Chit Chat

By Peloni

From now on comments on every post must relate to the content of the post.

Comments that don’t relate to the post must go here.

Any person who contravenes this demand will be put on moderation. Also their offending comment will be trashed.

The reason for this demand is so that people who want to read comments which pertain to the post, don’t have to wade through the chatter.

Everyone will be happier.

April 16, 2020 | 9,219 Comments »

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50 Comments / 9219 Comments

  5. SEBASTIEN-

    I’m sure you recall those “concerts” with Menuhin and Jack Benny. They were hilarious, to me anyhow, since Yehudi flowed effortlessly, with an exquisite tone, and poor old Jack was sawing away frantically, with a not surprisingly thin tone and the odd screech.,.

    Even a “tin ear” could tell the difference with ear plugs and eyes closed.

  6. TED, PELONI and not least READER, especially appreciated.

    I thank you all most sincerely. It reinforces a feeling of one family, united in Israpundit. Yes Ted, also die Yiddishe Shprache is haemish. Peloni, your connection of “wisdom to age” refreshes me. I sometimes feel I’m flagging, when it’s just laziness, and a dislike for research, combined with a reluctance to run ’round in circles -however wide. Or “reading between the lines”….
    And AgaIn, Honeybee and Sebastien.

    Now all I have to do is wait for the arrival of the presents. !!.

  11. @Edgar
    A very belated happy birthday to you! To boast another year older and wiser, as my dear grandmother always said, though many do prove that age and wisdom are not necessarily associated, but I would suggest that your example would prove my dear Nanni’s adage correct. Your wealth of knowledge and ready ability to draw so many distant straws together does provide an inspiration for others as to what can be done when applying a bit of learning, logic and critical thinking. I am very pleased to know you, and look forward to continuing to read your many delightful remembrances and reports for many years to come. L’chaim!

  12. Honeybee and Sebastien- (ladies first)

    I thank you both most sincerely for your Birthday Wishes for me.

    Sebastien, I recall a very dim, distorted video with much movement, was difficult to see. Perhaps that was what you refer to.

    1

  14. @Edgar Did you watch the three virtuoso violinists playing Paganini Caprice #24, the ultimate crazy difficult show piece, while keeping hula hoops spinning around their waists live on stage in front of a cheering audience?

    Didn’t know it was your birthday. How should I know? Happy Birthday.

    Yes, I grew up on Victor Borge and there’s lots of videos on Youtube. One of the greats.

    Also Sid Caesar

    https://youtu.be/U-1SBZJIrgg

    https://youtu.be/5OW7GoIl0T8

  15. @Edgar Did you watch the three virtuoso violinists playing Paganini Caprice #24, the ultimate crazy difficult show piece, while keeping hula hoops spinning around their waists live on stage in front of a cheering audience?

    Didn’t know it was your birthday. How should I know? Happy Birthday.

    Yes, I grew up on Victor Borge and there’s lots of videos on Youtube. One of the greats.

    Also Sid Caesar

    https://youtu.be/U-1SBZJIrgg

    https://youtu.be/5OW7GoIl0T8

  17. SEBASTIEN-

    Well…..I’m glad I got SOMETHING right……..For musical comedy I vote for Victor Borge.

    Did you listen to McCormack’s “I Hear You Calling Me” yet. Just think …it was made in 1910 when recording was so primitive. They were still also using wax cylinders -I think..Just transitioning to the recording head on a tight piece of string.

    I’d like your opinion.

  18. SEBASTIEN-

    Well…..I’m glad I got SOMETHING right……..For musical comedy I vote for Victor Borge.

    Did you listen to McCormack’s “I Hear You Calling Me” yet. Just think …it was made in 1910 when recording was so primitive. They were still also using wax cylinders -I think..Just transitioning to the recording head on a tight piece of string.

    I’d really like your opinion.

  20. SEBASTIEN-

    This surprises me, because he does look rather like Heifitz in his 50s.. In fact I looked Heifitz up when you mentioned him, to confirm my thought that he was familiar. .

  23. SEBASTIEN-

    I thought he looked as if I should have known him. He certainly could play despite that faked first note. I mentioned both of these in my original post but figured it was too long so scrapped it. I’ve heard many of his records when young, from that collector friend already mentioned.

