerusalem-surgeries-save-man-with-rod-in-his-head-627525
 
2-year-old Palestinian Arab boy saved. Surgeons at Israel’s Save a Child’s Heart performed open heart surgery on two-year-old Hamza Ali Mohammed, who was born with life-threatening congenital heart disease. He has been hospitalized during the coronavirus pandemic but has now returned to his family in Ramallah.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-doctors-save-life-of-2-year-old-palestinian-miracle-boy-send-him-home/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzZiqtsQFio  
 
 

The world has seen other pandemics, but the response to COVID-19 has been unlike anything the world has ever experienced. It is said we should not put a price on a life. Yet, that happens every day. Emergency rooms constantly make life and death decisions. When a hospital suspends a cancer treatment in favor of a COVID-19 patient, a life and death decision has been made. The closing of a food processing plant in Iowa or the downsizing of a shipping facility in Newark, both for fear of spreading COVID-19 are decisions that will likely cause starvation in underdeveloped countries. Every action has a consequence.

Experts in the field of epidemiology scare us through words. On Monday evening, listening to the president of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. David Reich, I grew fearful. He spoke of pathogens and their mutability, and of molecular biology and infections. He lost me in his vocabulary. A friend sent a blog written by Dr. Erin Bromage who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Dr. Bromage wrote of how a single cough releases 3,000 droplets that travel across a room at 50 mph, while a sneeze releases 30,000 droplets that travel across the same room at up to 200 mph. If an infected person coughs or sneezes, 200,000,000 virus particles could be released. It’s enough to scare the bejesus out of the most fearless – that is until one realizes that any expert, in using unfamiliar words, can frighten someone less knowledgeable. As well, we ignore the fact that in our lifetimes, we have been exposed to trillions of virus particles. Perspective and common sense are needed. For example, each cubic meter of air contains ten trillion molecules, and each human is host to about 300 parasitic worms and 70 species of protozoa, many of which are employed in fighting infections. We are complicated beings who through millions of years of evolution have developed sophisticated immune systems. There is much we know, but more we don’t.

As accurate as what Dr. Reich said and what Dr. Bromage wrote, they do not change the fact that politicians unleashed an even deadlier response. We count those who die from COVID-19, but we ignore those who suffer and die from despair, depression and loneliness. It is balance we should seek. John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune recently wrote: “All I see is the imposition of extremes. Those of us who want to get the country back to work are portrayed as selfish fools who Just Want People to Die. And those who never want the lockdown to end are dismissed as fearful Coronavirus ‘Karens,’ peering through their windows, calling the police if they see someone walking on the street without a mask.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-13-why-do-progressives-want-to-keep-the-economy-shut-down

As noted in my post a few days ago (“Republican Governors Are Kicking The Butts Of Democratic Governors On Covid-19 Response”), a clear dichotomy has opened up between left and right over whether and how quickly the economy should reopen, now that our pandemic is in decline. Republicans advocate for a quicker reopening, and many Republican governors are well into implementing that. The President has also come down on the side of optimism and early reopening. On the Democratic side, the response is something like “YOU WILL HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!!!”

The upper right-hand corner of the front page of the New York Times is a place where in the old days you would look for the most important news of the day. These days the article occupying that spot generally has little to do with real news, but instead informs you of the official Democratic Party talking point of the day. Today the headline (print edition) is “OPENING TOO SOON POSES DEADLY RISK, SENATE IS WARNED.” Excerpt:

Two of the federal government’s top health officials painted a grim picture of the months ahead on Tuesday, warning a Senate panel that the coronavirus pandemic was far from contained, just a day after President Trump declared that “we have met the moment and we have prevailed.” The officials — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — predicted dire consequences if the nation reopened its economy too soon. . . .

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/judge-sullivan-ignores-shocking-record-of-false/91

We may be slow, we often say, but then again, too, we didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. So in respect of Judge Emmet Sullivan’s outrage over General Michael Flynn’s desire to withdraw his guilty plea, let us just say our eyes are dry. The judge has gone so far as to appoint an ex-judge to recommend whether to charge the general for lying when he pled guilty. As if such pleading guilty to a crime one didn’t commit is all that unusual.

The fact is that it’s by no means rare for persons to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit. Some are scared. Others confused. Some lack the intestinal fortitude or financial wherewithal to stand up against the warnings or threats from the prosecutors. What’s so unusual in the Flynn case is that the Democrats and liberals are siding against the poor schlepper caught in the prosecutorial vice.

It turns out that one serious liberal institution, the Innocence Project, maintains a whole Website devoted to persons who plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit. It’s called GuiltyPleaProblem.com. The first click on it brings up a headline asking the question, “Why do innocent people plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit?” The Website offers illuminating background to the problem.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-us-economy-lessons-from-world-war-2/ 

Does World War II offer any lessons regarding our wrecked economy and staggering unemployment from the lockdown reaction to the coronavirus?

Seventy-five years ago this month, Germany surrendered, ending the European theater of World War II. At the war’s beginning, no one believed Germany would utterly collapse in May 1945.

On the morning of December 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, German invaders were on the verge of capturing Moscow. Britain was isolated. London had barely survived a terrible German bombing during the Blitz.

A sleeping America was neutral, but it was beginning to realize it was weak and mostly unarmed in a scary world.

