September 30, 2023 - Insurance Friends or Foes, College Sports Woes, 'Water or Fire,' and a Trivia Quiz

   

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A Clue for Trivia Quiz #10

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Insurance Companies – Friends or Foes?

Earlier this year I wrote two articles, published in my community’s magazine, including comments about insurance companies and roof replacements.  They implied that in the eyes of many of their policyholders, insurance companies were not their friends. In fact, it appeared that often they were their adversaries.

It wasn’t always that way with insurance companies. The big ones originally only insured lives and traditionally were thought of as being in the same corner as their policyholders, even as over the years they developed uses for life insurance far more sophisticated than their original purpose as ‘burial’ insurance.  Policyholders knew their insurer was dependable (Metropolitan Life claimed to be ‘the light that never failed,’ and the Prudential compared its strength to the Rock of Gibraltar) and would be there for them when a heart stopped beating, which was all that mattered to the company so long as the premiums were paid. (These were the kinds of companies by which I was employed throughout most of my career in the insurance industry.)

But that kind of insurance company is part of history now.  Even the Metropolitan and the Prudential now insure more than just lives.  Nowadays, old-fashioned life insurance is usually viewed merely as part of overall financial planning, and insuring one’s home, automobile, boat, or other possessions against a variety of ‘hazards’ has become the business of many companies, often whose names are not household words, and that require a bit more than the absence of a heartbeat to pay a claim. It is in this environment that an adversarial relationship developed between insureds and insurance companies.

The consumers of insurance, known as policyholders, now recognizing that the insurance companies are not always in the same corner as they are, look to the referee in the middle of the ring to make sure that the adversaries fight fairly.  In today’s world, that referee is the State’s insurance regulatory agency and the State legislation that governs its operation.

Often, in doing this, the policyholder might need the services of an attorney because of the complexity of both a state’s insurance legislation and their own policy’s language.  At this stage of the game, the agent who sold the policy is of no help in this task, their job ending when they sold the policy, and their objectivity perhaps being affected by the source of their income, commissions from insurance companies.

Aware that homeowners and automobile insurance costs in Florida are among, if not, the highest in the nation, in addition to recognizing the adversarial relationship mentioned above, Florida’s legislature has addressed this issue on several occasions.  It appears to me that the legislation they passed has been primarily aimed at supporting the insurance companies so that they might remain in business to serve the public but does not offer relief to that public in its search for reasonably priced homeowners and automobile insurance, and their treatment by insurance companies.

Possible solutions that have occurred to me include (1) excluding any roof coverage whatsoever from homeowners’ insurance policies, leaving it entirely a homeowner’s responsibility, possibly fundable by a home equity loan if necessary, or (2) even shifting such insurance coverage from the private sector to a government-subsidized public utility. 

Regardless, it remains a challenging problem, not only in Florida, but also elsewhere.

 JL

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College Football and Basketball Woes 

Without going into details, the ‘transfer portal’ is reshaping college football and basketball.  Like un-homogenized milk (are you old enough to remember that), the cream rises to the top, with the most talented athletes in lower-ranked schools switching to higher-ranked teams, as soon as possible. Few move in the opposite direction, where despite their talents, they will be less visible to NFL and NBA scouts. 

We must face up to the fact that college athletics, for at least the top teams, are the equivalent of minor league baseball, where stars get their first chance to shine. And really, does anyone really believe such athletes are held to the same academic standards as the rest of a school’s student body, despite what a school’s PR people might say? 

Below that top level, an example of which are the teams in football’s ‘Power Five’ conferences, college football and basketball will still manage to survive, but with their lesser teams ultimately being unmentioned in all but local media and dependent entirely on students, alumni, and local fans for support.  This will be a problem for the Furmans and the Delawares of the nation.

JL 

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Climate Change and the Jewish High

Holidays - 'By Water or by Fire'

The Unetanah Tokef prayer, to many Jews the most significant part of the Jewish High Holiday observance, recognizes that the mortality of individuals during the coming year is determined by God during those holidays.   It specifically refers to those who will die only after a long life, and others who will die ‘before their time, who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning,’ and offers the worshipper ways of changing those fatal outcomes. (In reading the above quote, substitute the word ‘some’ or the word ‘whether’ for ‘who.’ Then it makes more sense to today’s ears.)

Without getting into the religious aspect of this prayer, it is very significant in what it puts at the top of the list of the causes of someone dying before their time.  In that spot, you will find ‘by water and by fire.’

When we look at the deaths caused by flooding, bursting dams, storm surge, rising seas, and disastrous fires resulting from tinder-dry forests appearing in the news almost daily, we realize that what today is usually attributable to climate change, was present and recognized centuries ago and is not anything new. 

Strong  evidence of this is the fact that ten centuries ago, these two causes of untimely deaths were listed ahead of other causes of death in this prayer, including war, starvation, famine, and epidemics. 