    He was actually a Mr. Breen , the caretaker of the Greenville Hall Shool . He used to let my friends (one was the chazan’s son, who of course knew him well) and I in to practice table tennis on our first teams’s good table, a Jacques.. We’d play sometimes well into the a.m, whilst he’d be listening to his records. When in a very good mood he’s invite us in to listen to them, so I heard very many of the top artists in history. My favourite tenor is John McCormack. His bell-like voice and complete control were unequalled. And of course , his “head voice”.

    Listen to his “I hear you calling me”.

    What I really wanted to post now was that I just heard Helen Traubel singing “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home”. Unbelievable -she made a poor job of it. I was looking for “Clayton, Jackson and Durante” who did by far the best version. (that’a Jimmy Durante, “Schnozzola”)

  25. Sputnik cigarettes I smoked imported cigarettes and tobaccos from all over the world in the East Village in 1978-9 including Soviet papirosis that came in a boc with a painting of the Sputnik rocket on the inside cover.

    “Belomorkanal (Russian: is a Russian brand of cigarettes, originally made by the Uritsky tobacco factory in Leningrad, Soviet Union.

    Belomorkanal

    Belmorkanal was introduced in 1932 to commemorate the construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal, also known as the Belomorkanal.[1][2] Process engineer Vasily Iohanidi [ru] was the creator of its tobacco blend, and the pack drawing was made by Andrey Tarakanov.[3]

    Belomorkanal is a cigarette of specific design called in Russian papirosa different from usual cigarettes. Generally, the cigarette is without a filter. Belomorkanal is an example of one of the stages in the evolution of cigarettes: it is composed of a hollow cardboard tube extended by a thin cigarette paper tube with tobacco. The cardboard tube plays the role of a disposable cigarette holder. This method was abandoned by Western brands shortly after World War II. While smoking, the hollow part of the tube is usually compressed to make two separate perpendicular flat surfaces, for the sake of convenience. Belomorkanal are still produced in various post-Soviet republics, most notably in Russia, in Kamianets-Podilskyi (Ukraine), and in Hrodna (Belarus)”…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belomorkanal

    1

  27. Hilarious. !! was waiting for all the dogs in the area to begin howling. Of course, all spoofed (except perhaps the first one).
    Not surprisingly, I didn’t recognise any of it. Are they “real” pieces??

    A collector friend had a record of Gigli in which he was singing a half tone lower than the accompaniment. It was issued before it was noticed.

    Also there was a period where Crosby in later life, was singing off key, (mostly flat) as if his “ear” had gone, and it was not withdrawn. Then he seemed to regain proper pitch control, or there was massive electronics juggling.

  29. SEBASTIEN-

    That’s really good …but needs an acrimonious musical difference. May be too ambiguous my suggestions whilst not the best, can be used in normal conversation, concern, etc. Just my opinion.

    But it’s your choice. Are you “stocking up” for future possibilities, or is it an ongoing issue..? No matter/.

  31. SEB.

    I always rely on –

    “You’re a better musician than you sound”…or…”Are you sure you have your stings in the correct order”…or, Do you think you’re firing on all strings…!! or.. “no need to use piano wire, violin strings are better..”
    “were they out of good stings”..??

    “You should use a sound post.”.

    These off the top of my head. Just swithed in now.

  33. Ted-

    That’s an extremely picayune reason. There are a dozen other subjects on the go several of which I’m sure would interest them both. And Sebastien and you have become prolific posters. .

    I just don’t understand that they made it personal.. I was wondering about Bear a couple of months ago.. Then I saw a post of his on Arutz 7 a week or so later, so I knew he was O.K.. I couldn’t understand swapping Israpundit for Arutz.

    I see Singer has another article on Arutz 7 about his pet project. He says that “many” are wondering why it’s being ignored by the UN. I pointed out to him that the many are really only himself alone.

    He didn’t respond.

    Last year I saw Yehuda Halevi on Arutz as “Gaucho Sam, which I had seen him use one time on this site. So I addressed him as Y Ha L showing I knew who he was. . ..Very recently I decided to ask him why. He didn’t respond on Arutz but shortly after I saw him posting on this site again.

  37. @Edgar
    It has been several months since I saw his latest post. His long silence has been quite regretful. I am hopeful that he is doing well and that we will hear from him soon. It has, however, been a terribly long silence from him.

