Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here from Science Advancesvia National Geographic, is the painting of a wild pig from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. AT 45,000 years old, it’s world’s oldest cave art, and in fact the oldest known representational art of any sort.
Photo: MAXIME AUBERT
Here’s the paper reporting it (click on screenshot), and a free pdf is here:
The very oldest art comes not from Europe or Africa, but from Indonesia; but surely there was much earlier representational art. The subject is presumably a Celebes warty pig (Sus celebensis), a species still with us, and the artist presumably an anatomically modern human (H. sapiens sapiens).
And a few words from the authors (“AMH” means “anatomically modern humans”)
On the basis of the presently available evidence, we are unable to definitively conclude that the dated figurative rock art depiction from Leang Tedongnge is the handiwork of cognitively “modern” members of our species. However, this seems to be the most likely explanation given the sophistication of this early representational artwork and the fact that figurative depiction has so far only been attributed to AMH everywhere else in the world.
If so, the dated pig image from Leang Tedongnge would appear to provide some of the earliest evidence, if not the earliest, for the presence of our species in Wallacea. The minimum age of this artwork is compatible with the earliest established indications of AMH from excavated deposits in the Lesser Sunda islands, which formerly provided the oldest archaeological evidence for H. sapiens in Wallacea (~44.6 ka cal BP). Hence, dating results for the Leang Tedongnge painting underline the view that representational art, including figurative animal art and depictions of narrative scenes, was a key part of the cultural repertoire of the first AMH populations to cross from Sunda into Wallacea—the gateway to the continent of Australia.
If you didn’t like Bari Weiss’s reservations about potential problems with the Biden administration, which include its truckling to the Woke, you’re really not going to like Andrew Sullivan’s latest piece at The Weekly Dish (click on screenshot below). For Sullivan has a take almost identical to Weiss’s, and yet I sympathize with some of his worries.
Click on screenshot to read it (you’ll probably need a subscription, but I’ll give a few quotes). One note: You are free to say what you want in the comments, including that you’re not worried about this stuff, but please don’t tell me that I’m not allowed to have concerns—that now I should be celebrating rather than nitpicking. I am in fact doing both!
Like Weiss, Sullivan begins (and ends) by expressing some fealty towards Biden and hopes that his administration will succeed. He notes that Biden’s Inaugural speech was uninspiring and in fact anodyne, and Sullivan’s right. But, as I’ve noted before, in those words we saw the real Joe: a decent and straightforward man with a vision, however unrealistic it is. He is not an orator. Sullivan:
But [Biden’s Inaugural speech] matched the occasion: it was conventional, banal even, and anodyne. And how much we’ve missed banality! Biden boldly asked us to be against “anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness,” and to reaffirm the “history, faith and reason” that provides unity. Sure. Okay. At that level of pabulum, who indeed could differ? And a nation united in pabulum is better than one divided into two tribal camps waging an “uncivil war” against each other about everything.
And if Biden sticks to this kind of common ground, it will serve him well. He is lucky, in many ways, to succeed Trump. Any normal inauguration would feel transcendent after the sack of the capitol.
After praising Joe for his pandemic response, economic stimulus package, energy plan, and so on, Sullivan gets down to business. Here are his areas of concern (Sullivan’s quotes are indented, mine flush left).
1.) Immigration. The Democrats really need to put together a sensible immigration policy that doesn’t say “open borders” to Americans. If they don’t do this, they’re shooting themselves in the foot, and risk big losses in the midterm elections.
But Biden has also shown this week that his other ambitions are much more radical. On immigration, Biden is way to Obama’s left, proposing a mass amnesty of millions of illegal immigrants, a complete moratorium on deportations, and immediate revocation of the bogus emergency order that allowed Trump to bypass Congress and spend money building his wall. Fine, I guess. But without very significant addition of border controls as a deterrent, this sends a signal to tens of millions in Central to South America to get here as soon as possible. Biden could find, very quickly, that the “unity” he preaches will not survive such an effectively open-borders policy, or another huge crisis at the border. He is doubling down on the very policies that made a Trump presidency possible. In every major democracy, mass immigration has empowered the far right. Instead of easing white panic about changing demographics, Biden just intensified it.