Everyone, regardless of their religion, should recognize the continuing dangers presented by changes in our weather and climate, some of which are caused by mankind, and work to combat and control them.  

(Note:  I do not intend to make a habit of including religious articles like this one in Jackspotpourri, even though I am pleased by the comments I have received from some of you regarding my recent efforts concerning Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the Hebrew Scriptures. But this piece is basically about climate change.)

JL

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Covid Booster Shots Will be Available in a Few Days!  Check out where you can get yours.  I believe that those who don't get them can be a source of infection for others so it is something you owe to your friends, family, and neighbors.  This is not a political issue, as some attempt to make it.

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Ticked Off by Politicians in Washington or Elsewhere?  Here's a Voter Registration Reminder!!

If you live in Palm Beach County, and are not yet registered to vote here, or want to continue to receive ‘vote-by-mail’ ballots (something that no longer happens automatically), just contact the Election Supervisor at https://www.votepalmbeach.gov/. 

At a minimum, you can verify your status as a voter at that site.  Don’t wait. Do it now…  while you are on your computer, tablet, or phone!

And if you live elsewhere, contact your local Supervisor of Elections.  (In neighboring Broward County, access them at  https://www.browardvotes.gov/.)

 JL

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Trivia Quiz #10 - Movie Actresses

See if you can name the movie actresses famous for these attributes:

1. Hair combed down almost covering one eye

2. Skirt blown up by breeze from air vent below her

3.  Also was an inventor in real life

4.  Brought film sex to the fore in Howard Hughes' 'The Outlaw'

5.  Played the discoverer of radium

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Answers to Trivia Quiz #9 - Actors with Moustaches

Admittedly, while some were not always 'mustached,' there are many that come to mind.  You might have answered with at least Clark Gable, Burt Reynolds, Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Tom Selleck, Eddie Murphy, Cesar Romero, Errol Flynn, or David Niven.

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you are now reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link.

 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

 

JL

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September 26, 2023 - McCarthy's Dilemma, What Diplomats Don't Tell You, a N.J Water Problem, and Trivia Quiz #9

 

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McCarthy’s Dilemma

McCarthy

The kind of problems House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is having with his paper-thin Republican majority in the House are common in parliamentary type governments with their elected members coming from more than just two established parties, something not usually the case in our House of Representatives or Senate. 

In such systems, this usually results in a party with not quite enough representation to form a majority having to cut a deal with a small party to be able to form one.  Israel’s Knesset is a good example of this, where a small ultra-right religious party enables Bibi Netanyahu to form a majority and it gets to call the shots, way out of proportion to its size, as the price of its cooperation. 

Imagine that the Republican ‘Freedumb Caucus’ was such a small party, separate and distinct from the G.O.P., and that to form its House majority, the Republicans cut a deal with them.  That is, in effect, what put McCarthy in the speaker’s chair, and now that ‘small party’ is reneging on its end of the deal, demanding more than they originally agreed to in giving him that majority.  

That ‘reneging’ involves deepening the level of budget slashing that they had agreed to with McCarthy.  Their position is that either he gives in to their demands or they will withhold the votes the Republicans need to avoid a ‘shutdown’ of our government which cannot fully function without a budget. 

Over our history, our Congress has developed into what is basically a two-party system, one in which pressure from a small group cannot deny the government a budget.  This should not happen, but it is happening, right before our eyes. 

I believe that to be able to keep his speakership, McCarthy will buckle.  As a result, much of our government, being held as the hostages by the ‘Freedumb Caucus’ in this charade, will soon shut down because (1) even McCarthy’s ‘regular’ Republican base will not completely go along with the ‘Freedumb Caucus’ emaciated budget, (2) the Democrats, watching from the sidelines, would not either, (3) it won’t survive a Senate vote and (4) even if it such an emasculated budget passed, the President would veto it, an action they would lack the votes to override. It has less of a chance of passing than the proverbial snowball surviving in hell.  Naturally, the ‘Freedumb Caucus’ will then blame the president for the shutdown.

I believe that the crisis will last a few weeks until public clamor over shut down government functions forces the “Freedumb Caucus’ to back off (although they will never admit to doing so), and an acceptable compromise reached between McCarthy and his extremist 'friends,' probably close to a ‘continuing resolution,’ that would keep the existing budget temporarily operative, while a new one is negotiated. 

Ultimately, this will be recorded as just another gasp in the death throes of the Republican Party, as it drops into the trash basket of history, along with other failed movements that made the fatal mistake of trying to compromise with ideologues who had no intention of keeping their word.

(I’ve gently mocked the name of the Freedom Caucus in these comments, referring to it as the ‘Freedumb Caucus’ because, while sarcastically and  insultingly describing its members’ mental abilities, it avoids saying what that collection of Congressional Representatives really and truly are: ‘unpatriotic assholes who don’t give a damn about the future of the United States, preferring to be the tools of those who contribute millions to subvert the ideal of 'government of, government by, and government FOR the people.'