  39. It is all meaningless blah, blah, blah. Until Israel decides that peace cannot be made with their mortal enemies, and understands that not annexing Judea and Sanaria is considered weakness, nothing will change. God continually fought and killed his enemies and evil people. Are Jews more moral than God?

  40. @Edgar

    “I had a detailed Gantze Megillah “

    Wait, wasn’t he Defence Minister in the last government and one of the stars of the current – now 40,000, now 100,000 – demonstrations?

    You know, it’s been pointed out that there are vegetables that look like the parts of the body they are good for, like the cauliflower looks like a brain.

    https://www.ugaoo.com/blogs/innovation/foods-that-resemble-body-parts-they-benefit

    Wouldn’t it be funny if God helps us choose leaders by inspiring their parents to give some of them stupid names?

    “Gantze Megillah”
    “It is a meditation on the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life and of proper behaviour. Heavily influenced by Greek philosophy,”

    https://www.darcheinoam.ca/blogroll?post_id=207725

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magilla_Gorilla

  41. Hi, Tanna and Sebastien. Thank you for “standing in for me”. My wife and I went to a funeral Back East. We had a wonderful time — the best part being that we were free from any sort of “news”, fake or otherwise, other than that of our family and friends. When we left to go there, the big news was the election contest for Speaker of the House. When we returned, the news was the “Biden Papers”, and the fact that the media were largely ignoring them. Neither of these were stories interesting enough to follow blow-by-blow.

    Thanks to Sebastien, for spotting me in that movie. I was wondering what happened to my rifle 🙂

    1

  42. SEASTIEN-

    I had a detailed Gantze Megillah written out to you, and I accidentally did something and it all vanished. What follows below is a short synopsis.

    I didn’t know a league existed. I know there are lots of sites, and mine is the Microsoft one “Solitaire & Casual Games”.. Up to a month or so ago it was called “Microsoft Solitaire Collection.

    I found it about 4 years ago, and at first when I was stymied I just began a new came. A very casual approach. Then about 2 years ago I discovered the “undo” tag, and since then never lost a game. Every wekk or so, a row of circles is lowered above the “results box, It ticks off when you win a game. After 3 wins, it gives a BONUS game. Every few weeks the screen elaborately shows your “position” in something. My lowest was 100 and varies up to 500. I have no idea what it means. Maye this is the league you mention???

    I constantly “test” myself, and was concerned when I felt that either the games were getting more difficult although still “Medium”, or I was “slowing down”.. Of course I’m getting fed up with it, as it goes nowhere, which may be the cause. . Or imagining it, as I’m not concerned as to time.

    Which is why I asked you about your experiences, in the belief that you
    knew all about it. As indeed you do. In 1990 I was still playing competitive table tennis.

    So thank you very much for your response.

    1

  43. @Edgar Not a whiz, not in your league. Says best time 18:54 and I never competed. I’ve been playing it since the 90s, though. It must be on a number of different platforms. I’m just using an app on my ipad though originally I played it on a pc like just about everybody else who worked in offices back then. Which one do you play on that has leagues and so on?

  44. Hello Michael S. good to see you back. I tried to stand in/up for you while you were gone. You can see some of the back and forth in chit chat back to first of the year. but those boys play rough. I know they will never admit it, but Mr. Zorn and Reader missed you a bunch. Hope you had a good trip. Could you answer Mr. Zorn’s question. Does your return qualify for your second return?

  45. SEBASTIEN-

    Completely off any topic.

    As a casual comment, you posted you were a whiz at Free Cell. I mentioned that I also played (Medium) and had achieved a high level.
    I can say that of the 5 types, this is the only challenging one, which is why I played it,, after sampling the others.

    My level is over 800 as a Diamond Grand Master. What is your level, and what is your average time?? I’m not trying to compare one against the other, BUT….for, say the last 200 levels or so, I’ve noticed that it has become rather more difficult than before. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting bored with it, as indeed I am, or because it really is more difficult as I advance, or my expertise is diminishing, wither through lack of thought ….or diminishing capability.

    So this is why I would like to know how you find it.

    My best time was 2 mins.30 secs, and I have had several close to that, and there have been some, which took over an hour. right mow it seems to be from say 4 mins to 15 mins. although, 20-30 mins also occur.

