tal

Speaking of ties, I notice that Pezeshkian, unlike Putin, isn't wearing a tie.

And thinking back, I don't recall Ahmadinejad -- notable for his signature jacket -- wearing a tie either.

And looking at some presidential pictures, I don't see images of ties either:

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

kagis

Ah. It's a political thing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-necktie-ties-sign-of-westernization-making-comeback/

Iran banned the tie for men after the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed monarch as a symbol of Western culture. Although it has made a slow comeback since, government officials and most Iranian men continue to shun the cravat.

Iran's Shiite clerics who came to power in 1979 banned the tie because, in their eyes, it was un-Islamic, a sign of decadence, a symbol of the cross and the quintessence of Western dress imposed by the shah, said one trader who asked not to be identified.

After vanishing for decades, ties reappeared in some shop windows during the era of reformist president Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005.

Today, government ministers, senior civil servants and heads of state-owned companies don't wear ties with their suits and opt for shirts with buttoned, open or Mao collars.

Lawyer Masoud Molapanah said "wearing a tie is certainly not a crime" under the constitution or Islamic sharia law. "But there are dress restrictions in certain places such as on television."

There are probably some games that this would work well for, but I'm not sure that it'd be a great replacement the way a physical thumb keyboard is for texting or the like.

Most present-day games that I can think of that I play use the keyboard as a grid of buttons. They expect to have your hand over the thing -- often the left hand, with the right on the mouse -- to let you be able to push multiple buttons quickly.

I'm not usually doing much text entry, which is what I'd expect a thumb keyboard to work well with.

Not for vegetarians or Muslims!

I haven't seen any experts mentioning it, but I'm increasingly wondering whether a response may, at least in part, take the form of some kind of cyberattack.

There are several points that would support this.

• Israel has hit Iran like this in the past, with Stuxnet , with US involvement.

  Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 2010 and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran. Although neither country has openly admitted responsibility, multiple independent news organizations recognize Stuxnet to be a cyberweapon built jointly by the United States and Israel in a collaborative effort known as Operation Olympic Games. The program, started during the Bush administration, was rapidly expanded within the first months of Barack Obama's presidency.

  Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations, with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran; Symantec noted in August 2010 that 60 percent of the infected computers worldwide were in Iran. Siemens stated that the worm caused no damage to its customers, but the Iran nuclear program, which uses embargoed Siemens equipment procured secretly, was damaged by Stuxnet.

• My guess is that a non-kinetic response may be considered by the US to have less potential for escalation to a wider war. This has consistently been something that the US has stated that it would like to avoid.

• Most-importantly, I have a hard time otherwise explaining Gallant's quote:

  Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday said that the IDF's counter-strike on Iran for its October 1 massive strike on Israel will put the original attack to shame.

  He said, "The Iranian attack was aggressive but inaccurate. In contrast, our attack will be deadly, pinpoint accurate, and most importantly, surprising - they will not know what happened or how it happened. They will just see the results."

  I have a hard time seeing dropping a bomb on anything producing an effect that could be described in that way.

Arguing against that, it's also been consistently reported that no firm commitment to a specific response has yet been made. Gallant might have had an option in mind, but if there's no commitment yet, any quote from him doesn't mean that that's what will definitely happen.

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/10/israels-cabinet-remains-uncertain-about-response-iran-attack

Over the past 10 days, Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu and Gallant are considering several options, among them striking Iranian nuclear facilities, petrol installations, army bases, missile production facilities, arms depots and Iranian leaders. The Biden administration expressed its disapproval of the first option and has reservations about the second one.

Netanyahu and Biden spoke on Wednesday. Citing unnamed US and Israeli senior officials, Walla reported on Thursday that while no specific decision has been made on the retaliatory strike, the two leaders had reduced gaps on the issue. It added that Israeli and American senior officials had held several discussions prior to Netanyahu and Biden's conversation, including between Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, on details of a possible Israeli strike.

"Dialogue is undergoing continuously, and we are listening to what the Americans are saying, while explaining to them the way we see and assess the situation from our side," an Israeli government spokesperson told Ynet after the call between Netanyahu and Biden. "Israel will do what is necessary to protect itself."

That's a thought, though my guess is that access time constraints for something like a CD might mean that it could at most be a secondary form of storage.

Man, I didn't even think about Quebec.