2.) Equity versus equality. It behooves all of us to understand the difference. I hope that Biden does! At present he seems to be bowing before Critical Theory in his executive orders:
Biden has also signaled (and by executive order, has already launched) a very sharp departure from liberalism in his approach to civil rights. The vast majority of Americans support laws that protect minorities from discrimination, so that every American can have equality of opportunity, without their own talents being held back by prejudice. But Biden’s speech and executive orders come from a very different place. They explicitly replace the idea of equality in favor of what anti-liberal critical theorists call “equity.” They junk equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcomes. Most people won’t notice that this new concept has been introduced — equity, equality, it all sounds the same — but they’ll soon find out the difference.
In critical theory, as James Lindsay explains, “‘equality’ means that citizen A and citizen B are treated equally, while ‘equity’ means adjusting shares in order to make citizen A and B equal.” Here’s how Biden defines “equity”: “the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
In less tortured English, equity means giving the the named identity groups a specific advantage in treatment by the federal government over other groups — in order to make up for historic injustice and “systemic” oppression. Without “equity”, the argument runs, there can be no real “equality of opportunity.” Equity therefore comes first. Until equity is reached, equality is postponed — perhaps for ever.
I’m not sure that Biden’s definition adheres to the equity limned by Lindsay. All we can do is wait and see what Biden proposes. His executive order does seem to conflate “equity” and “equality of opportunity,” so someone should at least tell Joe the difference.
I think that for the near future the Democratic policy should be a combination of both equity and equality: some affirmative action but with the real work—and the hard work—being done on the level Sullivan notes in the paragraph just below. For the truth is that until equality is reached, equity won’t follow except though some kind of affirmative action. Like Sullivan, my goal is equality: equality of opportunity for all, which means removing the barriers to achievement that have impeded oppressed groups for decades. That takes a huge influx of effort and money into poor communities, and I’d hope we have the will and the funds to do that. But I’d throw some equity in there, too, for a government that at least doesn’t in part include representatives from all groups loses its credibility. Sullivan sees Biden adhering to the Ibram X. Kendi view of racial equity. I’m not yet sure of that, but Biden does seem to be going in that direction.
Sullivan saying, correct, what we really need to do:
Helping level up regions and populations that have experienced greater neglect or discrimination in the past is a good thing. But you could achieve this if you simply focused on relieving poverty in the relevant communities. You could invest in schools, reform policing, target environmental clean-ups, grow the economy, increase federal attention to the neglected, and thereby help the needy in precisely these groups. But that would not reflect critical theory’s insistence that race and identity trump class, and that America itself is inherently, from top to b
3.) Gay and gender issues. Like me (I think), Sullivan is in favor of equality based on sex and gender (including transgender people), but has some worries that the Biden administration will neglect those issues in which sex and gender issues mandate some inequality:
Biden’s executive order on “LGBTQ+” is also taken directly from critical gender and queer theory. Take the trans question. Most decent people support laws that protect transgender people from discrimination — which, after the Bostock decision, is already the law of the land. But this is not enough for Biden. He takes the view that the law should go further and insist that trans women are absolutely indistinguishable from biological women — which erases any means of enforcing laws that defend biological women as a class. If your sex is merely what you say it is, without any reference to biological reality, then it is no longer sex at all. It’s gender, period. It’s socially constructed all the way down.
Most of the time, you can ignore this insanity and celebrate greater visibility and protection for trans people. But in a few areas, biology matters. Some traumatized women who have been abused by men do not want to be around biological males in prison or shelters, even if they identify as women. I think these women should be accommodated. There are also places where we segregate by sex — like showers, locker rooms — for reasons of privacy. I think that allowing naked biological men and boys to be in the same showers as naked biological women and girls is asking for trouble — especially among teens. But for Biden, this is non-negotiable, and all objections are a function of bigotry.
And in sports, the difference between the physiology of men and women makes a big difference. That’s the entire point of having separate male and female sports, in the first place. Sure, you can suppress or enhance hormones. But you will never overcome the inherited, permanent effects of estrogen and testosterone in childhood and adolescence. Male and female bodies are radically different, because without that difference, our entire species would not exist. Replacing sex with gender threatens women’s sports for that simple reason.
Now people have said these are “quibbles” I’m less worried about locker rooms than about sports, prisons, rape counseling and women’s problems. Granted, these are not as pressing as are issues of inequality, climate change, and economics.) But they’re not quibbles, for a). they bear on issues of fundamental fairness, and those issues won’t go away; and b). the way Biden’s administration works this out will have consequences for the acceptance of the Democratic Party as a whole—for our continuing control of the House and Senate (the Supreme Court is already lost for several decades). And remember, Biden casts himself not as a messenger of Wokeness, but as a healer. If he’s to heal, he has to realize that most Americans want a sensible immigration policy, want equality but only a temporary remediation of inequity via affirmative action, and don’t want untreated biological men serving time in women’s prisons or participating in women’s sports. So far Biden’s policies seem to me way too conciliatory towards Critical Theory. That is to be expected if he’s clueless about Critical Theory and also keen to not be called a racist by more leftist Democrats.