One minute with Paul Gosar or Matt Gaetz would be enough to convince anyone that they belong in the legislature of some Third World country rather than in our Congress to which their equally dumb constituents have elected them.  That remains the greatest flaw in our representative democracy and the greatest danger to its successful continuance.)

 JL 

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Unspoken Diplomacy in the Prisoner Deal with Iran

In arranging the recent prisoner exchange freeing the Americans that Iran had been holding, we agreed that six billion dollars of that country’s assets coming from sales of their petroleum resources would become available to them.  That consisted of money that up to now we had prevented their accessing because of that country’s support of terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere as well as unregulated nuclear development.

It was stipulated that although this money was to be used for humanitarian, medical, agricultural, and similar purposes only, it still would not be given to Iran directly. It would remain in a Qatari bank, from which it could be withdrawn for these purposes only, and which would be carefully monitored.

Banking is big business in Qatar

Now that sounds fine, but what has always bothered me about such deals is that they free up a government to divert money for other purposes, in this instance six billion dollars already sitting in its treasury in Teheran, money that it might possibly spend (or pretend to spend) on such humanitarian and similar purposes anyway.

These ‘other’ purposes might include spending for nuclear weapons development and support of aggressive military actions in parts of the Middle East, purposes closely related to our reason for putting ‘sanctions’ on those six billion dollars in the first place. None of such spending would have anything to do with the ‘monitored’ funds sitting in the Qatari bank.    

Of course, diplomats understand this, but usually do not talk about it.  Much of diplomacy is about what is left unsaid.                                                   

JL

 

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Something in the Water in New Jersey

We all remember Tony Soprano, head of a fictitious New Jersey mob family in the TV series of a few decades ago.  Breaking the law came second nature to Tony and his associates, fitting in with the image of New Jersey as a haven for law breakers and corruption.  That association seems to persist, especially in the political world, across the Hudson from Manhattan. 

Currently, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who benefited from a hung jury five years ago, is again in legal hot water.  In the well-known tradition of Tony Soprano, that Senate seat has been spotlighted in the past as a haven for those who tip-toe along the borderline between what’s legal and what’s not.

I am old enough to recall former New Jersey Senator Harrison Williams going to prison in 1982 and former New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli narrowly avoiding prosecution but nevertheless receiving a formal letter of admonishment from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics in 2002 and then wisely cancelling his re-election campaign.  This sort of thing seems to erupt about every twenty years or so in the Garden State.  And these are the ones that got caught.

There must be something in the water in New Jersey causing this. 

Of course, Republicans will be jumping to support Menendez' present refusal to resign because that enables them to claim 'parity,' justifying the defeated former president pretty much ignoring the fact that he also is under indictment while politically campaigning.  What the defeated former president is accused of makes Menendez's transgressions look like small potatoes.

JL

 

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Readers’ Comments

A follower of Jackspotpourri commented by email that they would rather see Stacey Abrams and Liz Chaney as vice-presidential nominees in 2024 rather than the two (Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley) I predicted in the last posting of Jackspotpourri.  I don’t think Liz won’t even be let through the door at the G.O.P.’s convention, and the Democrats will continue with Kamala on the ticket, seeing no reason to replace her.  FDR switched his running mate in 1940 to Henry Wallace (from John Nance Garner in 1932 and 1936) and in 1944 from Wallace to Harry Truman but he had very good reasons to make both switches. Biden has none.

Readers are encouraged to send me their comments at jacklippman18@gmail.com or by using the ‘comment’ link at its bottom left.

JL

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Voter Registration Reminder

If you live in Palm Beach County, and are not yet registered to vote here, or want to continue to receive ‘vote-by-mail’ ballots (something that no longer happens automatically), just contact the Election Supervisor at https://www.votepalmbeach.gov/. At a minimum, you can verify your status as a voter at that site.  Don’t wait. Do it now…  while you are on your computer, tablet, or phone!

And if you live elsewhere, contact your local Supervisor of Elections.  (In neighboring Broward County, access them at  https://www.browardvotes.gov/.)

 JL

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Trivia Quiz #9

Can you name six movie actors (dead or alive) who sported moustaches?  Clue:  Start with ‘Gone With the Wind.’ 

The answers to Quiz #8, about Canada’s ten provinces, are as follows.  Getting seven of them was passing.  Here they are, ranked by population.

     1.    Ontario

2.    Quebec

3.    British Columbia

4.    Alberta

5.    Manitoba

6.    Saskatchewan

7.    Nova Scotia

8.    New Brunswick

9.    Newfoundland (including Labrador)

10.  Prince Edward Island

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link.