But by 1943, a booming U.S. economy was fielding vast military forces from Alaska to the Sahara. Britain and America were bombing the German heartland. The Soviet Red Army had trapped and destroyed a million-man German army at Stalingrad.

How did the Allies — Britain, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. — turn around the European war so quickly?

The huge Red Army would suffer close to 11 million deaths in halting German offensives. Britain would never give up despite terrible losses at home and at sea from German bombers, rockets, and submarines.

Yet the key to victory was the U.S. economy. It would eventually outproduce all the major economies on both sides of the war combined.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/andrew-cuomo-chris-cuomo-myth-better-than-reality/

The myth of famous Mario’s famous sons does not match the reality.

  T he media gushes over a supposedly ascendant New York governor Andrew Cuomo. His daily press conferences are purportedly the sort of muscular and animated high drama that Joe Biden should be staging. Robert DeNiro now says he would like to play the Homeric governor in a new pandemic film portrayal. Cuomo seems giddy at the thought.

Democratic politicos are whispering of a Bidexit.

Good ol’ Joe from Scranton would graciously step down and take one for the party. Cuomo then storms the convention. Bernie hands over his delegates in a show of gracious unity. That way, all the “troubles” — Joe’s cognitive impairment, Tara Reade’s sexual-assault charges, the currently dormant Sanders socialist threat — dissipate. Cuomo selects Joe’s promised minority or female — or both — vice-presidential candidate. Or in fact he doesn’t and is free to choose anyone he prefers. Presto, the party hits the campaign trail in August united.

There are problems with such a scenario — namely Biden, and, then, Sanders, not going quietly into the night after a grueling year of campaigning. And then there is Andrew Cuomo’s current underreported but actually spotty performance as governor during the crisis. Hs record has been as anemic as his press conferences have been robust, resulting in the surreal result that he effectively advertises his shortcomings.

Remember that the omnipresent and televised Cuomo was inviting the world into New York even as evidence mounted that the virus was spreading and densely packed cities such as New York were the most vulnerable? Cuomo oddly did little to prevent the state’s trains and subways from becoming the arteries of the epidemic. He neither implemented a social-distancing policy to prevent crowded conditions nor ordered daily cleaning of cars. Much less did he prevent the homeless from turning the subways into a veritable mobile home.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/05/leftist-who-covered-cambodian-genocide-accuses-daniel-greenfield/

Finally, Noam Chomsky managed to take a break from writing intros for Holocaust deniers or covering up the Cambodian genocide to express his sage opinion on the coronavirus.

Donald Trump is culpable in the deaths of thousands of Americans by using the coronavirus pandemic to boost his electoral prospects and line the pockets of big business, Prof Noam Chomsky has said.

He said Trump, who will seek re-election later this year, had cut government funding for healthcare and research into infectious disease for the benefit of wealthy corporations.

That argument, like a lot of TDS and Chomsky stuff, doesn’t actually make any sense.

Chomsky also said the president had abandoned his duties by forcing individual state governors to take responsibility for combating the virus: “It’s a great strategy for killing a lot of people and improving his electoral politics.”

Trump invented federalism to try and win reelection.

I know it’s baffling to Chomsky, but America isn’t actually a Communist dictatorship. Now if Chomsky wants a strategy for killing a lot of people, he can ask Pol Pot.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/10/unbearable-truths-about-our-current-political-moment/

“You can’t handle the truth!”
—Col. Nathan R. Jessep, “A Few Good Men”

Sometimes the truth is like mythical kryptonite. It radiates power and yet promises great destruction. And so reality is to be left alone, encased in lead, and kept at bay.

Take the Chinese genesis of the COVID-19 epidemic. We started in February with the usual Chinese deceptions about their role in the birth, transmission, and worldwide spread of the virus.

No one, apparently except Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates, was surprised by the accustomed politically correct prevarications of the Chinese-purchased World Health Organization, whose transparent lies were passed off as truth—and led to tens of thousands of deaths.

On cue, our own obsequious media accepted Chinese and globalist myths—their shared antipathy for President Trump meant whatever he is for or says, they are against and deny.

But by late March the bits and pieces of the truth had emerged. All that gobbledygook talk of a Chinese wet market, of patient-zero bats, snakes, pangolins and such, were likely ruses to deflect attention from a conveniently nearby level-4 Chinese virology lab.

We are beginning to learn that Chinese scientists were conducting research on—surprise, surprise—coronaviruses in general, and in particular, methods to enhance their lethality, all for the ostensibly exalted humanitarian aim of discovering cures and vaccinations, although how that was to be so was never quite disclosed.

China’s patient zero almost weekly was backdated by communist party officials from late January to mid-November. When the lying is exhausted, we may well learn the virus was known to the Chinese even earlier.

In addition, we learned that China variously threatened to cut off medical supplies in transit to the United States. It stopped all flights in and out of Wuhan on January 23, but called America racist for waiting a week until January 31 to issue a travel ban on China—including, but not limited to, ending direct flights to the United States from Wuhan. Consider the Chinese communist logic: running-dog American capitalists mimicked Beijing in forbidding Chinese from flying—but only after a week-long interlude of bourgeoise debate and puerile reflection.

Were the Chinese embarrassed that they had accused Washington of being racist for belatedly doing exactly what they had done earlier? Of course not. In their eyes, weak decadent Westerners welcome such help in aiding their own self-abnegation and debasement.