Some treaties that the French sign have had them require a French version and that the French version be equally-binding. I imagine that this makes any form of translation difference exciting. Is this the case for Quebec?

searches

Apparently so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982

English and French versions

Section 56 of the Act provides that the parts of the Constitution that were enacted in English and French are equally authoritative, and section 57 adds that the English and French versions of the Constitution Act, 1982 itself are equal. Section 57 is akin section 18 of the Charter, which provides that English and French versions of federal and New Brunswick statutes are equal.[20] The Supreme Court has interpreted section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and section 23 of the Manitoba Act, 1870 to mean that the English and French versions of federal, Quebec and Manitoba statutes are equal.[21][22]

Despite sections 56 and 57, significant portions of the Constitution of Canada were only enacted in English and even if there exist unofficial French translations, their English versions alone have force of law. To address this problem, section 55 requires that the federal Minister of Justice prepare "a French version of the…Constitution of Canada as expeditiously as possible." The Minister of Justice established a French Constitution Drafting Committee in 1984, which prepared French versions of the Constitution, and presented them to the Minister in 1990.[citation needed]

Section 55 also requires that "when any portion thereof sufficient to warrant action being taken has been so prepared, it shall but put forward for enactment by proclamation issued by the Governor General under the Great Seal of Canada pursuant to the procedure then applicable to an amendment of the same provisions of the Constitution of Canada." No action has been taken to put forward the French version for enactment. The reference to a proclamation by the Governor-General implies that some combination of the general, unanimity and special arrangements procedures would be required to enact the French version.[citation needed] Although the intention was presumably that the government of Canada would do so by introducing an amendment resolution in the House of Commons,[citation needed] a Senator or a provincial government could presumably do so since, under section 46, such amendments "may be initiated either by the Senate or the House of Commons or by the legislative assembly of a province".

Additional wrinkle: my understanding is that the question of what parts of Canadian law are part of the constitution and what are not is an active legal question being gradually resolved by courts.

The UK doesn't have any formal constitution, as the bar for Parliament to change anything it wants is the same -- a simple majority.

Canada's legal system was originally structured in a similar way, and did not have an explicit constitution written. When it became independent, part of the process indicated that some of that body of law was part of the constitution. And in present-day Canada, as in the US, it does matter whether a piece of law is part of the constitution, as the constitution has a different legal status from ordinary federal law.

But because the division is not presently fully-defined, I imagine that a rewrite would be a pretty substantial task, even above what would typically be the case.

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

After patriation, the methods of constitutional entrenchment are:

• specific mention as a constitutional document in section 52(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982;

• amendments to constitutional documents using the amending formula in Part V the Constitution Act, 1982;

• in some cases, reference by an entrenched document;

• ruling by a court that a practice is part of Canada's unwritten constitution; or

• judicial interpretation of constitutional provisions.

The list of documents for the first two methods is well-established. For the next two, however, there is debate about which documents, or which parts of those documents, are included in the constitution. In some cases, the Supreme Court of Canada has made definitive rulings regarding whether a given documents forms part of the constitution, but in many cases the question is still unclear.

On the up side, I suppose that doing such a rewrite would clear this up. On the down side, I imagine that an actual rewrite would be an unholy mess from a legal standpoint, as it'd have to resolve what the constitution is at one go.

Some of those people who did have flood coverage will only have it because they have a mortgage and were legally obligated to buy it as a condition of getting a mortgage (that is, it protects the mortgage lender's equity). It looks like the federal government requires people who live in a flood risk area and get a federal mortgage to buy flood insurance, for example:

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/R44593.pdf

An area of specific focus on the FIRM is the Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). The SFHA is intended to distinguish the flood risk zones that have a chance of flooding during a “1 in 100 year flood” or greater frequency.

Any federal entity that makes, guarantees, or purchases mortgages must, by law, require property owners in the SFHA to purchase flood insurance, generally through the NFIP.

Two points:

First, other articles state that these are expected to be used in an engineering role, not in a combat role. That will potentially have an impact on the front line in that it will permit Russia to use Russian engineering forces in a combat role. But they aren't expected to be fighting themselves.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4925134-ukraine-strikes-russian-ammunition-depots/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/09/asia/north-korea-army-militarized-border-south-korea-intl-hnk/index.html

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starrmer

No double "r" on "Starmer".

https://vetexplainspets.com/why-do-cats-lick-other-cats-butts/

One of the main reasons cats lick each other’s butts is for grooming purposes. Cats are meticulous groomers and spend a significant amount of time cleaning themselves and their fellow feline companions. Licking each other’s butts allows cats to clean hard-to-reach areas and helps maintain their hygiene.

The cat looked unhappily back at its butt. The problems resulting from concurrently wearing a built-in fur coat, pooping, and not having any hands to operate toilet paper were clearly not appreciated by the human.

It's the brain cysts from toxoplasmosis that are the real trouble!