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

JL

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September 22, 22023 - Voting Registration, the Vice-Presidency, Birds of a Feather, a Bit of Astronomy, and a Trivia Quiz

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Voter Registration Reminder 

If you live in Palm Beach County, and are not yet registered to vote in Florida, or want to continue to receive ‘vote-by-mail’ ballots (something that no longer happens automatically), just contact the Election Supervisor at https://www.votepalmbeach.gov/. 

At a minimum, you can verify your status as a voter at that site.  Don’t wait.  Do it now… while you are on your computer, tablet, or phone! 

And if you live elsewhere, contact your local Supervisor of Elections. (In neighboring Broward County, access them at https://www.browardvotes.gov/.) 

JL

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The Choice for Vice-President in 2024

In the 2024 presidential race, it is becoming clear that the choice will be between voting for electors supporting President Joe Biden or those supporting his predecessor in office. 

Because the incumbent president will be 82 years old by the inauguration date, and his challenger will be 78 at that time, the choice of a vice-presidential candidate to accompany the presidential nominee becomes important. 

While both candidates seem to be in good health, their advanced ages cannot be ignored, the four year difference between them being inconsequential. Clearly, neither are spring chickens.   Furthermore, the former president, defeated in 2020, faces numerous legal challenges that are unlikely to be fully resolved by the inauguration of our forty-seventh president. These cannot be ignored either.  These are the two reasons why the vice-presidential nomination becomes very important. 

Harris

Quite likely, the incumbent vice-president, Kamala Harris, will be on the Democratic ticket in 2024.  She is a known quantity, a former California Attorney General and Senator with liberal leanings that she is comfortable leaving in the back seat when necessary.  

The Republican vice-presidential slot is open for grabs.  He or she might be chosen from that party’s extreme right or from those Republicans who are more to the center, but who to some extent tolerate the extremists, the votes of whose supporters are crucial to that party’s survival.  If I had to place a bet today, I would put my dollar on former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. 

It is interesting to note that both Harris and Haley are first-generation Americans whose parents immigrated to this country.  Both of Haley’s parents came from India, while Harris’ mother came from India and her father came from Jamaica, meeting here as university students.  Therefore, I cannot see either one of them being personally hostile to a liberal approach to immigration.

This might pose a problem for Haley because of her party’s traditional anti-immigrant stance.  And Kamala Harris is of course aware that the labor union support of Democrats has always been leery of legislation that might result in immigrants entering the work force, replacing native-born workers.  

One overriding reason the Republicans might turn to Haley is their belated concern with the votes of women, many of whom already are hostile to the G.O.P. because of its posture regarding abortion restrictions.  They would lose even more support if they nominated a man for the number two slot, opposed by Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket.

Haley

Your job?  Scroll back up to the first item on this blog's posting for a clue!

JL

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Two Birds of a Feather  (plus two more)

Birds of a feather do indeed flock together, and their birdhouse in today’s political aviary seems to be the Republican Party.  Its floor is covered with bird excrement.  Smell it?  That's the smell of the G.O.P.

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, who should have stuck to coaching football, is still holding up what would normally be routine Defense Department personnel changes in the Armed Forces in order to pressure them into restricting travel allowances in connection with military personnel getting an abortion.  Dumb Alabama residents confuse government with SEC football and voted him back in office last year. (By the way, Tuberville doesn’t even live in Alabama, his real residence being across the State line in Florida.)  Most of his Republican colleagues recognize his unfitness for a Senate seat but support him to maintain party unity.

And speaking of Florida, its governor, Ron DeSantis (currently falling on his face in his efforts to get the Republican presidential nomination), picked a fight, one that he is losing, to pressure the Disney people by playing with their favorable taxing district, to get them to stop defying his negative position regarding LGBTQ individuals.  

Disney’s Magic Kingdom is perhaps Florida’s single largest private employer and greatest tourist destination.  DeSantis seems to forget this because he spends his time restricting voting opportunities, messing with the State’s public school curricula and its State colleges and universities, attacking drag queens, banning books, and severely limiting a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. 

I suppose this is why Tuberville chooses to live across the border in Florida, probably because he is envious of DeSantis' agenda, and hopes to learn from him.   

Florida's two Republican senators also reside in that smelly birdhouse with Tommy and Ron.  Neither of them similarly make no effort whatsoever to serve the interests of residents of the State they allegedly represent.  Both continue to put 'party before country.'  Maybe it's not the bird excrement you smell.  Could it be the stink emanating from Marco and Rick?  (Rick is up for re-election in 2024.)

Your job?  Scroll back up to the first item on this blog's posting for a clue! 