Sullivan ends this way:
I wonder if Joe Biden even knows what critical theory is. But he doesn’t have to. It is the successor ideology to liberalism among elites, a now-mandatory ideology if you want to keep your job. But Biden’s emphatic backing of this illiberal, discriminatory project on his first day is relevant. He has decided to encourage “unity” by immediately pursuing policies that inflame Republicans and conservatives and normies more than any others.
And those policies are obviously unconstitutional. . .
. . . I want Biden to succeed. I want Republicans to moderate. I want to lower the temperature. I want to emphasize those policies that really do bring us closer together, even though many may still freely dissent. Biden says he wants to as well. But none of that can or will happen if the president fuels the culture war this aggressively, this crudely, and this soon. You don’t get to unite the country by dividing it along these deep and inflammatory issues of identity. And you don’t achieve equality of opportunity by enforcing its antithesis.
I’ve quoted too freely here, and you should pay the $50 per year to read Sullivan (and perhaps Bari Weiss), because they’re good writers, because they may have views that don’t exactly jibe with yours, and because you need to read something besides the New York Times and Washington Post, which have already caved to Critical Theory. Actually, I pay $4 per month to read the NYT, so I’m paying more to read Sullivan (and Weiss, if I subscribe) than to read whole newspapers. I’ll live.
Yes, we can and should celebrate the unexpected victory of the Democrats as well as their takeover of Congress. But remember too that Biden promised to heal, and you won’t heal America by imposing Critical Theory on it.
There’s more text at the Open Culture site, but the nice seven-minute video below says most of what’s important. Her take on why cats are so appealing is spot on. Tucker brings up toxoplasmosis, but I don’t pay attention to that. Pay attention instead to the “werewolf cat” and then the Bengal Cats at about 5:20.
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From reader Rick we get a three-minute video showing a magnificent lynx. The gorgeous cat jumps atop a Canadian logging truck to suss out the operator and his vehicle. Look at the size of its paws!
Here are the YouTube notes:
Occurred in February 2020 / Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada “I am a logger from Alberta, Canada. I was stopped on the road with my skidder and looked back and to my great surprise, there was a Lynx standing by the tire on my machine. I quickly climbed on the roof and started videoing. He then jumped up on the tire, looked at me, and then jumped again on the arch of my skidder. Only a few feet from me now, he sat and curiously watched me. After a few minutes, he jumped back down on my tire and then with one great big leap, jumped off the tire back on the ground and slowly walked back into the forest never to be seen again.”
This lynx looks a bit thin, as if it needs a few snowshoe hare sandwiches.
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Here’s a Washington Post article about rapper Sterling Davis, who gave up his singing and traveling life to. . .
. . . change litter boxes at the Atlanta Humane Society. Then in 2017, he gave himself a new nickname — “TrapKing” — and started a company to humanely trap stray cats, get them spayed, neutered and microchipped, and return them to where they came from. He says the name is a play off the term “rap king,” an honorific bestowed on hip-hop’s best lyricists.
Click on the screenshot to read the piece. I’ll give an excerpt and show a few photos:
Davis, 40, now runs his company, TrapKing Humane Cat Solutions, from his RV, visiting predominantly Black neighborhoods throughout the metro Atlanta area to trap feral felines and educate people about the importance of caring for strays.
“I like to teach kids that the ‘crazy cat lady’ down the street who is feeding all the strays isn’t actually so crazy,” he said. “She’s doing what she can to help. And anyone can do the same.”
The practice of TNR — trap, neuter, release — is the humane alternative to euthanasia for stray cats, Davis added.
“Strays don’t usually do well in homes, but they help with rodent populations,” he said. “So it’s important to neuter them and return them where you got them in order to humanely control their numbers.”
(from WaPo): Sterling Davis with some traps set for stray felines. (Timothy Phillips)
When he went out on his own with his company, Davis sold all his belongings and lived in a van covered with “TrapKing” stickers so that he could afford to have cats neutered and spayed, he said. He now gets funding from donations, mostly through his website, and says he takes a small salary from the company.