    Another thing. Did you pay to eliminate the adverts> I did not regarding it as blackmail. I worked out a system where I immediately deleted any ad of more than 15 secs, so the system broke down, and now, after maybe 1-2 30 sec ads, which I immediately delete they are from zero to 15 secs, which is O.K. with me, as consecutive games occur.

    It took some persistence at first, but with practice I got it down to a few secs for a game to appear.

  46. @ketzel , Ted

    “…violation of the Nuremberg Code, which forbids medical experiments on humans since the COVID injections were not properly tested before being introduced to the market.”

    She’s a famous Ukranian Jewish composer residing in Germany. Can’t find out more about her like when she left the Soviet Union or Russia, when she came to Germany, why she has a legal guadian. This should be big news.

  48. ”
    In Boston labs, old, blind mice have regained their eyesight, developed smarter, younger brains and built healthier muscle and kidney tissue. On the flip side, young mice have prematurely aged, with devastating results to nearly every tissue in their bodies.

    reverse aging life itself
    The ‘Benjamin Button’ effect: Scientists can reverse aging in mice. The goal is to do the same for humans
    The experiments show aging is a reversible process, capable of being driven “forwards and backwards at will,” said anti-aging expert David Sinclair, a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research.

    Our bodies hold a backup copy of our youth that can be triggered to regenerate, said Sinclair, the senior author of a new paper showcasing the work of his lab and international scientists.

    The combined experiments, published for the first time Thursday in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief aging is the result of genetic mutations that undermine our DNA, creating a junkyard of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.

    “It’s not junk, it’s not damage that causes us to get old,” said Sinclair, who described the work last year at Life Itself, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

    “We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging.”

    Jae-Hyun Yang, a genetics research fellow in the Sinclair Lab who coauthored the paper, said he expects the findings “will transform the way we view the process of aging and the way we approach the treatment of diseases associated with aging.”

    Epigenetic changes control aging
    While DNA can be viewed as the body’s hardware, the epigenome is the software. Epigenes are proteins and chemicals that sit like freckles on each gene, waiting to tell the gene “what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.

    Get about 11,000 steps in each day to lose weight, study says
    What’s the magic number of steps to keep weight off? Here’s what a new study says
    The epigenome literally turns genes on and off. That process can be triggered by pollution, environmental toxins and human behaviors such as smoking, eating an inflammatory diet or suffering a chronic lack of sleep. And just like a computer, the cellular process becomes corrupted as more DNA is broken or damaged, Sinclair said.

    “The cell panics, and proteins that normally would control the genes get distracted by having to go and repair the DNA,” he explained. “Then they don’t all find their way back to where they started, so over time it’s like a Ping-Pong match, where the balls end up all over the floor.”

    These mice are from the same litter. The one at right has been genetically altered to be old.
    These mice are from the same litter. The one at right has been genetically altered to be old.
    In other words, the cellular pieces lose their way home, much like a person with Alzheimer’s.

    “The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” Sinclair said. “We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”

    It doesn’t matter if the body is 50 or 75, healthy or wracked with disease, Sinclair said. Once that process has been triggered, “the body will then remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness. Now, what that software is, we don’t know yet. At this point, we just know that we can flip the switch.”

    Years of research
    The hunt for the switch began when Sinclair was a graduate student, part of a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that discovered the existence of genes to control aging in yeast. That gene exists in all creatures, so there should be a way to do the same in people, he surmised.

    To test the theory, he began trying to fast-forward aging in mice without causing mutations or cancer.

    “We started making that mouse when I was 39 years old. I’m now 53, and we’ve been studying that mouse ever since,” he said. “If the theory of information aging was wrong, then we would get either a dead mouse, a normal mouse, an aging mouse or a mouse that had cancer. We got aging.”

    To do this, Sinclair’s team developed ICE, short for inducible changes to the epigenome. Instead of altering the coding sections of the mice’s DNA that can trigger mutations, ICE alters the way DNA is folded. The temporary, fast-healing cuts made by ICE mimic the daily damage from chemicals, sunlight and the like that contribute to aging.

    ICE mice at one year looked and acted twice their age.

    Becoming young again
    Now it was time to reverse the process. Sinclair Lab geneticist Yuancheng Lu created a mixture of three of four “Yamanaka factors,” human adult skin cells that have been reprogrammed to behave like embryonic or pluripotent stem cells, capable of developing into any cell in the body.

    The cocktail was injected into damaged retinal ganglion cells at the back of the eyes of blind mice and switched on by feeding mice antibiotics.