 JL

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Thoughts on the Absence of ‘Time’ from ‘Space’ … the Webb Space Telescope

Webb Space Telescope Image of Activity from which Stars are Formed

When the Webb Space telescope sees something during its traveling through space, in its orbit around the sun a million miles away from its origin on our planet, it is not seeing it exactly as it is at the time that image reaches back to Earth.  It takes ‘time’ from when the telescope sees something for it to reach the viewer, and that time is measured by the speed of light, roughly 186,000 miles per second.  Therefore, what the telescope reports seeing happened a very long, long, time ago, conceivably before the creation of our planet and possibly of our solar system!  We measure that time in what is called ‘light years,’ each one consisting of the amount of ‘our time’ for the image to travel in one year or about 5.88 trillion miles. Wow. That sort of blows one’s mind.  But that’s the easy part.

To find out more about the Webb Space telescope (a project of our government along with Canadian and European scientific partners), check out https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/assets/documents/WebbFactSheet.pdf  or just CLICK HERE.  

I suggest that you do that right now.

Down here on planet Earth, time is measured in meters, miles, seconds, hours, and years all of which we neatly define based on the earth completing one rotation on its axis (every 24 hours … we call that a day) and one rotation around the sun (about every 365.25 days … we call that a year).  This makes sense to us but is meaningless from any other perspective in the universe other than Earth.  Data from the Webb Space telescope out there in space is ultimately reflected to us in terms of these parameters, and this includes what defines a ‘light year.’  But beyond the planet Earth, this definition of what a ‘light year’ is might not exist.

What the Webb Space telescope sees in the simplest of terms just ‘IS,’ while ‘WHEN’ it occurred, occurs, or will occur is dependent upon from where the event in space is viewed, be it from Earth, another planet, another galaxy, or any indeterminate point in the cosmos. (Read that sentence twice.)  

That’s what is crucial about the Webb Space telescope.  It provides us with a controlled vantage point other than one on the Earth. Though it originated from our planet and speaks to us in our language, the Webb Space telescope’s perspective is not from some observatory on Earth, but from where it is in its travels in its orbit around the star we refer to as the sun. To find out more about this controlled orbit around the sun, enabling it to see further into space than earlier efforts, like the Hubble telescope that ‘merely’ orbited the Earth, check out  https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html  or just CLICK HERE.  

I suggest that you do that right now.

Let's pause for a while to say again that when the Webb Space telescope transmits an image of something happening in space, it is not necessarily aware of when that something took place.  Until the development of the Webb Space telescope, that ‘WHEN’ was always something variable and indefinite because what was seen depended upon the viewer’s vantage point here on terra firma.  We had been unable to measure time from the infinite number of vantage points other than Earth’s.  

But now, we can do that from the vantage point provided by the Webb Space telescope, something we can control.  Having the Webb Space telescope in its controlled orbit in the nearest reaches of the universe, around the star we refer to as the sun, enables us to better see beyond our sun and its solar system, and is the gateway to getting into the dimensions of time from these other more distant vantage points. 

I think it is safe to say that out in space, there is no such thing as time in the terms that we usually understand it to be.  There may be an ‘absolute’ timing of what occurs in the universe, but we are not there yet.  There is just ‘space.’  (Sometimes this is referred to as a ‘space time continuum,’ introducing another approach to defining ‘WHEN,’ getting us into Einsteinian astrophysics, where obviously this blog is incapable of going.  Recall those cartoons with a scientist filling an enormous blackboard with calculations dealing with this.) 

From what we can see of space from our vantage point using the Webb Space telescope out there in space and similar devices yet to be developed, some scientists have come to believe that the universe is periodically expanding and contracting, but ‘WHEN’ such changes occur, occurred, or will occur, cannot be defined within our limited definition of ‘time.’  What’s out there in space just ‘IS’  and may be ‘timeless.’  Or maybe not.  In any event, the vantage point provided by the Webb Space telescope is enabling us to learn more about the nature of space and time and of the universe.  

If anyone wishes to comment on these thoughts, please do!  But first, check out both links provided in this article.  I am at the limit of my familiarity with this subject.

JL

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Trivia Quiz #8

Our neighbor to the north, Canada, consists of ten Provinces (something like our States) and three sparsely populated territories.  (Clue: One of the Provinces represents two areas and has a double name.)  See if you can name at least seven of Canada's Provinces.  

And here are the answers to Trivia Quiz #7.

The six named guests at that masquerade party came dressed as follows:

Billy Batson - Captain Marvel

Lamont Cranston - The Shadow (He's the one that's hard to see.)

Peter Benjamin Parker - Spiderman

Clark Kent - Superman

Britt Reid - The Green Hornet

Bruce Wayne - Batman

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com. 

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc. 

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri. 

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link.

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

JL

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Sepember 17, 2023 - Moby Dick's Jewishness, Immigration Woes, What We Take for Granted, Juice, Age, and a Trivia Quiz

 

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Moby Dick, a Jewish Novel ?