He’s since upgraded to an RV, which he shares with three cats named after some of his favorite singers — Damita Jo (Janet Jackson’s middle name), Bowie and Alanis Mewissette.
The back of his RV is outfitted with plenty of room for cages holding the stray cats he picks up each day after enticing them into traps with treats of chicken or mackerel, he said.
Sterling Davis with some trapped cats before taking them to be neutered and microchipped. (Sterling Davis)
The Humane Society now covers the cost of spaying and neutering, said Davis, so he’ll park at the shelter at night to be the first one in the door the next morning. Before the pandemic hit, he also spent a lot of time speaking at schools about his affinity for felines.
. . .With so many stray cats roaming the streets, his cause often feels overwhelming, admitted Davis.
“But if we can get kids to care about these cats and especially teach boys that it’s okay to love them, maybe there’s some hope,” he said.
Boys: please love cats!
Sterling “TrapKing” Davis gives a presentation about cats at an Atlanta school in November 2019. (Mary Tan)
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Lagniappe: Reader Will Meyer sent a picture of his cat and wants to know if other readers have seen this phenomenon:
Do other cats do this Walrus Pose? Or is it just our Manny? We’ve known many cats over the years and no other crossed their back legs like this. Your views?
I haven’t seen it, but perhaps other readers have. Here’s Manny:
Roger Sorensen from St. Cloud, Minnesota sends some frigid plants. Click photos to enlarge; Roger’s captions are indented.
Central MN has been under overcast still air for the past week, with morning fog that has left some remarkable accumulations of rime ice on plants. Rime ice occurs when supercooled water droplets freeze on contact. Supercooled water droplets are still in liquid state when temperatures are below the freezing point (32ºF / 0ºC).
These are all from my back yard, where I maintain pollinator gardens of native perennials. In the winter they are also favored by Chickadees, Finches, and other birds who glean the seeds from the inflorescences.
The empty seed pod of Swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata:
Big leaf aster, Eurybia macrophylla. This is one of the few shade tolerant asters and blooms into fall still providing pollen while other plants are long past flowering:
Blue vervain, Verbena hastata. The birds do not find these seeds palatable.
Common goldenrod with Buckthorn leaf, Solidago canadensis and Rhamnus cathartica. Both are non-native invasive, Buckthorn especially so. I missed this one in my annual “Buckthorn Bust.”
It’s the Sabbath for cats and Jewish people: Saturday, January 23, 2021, and National Pie Day. It’s also National Rhubarb Pie Day, the worst pastry ever invented. I have no truck with this pie (the odious rhubarb is often mixed with strawberries, to the great detriment of the latter), though I know some people favor this gritty, sour vegetable in pies. It’s also National Handwriting Day. I notice that mine has degenerated over the years, perhaps due to either age or my complete failure to write anything by hand in the age of computers.
Wine of the Day: Here we have an inexpensive ($10-15) and delicious Italian wine, the Sartarelli Verdicchio Castelli Di Jesi Classico from 2019, made from the Verdicchio grape and the first example I’ve ever had (quaffed with an omelette made with tomatoes and Tilamook aged sharp cheddar) The wine was surprisingly viscous and extremely fruity, with notes of orange blossom, honey, and peach; and it was slightly off-dry. I’d think that this would be the ideal accompaniment to spicy Indian or Chinese food, though I usually take those with beer. If you see this one, do snap it up. It’s a great bargain.
News of the Day:
The BBC reports that in Nigeria, a 13 year old boy, sentenced to a decade in jail for “making uncomplimentary remarks about God during an argument with a friend in northern Kano state,” has had his sentence overturned by a secular appeals court. (Kano is one of the states that has a parallel system of Sharia law.) The court also overturned a death sentence against a man “for using lyrics deemed blasphemous against the Prophet Muhammad.” The singer will be retried, but the 13-year old better get his tuches out of Nigeria. Others are still serving long sentences for blasphemy—a travesty in this day and age.
Over at the Washington Post, George Conway III, a co-founder of the Republican Lincoln Project (and spouse of Kellyanne Conway), has a long essay about what criminal charges Trump may face as a private citizen. Conway, who thinks the President’s behavior was indeed criminal, goes through all the possibilities, none of which seem to include a Presidential pardon. A quote:
“. . . Trump is the extreme case. He has proved that over and over again. Bringing him to whatever justice he may deserve is, now more than ever, essential to vindicating the rule of law, which, now more than ever, must be a critical governing policy of the new administration. Vindication of the rule of law is precisely why many Americans, including myself, voted for Biden.”
