Just a few.
• Errata: My February 9th Radio Derb included an item about the million-dollar judgment against Mark Steyn for scoffing at climate scientist Michael Mann. In there I said:
Michael Mann is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. I don't know how he got the case heard in Washington, D.C., but it was a smart move on his part. D.C. is the beating heart of wokeness; a D.C. jury is going to include twelve climate-change fanatics.
A friend observes that Michael Mann is at Penn State, not U. Penn, and that Steyn's jury had only six people on it. Sorry, sorry.
Then in the February 16th Radio Derb I got my congressmen confused, saying said "Steve King" when I meant "Peter King." I really should have known better, having for years been angrily aware of Rep. Peter King as an apologist for Irish terrorists. (I've corrected the mis-speech in the transcript I'll post on Wednesday.)
• Erratum? Also in the February 16th Radio Derb I opened my miscellany of brief items with a story about Brookline, Mass. I described Brookline as "a modestly prosperous little town in central Massachusetts."
Two different listeners took exception to my geography there.
Listener A: "Brookline … is not in central Mass. but in eastern Mass., right outside the border of Bahstin. And I'd say it's more than moderately prosperous—a lot of well-off Jews live there, nice homes go for millions."
Listener B: "Brookline is right next to Boston; in fact it sort of sits nestled roughly between Boston neighborhoods Mission Hill and the South End on the east, and Allston and Brighton on the west/ northwest."
Hmm. The furthest you can go east from Brookline without leaving mainland Massachusetts is Chatham lighthouse, about 74 miles; the furthest west ditto is Mount Washington on the border with New York, 121 miles.
If I'm 74 miles from the eastern extremity of a geographical feature and 121 miles from the western extremity, I'm pretty central, aren't I? Not dead center, but surely central. (All right: east-central, if you want to pick nits.)
Natives have their own ideas about these designations, though, with more "weight" given to more-populated parts … I yield to the natives, but grudgingly.
• Carlson-Putin: Back to the February 9th show where I quoted Vladimir Putin saying to Tucker Carlson:
The German troops, even the SS troops, made Hitler's collaborators do the dirtiest work of exterminating the Polish and Jewish population. Hence, this brutal massacre of the Polish and Jewish population.
I followed that with:
When Putin says "Hitler's collaborators" there, he is referring to Ukrainian Nazis, of which there were indeed some. Did any of them collaborate in the Katyn Forest Massacre of 1940, when more than twenty thousand Polish military officers and intellectuals were murdered by the Soviet secret police?
A listener thought that Putin probably had in mind the Volhynia massacres of 1943-45, which were indeed carried out by Ukrainians with German support.
I think my listener is right—that that was what Putin had in mind. Still, Carlson really should have followed up with questions about the Holodomor and Katyn Forest.
• Healthcare in China: One more from the February 9th podcast in which, speaking about China, I said:
I've heard stories about doctors demanding large sums of money up front, in cash, for medical procedures. No doubt there are conscientious and public-spirited doctors too, and my apologies to them; but on the whole I don't think China is a good country in which to have a health issue.
A reader of the transcript with a name of Scottish or Irish provenance, age mid-seventies, living with his Chinese wife in southwest China, offered some first-hand experience with that country's healthcare system.
He tells me that after a diagnosis of stage-four cancer last year he received excellent treatment from honest doctors and is now fit and well. He comments:
Many years ago I heard of Chinese doctors demanding cash payments, but from my experience and that of Chinese friends it seems that those corrupt doctors have either been pushed out of the profession or have cleaned up their acts.
Thank you, Sir. In fairness to myself, I did warn listeners that my information about life in China comes from a biased sample: mainly educated middle-class urban sixty-somethings.
I also included a caution I heard from an Old China Hand fifty-some years ago: China's a very big country, and the edges are a long way from the middle.