Here’s an original piece that was posted about twelve years ago (August 6, 2011) on Jackspotpourri.  The only critical comment I have ever gotten about it came from a rabbi who pointed out to me that in its original version, it included several references to the ‘Old Testament,’ a Christian rather than a Jewish designation describing portions of the Bible sometimes also referred to, as the rabbi pointed out, as the ‘Hebrew Scriptures.’  I have clarified such references to the ‘Old Testament,’ indicating the source of some of its Biblical citations and references. These changes, appearing in the piece below, are the only changes from the original version.

I have never seen these ideas appearing in any literary articles about Moby Dick or its author, Herman Melville. In that sense, while it is not academic, the article is original.  Now that we have reached the Jewish holiday season starting the year 5784 on the Hebrew calendar, it seems appropriate to repeat it.  L’Shana Tovah! 

Moby Dick, a Jewish Novel

(or “Moby Dick, an Incomplete Anagram”) 

Jack Lippman                                                  

I have always felt that there was a special relationship between Herman Melville’s great novel, Moby Dick, and the Jewish High Holidays.  Many of the Biblical allusions in the book relate specifically to those parts of the Bible that Melville probably identified as the Old Testament, based on the original Hebrew scriptures and which are part of the Jewish High Holiday liturgy.  This is so striking that I have often wondered, even though it is clear that Herman Melville had an extremely thorough knowledge of these portions of the Bible, whether he might also have had a Jewish friend who took him to synagogue during the High Holidays. 

For people who like to play with words, the very title of Moby Dick is enticing and perhaps exciting.  If you look at the letters, and try to construct an anagram from them, you fail to produce “Yom Kippur,” but you do come fairly close.  The first five letters of the holiday’s name, “Yom Ki” easily fall into place, but then the anagram fails.  But this failure to complete the anagram may not be accidental.  In the book, the white whale called Moby Dick never appears in his entirety, only that portion of him which is not submerged in the water being visible.  Might it not be logical that Melville, in entitling his book, would create only a partial anagram since his view of the whale was never more than a partial one?   He actually says “… there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like.”   (Chapter 55) 

In another quote, Melville apparently associates the sperm whale, whose face he considers to be an inscrutable blank wall, with the Deity. (Chapter 79)  He paraphrases Exodus 33:23 (“Thou shall see my back parts … but my face shall not be seen.  But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face”)  (Chapter 86) causing us to wonder whether Melville is talking about God or about a whale.  To those familiar enough with the novel to subscribe to the idea that the White Whale might be a manifestation of God, or actually represent a Deity which mankind has never actually fully seen, the incomplete anagram may make some sense. 

Herman Melville came from a socially prominent Manhattan family which had lost most of its money, precluding his pursuing higher education.  Instead, at age eighteen, he went to sea on a merchant vessel.  This was followed by whaling voyages, capture by cannibals, teaching, lecturing, and ultimately a government job at the Custom House in New York.  Early on, Melville turned to writing about his experiences at sea and from Moby Dick, it is clear that he was very familiar with the parts of Bible identified to him as the Old Testament, based on the original Hebrew scriptures.  I am unaware of Melville having any close relationship with Jews of his period, although undoubtedly, there certainly were Jews in New York City in the first half of the nineteenth century.  Perhaps, as I have thought, he had a Jewish friend.   But let us get on with the book, and of course, its uncanny relationship to the Jewish High Holidays. 

The “Etymology” which begins the book includes the word for “whale” in many languages.  It is noteworthy that first of all of them, however, Melville lists (in Hebrew letters, no less) the Hebrew word for whale.  Immediately following that is a section labeled “Extracts,” where quotations involving whales are cited from various historic sources.  The first five of the many extracts quoted, notably, are from the parts of Bible sometimes referred to as the Hebrew scriptures,’ specifically from the Books of Genesis, Job, Jonah, Isaiah, and Psalms, texts with which Melville obviously was very familiar as part of what he knew as the Old Testament. 

The novel itself starts with three words, “Call me Ishmael.”  And Ishmael is the narrator as we read “Moby Dick.”   In the Bible, Ishmael is Abraham’s son, born of Hagar, his wife Sarah’s maidservant.  Genesis 21 tells us that when, after years of barrenness, Sarah gives birth to Isaac, she no longer wants Hagar and Ishmael to remain in the household.  The Lord instructs Abraham to accede to his wife’s wishes and to send Hagar and Ishmael off, assuring Abraham of Ishmael’s future wellbeing.  Apparently, Ishmael did survive his wanderings, because years later, we find his namesake about to set off on a whaling voyage out of Nantucket, which as his telling the story evidences, he also survived.  Coincidentally, Genesis 21 is the morning Torah reading for the First Day of Rosh Hashanah during the Jewish High Holidays.