After lots of waffling and intimations about when Trump’s impeachment trial will begin (it was first said to be immediate, then within two weeks), Chuck Schumer has announced that, by bipartisan agreement, Trump’s trial will start on February 9. I still think the trial is a good idea, although I’d bet a fair amount that Trump won’t be convicted. As is becoming more clear, Republicans simply won’t vote for it. But a trial will still be a reminder that there must be an accounting if a President engages in the kind of actions that Trump did. I do wonder if the Senate can bar Trump for life from holding federal office.
Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 414,170, large increase of about 3,900 deaths over yesterday’s figure. We may past half a million deaths in less than a month. The world death toll stands at 2,118,135, a big increase of about 15,800 deaths over yesterday’s total, or abut 11 deaths per minute.
Stuff that happened on January 23 includes:
393 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his eight-year-old son Honorius co-emperor.
1556 – The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
Why so many dead? As Wikipedia notes, “Most of the population in the area at the time lived in yaodongs, artificial caves in loess cliffs; these collapsed in great numbers, causing many casualties.”
1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is awarded her M.D. by the Geneva Medical College of Geneva, New York, becoming the United States’ first female doctor.
Blackwell, a great feminist, spent her early career organizing clinics and hospitals, and later engaged in many varieties of social reform. Here’s a photo:
1937 – The trial of the anti-Soviet Trotskyist center sees seventeen mid-level Communists accused of sympathizing with Leon Trotsky and plotting to overthrow Joseph Stalin‘s regime.
Every one of the defendants was found guilty and given nine grams of lead in the head in the cellars of the Lubyanka. Trotsky, who had escaped, later got an ice pick in the head.
If anyone should be canceled, it should be Lindbergh, who was a Nazi sympathizer. But of course we don’t hear a peep. Here’s a very short video Lindberg urging the U.S. to stay out of World War II.
1950 – The Knesset resolves that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Here’s Morrison, in a mock space suit, promoting his discs, then called the “Pluto Platters”, in the 1950s. Now, of course, they’re called Frisbees.
1986 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first members: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.
2002 – U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl is kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan and subsequently murdered.
Notables born on this day include:
1737 – John Hancock, American general and politician, 1st Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1793)
Hargitay played the character Olivia Benson on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Taylor Swift named one of her cats, a Scottish Fold, after Benson. Here Olivia Benson meets Olivia Benson.
Here’s Bonnard’s “The White Cat”, a bit etiolated!
1976 – Paul Robeson, American actor, singer, and activist (b. 1898)
Here’s Robeson, a hero of mine, singing to Scottish miners. The Youtube notes:
Extract from Mining Review 2nd Year No. 11 (1949) The highlight of this 1949 issue is the visit of American actor and singer Paul Robeson to Woolmet Colliery near Edinburgh. Robeson was also a renowned (and often persecuted) left-wing political activist and he made several visits to British mining communities. On this occasion he sings “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” for miners in the canteen, a song about an American trade unionist who was allegedly framed on a murder charge and executed in 1915. Robeson had long been something of a hero to the British mining community, ever since he starred in the film Proud Valley (d. Pen Tennyson, 1940) as an American sailor stranded in Cardiff who finds work in a Welsh colliery (the newsreel opens with a short clip from the film).
1985 – James Beard, American chef and cookbook author for whom the James Beard Foundation Awards are named (b.1905)
1989 – Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter and sculptor (b. 1904)
2004 – Helmut Newton, German-Australian photographer (b. 1920)
Newton was a great fashion photographer. Here’s one of his photos (I can’t identify the model).
2011 – Jack LaLanne, American fitness instructor, author, and television host (b. 1914)
2015 – Ernie Banks, American baseball player and coach (b. 1931)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is weary from the day’s editing, but Andrzej soldiers on.
Hili: Maybe we could switch off the computer and go to sleep?
A: Just let me read this article.
In Polish:
Hili: Może zgasimy już ten komputer i pójdziemy spać?
Ja: Pozwól mi tylko przeczytać ten artykuł.
Kulka’s out in the snow again. She can’t be stopped:
Two inauguration memes. Good for Garth Brooks: after all, he’s a country singer!
And, from Jean, the best take yet on Bernie In Mittens:
A fake Time Magazine cover sent by Bruce:
Here’s a guy who trained his dogs to pray before eating! I guess he doesn’t know that Catholic philosopher Edward Feser asserts that dogs can’t go to Heaven.
