It’s funny how your subconscious makes a liar out of you.

Father’s Day came and went with almost no notice on my part. I saw a Father’s Day post on Ann Althouse’s blog with a picture of her father, asking if you missed yours. I remember thinking it must have been nice to have a father you could miss like that.

My father died seven years ago, two days after Father’s Day. I couldn’t remember the date. I had to call my brother Dave and ask him. I knew it was a Tuesday only because I’d recently reread my ancient post about his death.

On Monday night, while chatting with Ilyka, she asked me if Father’s Day affected me. “No, not really,” I replied. Then I wound up telling her the story of the last few months of my father’s life.

On Tuesday, in the CVS, I saw that they’re fundraising for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Dad died of ALS in 1999.

And this morning, I suddenly realized why I’ve been having trouble sleeping for the past week. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my father’s death.

(more…)

After so many years of Muslim, Islamic, and Eunuch apathy and interference, the impossible may finally be happening…

The Red Cross humanitarian movement overcame Muslim objections and cleared away the last obstacle to full Israeli membership early Thursday, setting up formal admission later in the day after nearly six decades of exclusion, Israel’s ambassador said.

In a vote that came well after midnight, the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent approved a resolution that enables Israel’s Magen David Adom society to join while retaining its red star of David instead of having to adopt the red cross or crescent used by other societies, Ambassador Itzhak Levanon said.

As much as I’d like to rejoice, I’ll hold back my jubilation until the ink is dry and Israel is truly sitting at “the adults table” without any reservations whatsoever.

(And is this a Mandarin area, or another dialect?)

This is the most heartwarming story I’ve read in months.

Though Harbin, capital of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, was credited as an international municipality with exotic historical architectural style, the sudden arrival of nearly 100 Jews was still something to marvel at.

They are not visitors, but were excited to stand again in the old synagogue, streets, houses and schools they were so familiar with about more than half a century ago.

They came to take part in a three-day international forum on the history and culture of Harbin Jews, which concluded on Monday, and also to witness the opening of an exhibition of the same theme.

[...] For several decades from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, more than 20,000 Jewish people came to Harbin. They came to escape the waves of anti-Semitism in Russia and Europe, according to Qu Wei, president of the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

“Harbin people, with their unique and broad-minded hospitality, accepted and developed long-lasting friendships with them,” Qu said. “That history is a brilliant page in China’s humanitarian record.”

[...] Bein expressed her appreciation of the peaceful childhood she enjoyed in Harbin.

“During the war, when the whole of Europe was aflame, we enjoyed a comfortable life,” she said.

By the end of the World War II, there were about 30,000 Jews in China.

“Thirty thousand people came and 30,000 people left China,” said Teddy Kaufman, President of Association of Former Residents of China and Israel China Friendship Society.

“Nobody was killed,” he said.

Thank you, Harbin.

Harbin has preserved the largest Jewish cemetery in East Asia, which has about 600 tombstones and includes the grave of the grandfather of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

No, really, thank you, Harbin.

The city’s dozens of Jewish assembly halls, hotels, schools, hospitals, banks, shopping malls, dwelling houses, kindergartens and office buildings, some of which are nearly a century old, are protected by Harbin municipal government.

Holy crap! Thank you, Harbin.

Is there any other nation in the world who has done as much? (Not counting America, which has never persecuted her Jews.)

Wow. Just—wow.

If you thought that showing the Israeli flag to Iranians is the tops, think again. Saudi blogger Farah got wise to another offence, much more serious, although it is Mondial-related too. Enjoy.

Don’t load the code.

Not that I think any of my readers are stupid enough to do so. But I thought I’d mention it, just the same.

Thanks to chsw for the tip.

Update: Whoops. Day By Day has not been hacked. Never mind.

This one is so ironic as to almost deserve the word hubris. David Talbot, the founder of Salon, on the occasion of Slate’s tenth anniversary:

overall I find it shrill and superficial, a function of the triumph of the blog.

Shrill? This, from the founder of the far-left online magazine, Salon?

If you read the full link, you end up wondering if someone stole Talbot’s email and send in an article bound to make him look like an absolute moron.

And that stands for pool:

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan police have banned people from playing pool during the daytime because it encourages crime, local media said Wednesday.

The game is very popular in the east African nation, where pool tables sit under canopies outside thousands of small bars.

But Kampala police chief Grace Turyagumanawe said youths often played while drinking illegal spirits and smoking drugs.

“They also use this as a meeting place to make plans of robbing people of their property at night,” he told the Daily Monitor newspaper. “We are not banning the sport, but we are stopping people from playing it during the day.”

Bar owners like pool tables because they earn income but use no electricity. Uganda has suffered power cuts for months.

This calls for a song!

Oh, we got trouble!
Right here in River City!
Right here in River City!
With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P”
And that stands for pool!
That stands for pool!
We’ve surely got trouble!
We’ve surely got trouble!
Right here in River City!
Right here!
Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones
Moral after school.

You know how every so often, I can’t stand writing about world events?

This is one of those days.

KOLKATA (Reuters) - Thousands of people are flocking to an impoverished Indian village in eastern West Bengal state to worship a man they believe possesses divine powers because he climbs up trees in seconds, gobbles up bananas and has a “tail.”

Devotees say 27-year-old villager Chandre Oraon is an incarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman — worshipped by millions as a symbol of physical strength, perseverance and devotion.

“He climbs up trees, behaves like a monkey and is a strict vegetarian, but he is no god and his condition is just a congenital defect,” says Bhushan Chakraborty, the local medical officer.

Tucked away in a hamlet in Banarhat, over 400 miles north of Kolkata, the state capital, devotees wait for hours to see or touch Oraon’s 13-inch tail, believing that it has healing powers.

Doctors said the “tail” — made up of some flesh but mostly of dark hair — was simply a rare physical attribute.

“It is a congenital anomaly, but very rarely do we find such cases,” B. Ramana, a Kolkata-based surgeon, told Reuters.

Hm. I have bananas witih my lunch today. But I don’t think I’ll be climbing any trees, and I know I haven’t got a tail.