 

On his way to Nantucket, Ishmael stops in the whaling port of New Bedford, waiting for a boat to take him to the island, where he will seek employment on a whaling vessel.  He visits the Whaler’s Chapel in that city where he listens to a sermon about the punishment which awaits those who defy and disobey the Lord, but how the Lord also forgives those who repent.  This, of course, is the story of Jonah, which in the salty language of the seagoing preacher, is told in its entirety in that Chapel in New Bedford.  That same Book of Jonah also is read, again coincidentally, as part of the afternoon service on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.  

An interesting footnote to the chapter in which Ishmael visits the Whaler’s Chapel is Melville’s passing reference to “antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago.”  If the author was using a Hebrew calendar, and rounding off to the nearest century as he says he is doing, he is fairly close to the mark, because I place the story of Moby Dick as taking place approximately in the year 1850 or 5610 on the Hebrew calendar, only 390 years off from Melvilles’s “sixty round centuries ago.”  Melville, again coincidentally, was obviously conversant with that calendar, which moves on to another year at each Rosh Hashanah. 

The novel deals with the whaling ship’s captain, Ahab, who drives his crew mercilessly in his mad quest to find Moby Dick, the White Whale who, on an earlier voyage, had taken Ahab’s leg and left him seeking revenge.  In the biblical Book of Kings, also part of the portions of the Bible Melville identified as the Old Testament, Ahab was a monarch, and influenced by his evil wife Jezebel, became an idolatrous worshipper of Baal.  Melville’s Ahab apparently was one who in the past, like his biblical namesake, also had disobeyed and defied the Lord.  The novel does not go into the specifics of Ahab’s transgressions but it is clear that unlike Jonah, neither the biblical King Ahab nor Melville’s Captain Ahab had any intention of repenting.  In fact, many view Captain Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick as his way of battling the Lord’s efforts to punish him, represented by the whale.  This, in effect, is the novel’s story.  Ahab, in hunting the whale to avenge his mutilation, is fighting the God who has punished him for his sins, and continues to do so, through Moby Dick.  

Early on in the novel, before the Pequod (for that is the name of the boat Ishmael sailed on) left on its voyage, a mystical character named Elijah appears on the dock to warn Ishmael that something is wrong with Captain Ahab, that he has a history of something terrible that had happened in the past.  Elijah tries to discourage Ishmael from signing onto Captain Ahab’s boat.  In the Bible, the Prophet Elijah is precisely the one who attacked the idolatry of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, urging the Hebrew people to recognize only the one true God, and not the false god worshiped by King Ahab.  And just as the Prophet urged ancient Jews to keep their faith pure, so Melville’s Elijah is there to warn Ishmael against Captain Ahab as he signed onto the crew of the  Pequod on that dock in Nantucket.  The parallel is striking.  

But what might you ask does this have to do with the Jewish High Holidays?  The story of King Ahab and Jezebel is not part of the High Holiday liturgy.  The Prophet Elijah is more associated with Passover, when a door is left open for him at the seder.  Nevertheless, you will find those same words Elijah used to the Hebrews uttered in the face of King Ahab’s apostasy, still resonating to Jews of today, as Yom Kippur draws to a close just prior to the final sounding of the shofar.  “The Lord, He Alone is God” (Adonoy Hu Ha-Elohim) is repeatedly intoned as Jewish worshippers complete their period of “tshuva” (penitence) on the Day of Atonement.  Herman Melville was familiar with First Kings, Chapter 19, where these words appear, as a part of the portion of the Bible he identified as the Old Testament.  Is this the same message that Melville’s Elijah was trying to communicate to Ishmael?  Indeed, it is a Jewish message. 

The novel goes on to tell the story of Ahab’s quest for Moby Dick, and how the Pequod ultimately finds him, battles him and is destroyed by him, with Ishmael being the only survivor.  As the novel approaches this climax, the vessel encounters another whaling ship, which is sadly crisscrossing the sea, looking for missing crewmen, lost in an earlier attempt to challenge Moby Dick.  These crewmen included the vessel’s captain’s children, and the name of the ship, the Rachel, obviously relates to the biblical Rachel who laments her lost children in Jerimiah 31.  That reading happens to be the Haftorah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah, another indication of the relationship of Moby Dick to the Jewish High Holidays.  It is the Rachel, still searching for its lost children, that rescues Ishmael from the disaster which befell Ahab, his ship and the rest of its crew. 

(Twenty-five years after writing Moby Dick, Melville published a 30,000 word poem entitled “Clarel, A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land.”  Melville scholars have suggested that this is really a study in comparative religion, a field which became popular in the late 19^th century, when industrial and scientific advances were causing many to question long standing fixed beliefs.   Melville’s knowledge of Judaism, as indicated in Moby Dick, would logically lead him in this direction a quarter of a century later.) 