    The mice regained most of their eyesight.

    Next, the team tackled brain, muscle and kidney cells, and restored those to much younger levels, according to the study.

    “One of our breakthroughs was to realize that if you use this particular set of three pluripotent stem cells, the mice don’t go back to age zero, which would cause cancer or worse,” Sinclair said. “Instead, the cells go back to between 50% and 75% of the original age, and they stop and don’t get any younger, which is lucky. How the cells know to do that, we don’t yet understand.”

    Today, Sinclair’s team is trying to find a way to deliver the genetic switch evenly to each cell, thus rejuvenating the entire mouse at once.

    “Delivery is a technical hurdle, but other groups seem to have done well,” Sinclair said, pointing to two unpublished studies that appear to have overcome the problem.

    “One uses the same system we developed to treat very old mice, the equivalent of an 80-year-old human. And they still got the mice to live longer, which is remarkable. So they’ve kind of beaten us to the punch in that experiment,” he said.

    “But that says to me the rejuvenation is not just affecting a few organs, it’s able to rejuvenate the whole mouse because they’re living longer,” he added. “The results are a gift and confirmation of what our paper is saying.”

    What’s next? Billions of dollars are being poured into anti-aging, funding all sorts of methods to turn back the clock.

    In his lab, Sinclair said his team has reset the cells in mice multiple times, showing that aging can be reversed more than once, and he is currently testing the genetic reset in primates. But decades could pass before any anti-aging clinical trials in humans begin, get analyzed and, if safe and successful, scaled to the mass needed for federal approval.

    But just as damaging factors can disrupt the epigenome, healthy behaviors can repair it, Sinclair said.

    “We know this is probably true because people who have lived a healthy lifestyle have less biological age than those who have done the opposite,” he said.

    His top tips? Focus on plants for food, eat less often, get sufficient sleep, lose your breath for 10 minutes three times a week by exercising to maintain your muscle mass, don’t sweat the small stuff and have a good social group.

    “The message is every day counts,” Sinclair said. “How you live your life even when you’re in your teens and 20s really matters, even decades later, because every day your clock is ticking”

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/health/reversing-aging-scn-wellness/index.html

  49. @PELONI-

    Thank you, I understand it all very well, and very interesting to me. I was posting a comment on a boxing site, in which the quick recovery of boxers during the 1 minute intervals was being discussed. Low pulse rate was mentioned and it brought to mind the situation of my late uncle which I’ve described,.

    I’ve since recalled more. . When I called to visit him, his sons were there, and he was sitting with his head down between his knees. He’d become dizzy, and it was then that I was told about the double heart block.
    So whilst commenting on the boxing site, I was thinking of my uncle and that he lived “hale and hardy” all his life, until 97, the double block being no problem. Only a few years before this, he and I were walking on the street at a pretty good pace. It was really “a boxing historical moment”, because we met an old friend of his, a tall erect, spotlessly attired very old black man. I had often seen him walking in the street, always dressed in a black frock coat, with a cane and a flower in his lapel, and wonder who he was. I think the only black man in the country excluding a few University students.

    We stopped and he and my uncle had a good chat. Uncle told me later, that he was a Tommy Burn’s sparring partner. Burns was the World boxing champion until 1908., when he was beaten by the famous Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight champion, who is still talked about in boxing circles. (In WW! the “Tommies” called a huge shell which exploded with lots of black smoke, a “Jack Johnson”.

    Digression: *****Burns had come to Dublin to fight the Irish champion. Jem Roche for 20 rounds.. It took place in The Theatre Royal, a huge building with over 3000 seats. (owned by the Elliman family.)
    It was St. Patrick’s Day…………!!!!

    Burns KO’d Roche in about a minute and a half of the FIRST round. The half drunken audience was enraged and bottles were flying. They rushed the ring and Burns and his team had to have police protection. They secretly sneaked out of the country during the night. This man we’d met was sick in bed, and left behind. He stayed in Dublin the rest of his long life. He even came down to our boxing club and donated some very old boxing equipment. Collectors’ items for sure, but I was too stupid to understand about that. I still recall every item he gave us.*******

    My uncle’s mother was born the year Joseph Bonaparte died, and there were still 2 other brothers alive, Jerome died when she was 16 years old.

    Hard to believe…but true.