Take it away...

Interesting day in Italy

coconut oil is the cure for Alzheimer's?

http://www.cbn.com/tv/1472017228001

Well, it seems I will not be getting an explanation.

After the GOP went through Yet Another Round of irritating political kabuki to appease the Fundie/Con TeaTarding masses, wasting time over pointless inanities: Hagel has been confirmed as Secretary of Defense.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

I've started to post articles from ET on my Facebook page every so often.  Who knows if there are any click-throughs, but I figure it's worth the minimal time and effort it takes to spread the word that little extra bit.

However, it's not all that easy to do so.  There are no integrated buttons, as on other sites, but that's not so big of a problem.  What is vaguely annoying is when I cut and paste a link into Facebook, the title and heading text is not from the article, but rather from ET generally.  When that happens, I have to manually cut and paste the text.

Any thoughts on this?

Shortly after the 1967 war, Israel set up some settlements on the Golan Heights. Officially, these were for "security" reasons, an explanation that never made any sense for me: The official reason for occupying the Golan Heights was to safeguard settlements in Israel proper, so setting up new ones on the new border seemed to contradict this. In fact, the need to waste time evacuating them at the start of the 1973 war confirmed my doubts.

But I never realized quite how bad it was until now. I've been reading Igal Kipnis' new book "1973: The road to war". The following is from page 237. The date, October 6. Two days before, the Soviet Union had evacuated the families of their advisors from Egypt and Syria, and the Israeli government were starting to realize how badly they had screwed up.The previous night, Ashraf Marwan, Israel's top spy in Egypt (or double agent?) had had an emergency meeting with the head of the Mossad in London, and had delivered another of his warnings that a war was about to start. This time, however, the date was correct (even if the time was off by a few hours), and Golda Meir had been woken up at 4am with the news.

This should give you an idea of how serious things were, since what follows might otherwise seem to come straight from the pages of The Onion. The time is 8am, at a meeting of as much of the cabinet as could attend:

בפתח הישיבה הציע שר הביטחון לאפשר פעילות סדירה של ערביי השטחים ושל המעבר בגשרי הירדן וכן: "מציע לפנות היום את הילדים מרמת הגולן, מרחב שלמה ואבו רודס, סך הכול בגולן שלושים ילד. אם יש להם רעיונות אחרים, זה עניינם. לפנות ערב או אחר הצהריים להציע להם להוציא את הילדים לטיול. להוריד אותם משם. נשים, תרצינה להישאר - תישארנה." בתשובה להערת ראש הממשלה: "אני מכירה את האנשים. לא מוציאים את הילדים. אני חושבת שזו צריכה להיות הוראה," אמר דיין: "אומרים לרדת - שירדו. מחר שיערערו בפניך."		At the start of the meeting, the Defense Minister proposed to allow regular movement of the Arabs in the occupied territories and the Jordan river crossings, and "I propose to evacuate today the children from the Golan Heights and [several place in Sinai], all together there are about 30 children in the Golan. If they have other ideas, that's their business. Towards evening, or in the afternoon, to offer to them to take the children out on an excursion. To get them out of there. Women, if they want to stay - let them stay." Responding to a comment of the Prime Minister "I know the people. They will not take away the children. This should be an order", Dayan said: "Tell them to come down - they should come down. Tomorrow they can complain to you".
כך, כשהרמטכ"ל ממתין בקוצר רוח לאישור לגייס את כוחות המילואים כדי לעצור את המצרים והסורים שאמורים לתקוף בשעות הקרובות, דנו שר הביטחון בטיול של ילדי הגולן וראש הממשלה בדימוי העצמי של המתיישבים - נושאים, שלפחות בעת ההיא, היו צריכים להיות עיסוקם של עובדים זוטרים בלשכותיהם.		Thus, while the Chief of Staff was waiting impatiently for the approval to call up reserves in order to stop the Egyptians and Syrians who were due to attack in a few hours, the Defense Minister discussed taken the children in the Golan out for an excursion, and the Prime Minister of the self image of the settlers - issues that, at least at that point, should have been dealt with by junior staff in their offices