No, Herman Melville was not Jewish, nor do I really believe he had a Jewish friend who took him to High Holiday services.  What is clear is that he was extremely familiar with the parts of Bible sometimes referred to as the Hebrew scriptures, and which he knew as the Old Testament, and included many references to them in Moby Dick.   In re-reading the novel, and relating it to the Jewish High Holidays, this reader has had frequent occasion to put the novel down and refer to the Torah and the Prophets in order to deepen his understanding of what Melville is saying.  To my way of thinking, a novel that prompts its readers to study Torah has to be considered a Jewish novel, and Moby Dick certainly meets this standard. 

JL 

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Immigration Woes

I was all set to include a ‘Click Here’ link to a column by Thomas Friedman about immigration (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/opinion/biden-trump-border-policy.html) in this posting.  Basically, he says that we need a ‘high wall,’ but one with a ‘big gate,’ and goes on to explain that.  But I changed my mind when I saw the pictures accompanying the Times article about immigrants hopeful of reaching the United States struggling to traverse the Darien Gap, the jungle area between Colombia and Panama, and how the locals there were making money from them as they trekked northward. More than its words, the article’s pictures tell the story of the enormity of the problem.  It is far more than our having a ‘high wall with a big gate.’  Check it out by visiting https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/14/world/americas/migrant-business-darien-gap.html or by CLICKING HERE.

These heartbreaking pictures illustrate the dimensions of the problem and make it clear, at least to me, that our efforts to establish a viable immigration policy must include getting the nations from which these immigrants are coming, at least those in the Western hemisphere, to improve economic and political conditions there so that their people do not have to attempt the dangerous trek to the United States, where they might even be turned back.

 JL

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Libya and Morocco - Things We Take for Granted

One thing that occurs to me when I see the horribly deadly results of the earthquake in Morocco and the floods in Libya is whether these poor people had things that we take for granted, like homeowners’ or renters’ insurance and automobile insurance, and monthly payments to make.  Americans who own cars all have automobile insurance, homeowners with mortgages have homeowners’ insurance and many who don’t, carry it anyway, as is the case with renters’ insurance.  And those who purchase or lease cars often do so with a contractual monthly payments being required.  

I get the feeling that there are no such things for the general populations in these countries, even for those who managed to own their homes or automobiles, turned to wreckage overnight by disasters.  (Perhaps there might be for the aristocratic elite members of their societies.)  Simply surviving is uppermost in most of their minds.  

Nevertheless I wonder when seeing the debris of their homes and automobiles whether things are different in these places from the way things are here.  Or are they?  If similar disasters struck here, would our insurance be worth anything, and would car payments on destroyed vehicles be waived along with mortgage payments on demolished housing?

JL

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Advice for Those Looking for 100% of Whatever 

When you buy a bottle of cranberry, pomegranate, or whatever supposedly nutritious juice you like, don’t be fooled by the words ‘all juice’ or ‘100% juice’ on the label.  Often that means exactly what it says, ‘100% juice,’ and that does not necessarily mean 100% of the kind of juice in big letters on the front label that you thought you were purchasing.  

Read the small print this label includes.  They should
have a picture of apples on it rather than cranberries!

Read the ingredients on the back label to find out what is the chief ‘juice’ composing that 100% number, listed first by law, and often you’ll find that it’s plain old apple juice, with the ‘front-labeled’ juice there but further down the list reflecting its lesser component of what you are buying, possibly providing its color and a bit of its flavor.  Now I have no argument with the taste of apple juice which I happen to like, but it isn’t the cranberry nor pomegranate juice you were buying!

JL

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Advice for Those Concerned with the President’s Age

Maureen Dowd’s recent New York Times column on this topic was titled ‘Go with the Flow, Joe.’  She was correct.  

Senior citizens know what they have to do to continue being active. That’s how they got to become senior citizens. They know when they need rest. They know what tasks to delegate to others. They know what they must do themselves. They know that maintaining a structured existence each day enables them to accomplish as much, if not more, than those younger than they are.  An elderly Konrad Adenauer proved that after World War Two in what was then West Germany. Those that attempt to shepherd senior citizens, and haven't been there yet themselves, may not grasp this.  

President Biden will continue to do just fine, but he must be the one in charge, in effect being his own governor, with a small 'g.'

JL

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Trivia Quiz #7

At a masquerade party, as whom would the following guests be attired, and which one would you have difficulty seeing? 

Billy Batson

Lamont Cranston

Peter Benjamin Parker

Clark Kent

Britt Reid

Bruce Wayne

And here are the answers to Trivia Quiz #6:  (Car rental agencies and States with which they share a first letter.)  At a minimum, you should have guessed:

1.     Hertz (Hawaii)

2.     Avis (Arizona and few other States)

3.     National (Nebraska and many other States)

4.     Thrifty (Tennessee or Texas)

5.     Alamo (Arkansas and a few other States, but one other than the one you might have used for Avis)

JL

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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri

Email Alerts:  If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do.  And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.

Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.

If you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a link to that address in your email to them.   I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.

There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though!   Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible.  If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you.  Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.

Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link. 

Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.

JL

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