From Ginger K.: Another Biden reversal of Trump policy. I can’t verify that the button was real: some sources imply it was, while others have doubts.
President Biden has removed the Diet Coke button. When @ShippersUnbound and I interviewed Donald Trump in 2019, we became fascinated by what the little red button did. Eventually Trump pressed it, and a butler swiftly brought in a Diet Coke on a silver platter. It's gone now. pic.twitter.com/rFzhPaHYjk
Tweets from Matthew. As somebody said, you don’t stand on the shoulders of giants to accomplish good science—you stand on the shoulders of a whole crowd.
Gregory Gregoriadis was more pleased than most to learn he was getting the Pfizer vaccine. 50 years ago he pioneered the lipid particles used to deliver it.
A reminder that amazing science can only happen in a year because of decades of work. https://t.co/TjhkuTNOLW
Yep, it’s time for another edition of the Curmudgeon Gazette: a list of words and phrases that rankle me. As usual, most of them come from HuffPost, and, as usual, people will tell me that some of these phrases are fine. “Language evolves,” say the Excusers. Great, but I still don’t like these phrases.
On this cold but sunny Chicago afternoon, I have three for you. (Click on screenshots to see article.)
1.) “I’m all about X.” This one really burns my onions (see the subtitle below). First of all, nobody is all about anything—every human is multifaceted and has multiple interests and concerns. The phrase is simply gross exaggeration, and could easily be replaced by phrases (as in the sub-headline below) like, “This month, we focus on. . . ” or some equivalent.
You will never hear this phrase pass my lips.
2.) “All the feels”. I’m pretty sure that I’ve used this one before, but I keep seeing it, and it never ceases to irritate me, as in the HuffPost article below:
The word is “FEELINGS”, chowderheads! And even that is hyperbole. No movie moments give you the totality of human emotions, which run the gamut from despair to horror to complacency, to anxiety, to elation—and many more. Can’t these peabrains just say “13 Emotional Movie Moments”? My “feel” when I read headlines like this one is disgust.
3.) “The thing is. . . is that. . ” Now this one baffles me. Why can you just say “The thing is X” instead of “The thing is. . . is X”? For example, “The thing is, is that he’s been a real jerk to me for a long time” can be replaced by “The thing is that he’s been a real jerk for me for a long time.” Better yet, deep-six “the thing is” part, which adds little, or replace it with “The important thing is.”
Here’s a discussion from the website Language Rules:
From that site:
It may be much more clear to see when sentences are rearranged. One of the above examples [JAC: the grammatically correct sentence”How correct this is is clear to see”] can be arranged as follows:
How correct this is is clear to see.
or
It is clear to see how correct this is.
In this instance, we can immediately tell that “how correct this is” in this case is a complete noun phrase able to stand on its own. When we try to reconstruct an example of an incorrect sentence using “The thing is is…” in exactly the same way, we get this:
The thing is is that this is incorrect.
or
It is that this is incorrect the thing is.
Most folks should be able to tell that the second sentence is totally jacked, which immediately tells us that the first sentence, merely a rearrangement of the words, must be incorrect as well, even though it sounds slightly better.
You know the drill: it’s time to be petulant and put your bête noire phrases below.
I just talked to a friend, and we shared our feelings about the new Biden administration. We were both relieved and hopeful, but when I expressed some of the same worries that Bari Weiss does in her new Substack column (below), my friend admonished me: “Oh, don’t look for needs in haystacks, enjoy the relief!” I responded that I was a Jew, and therefore could be elated for one hour at most—the duration of the Inauguration. After that, the worries set in again. I think this is a legacy from our history: a pogrom was always around the corner. If one was a genetic determinist, one could argue that a form of natural selection was at play: the nervous and anxious Jews who were the ones who survived.
At any rate, I told my friend that the best one can do as a “glass-half-full” Jew is complacency, not unalloyed happiness.
Perhaps that’s also true for Ms. Weiss, also Jewish but, unlike me, religiously so. She’s worried about the Biden administration, or, rather, that people are ignoring potential problems with the administration down the line. Click on the screenshot to read about Weiss’s angst. Her site will be free for the time being, but do consider subscribing. I am waiting a few weeks to decide. This week, though, it’s pretty good. For one thing, she limns the content of her column, which emphasizes political hypocrisy and inconsistency:
I’ll be focusing on topics where the mainstream media gets . . . confused. Remember this summer, when it decided that anyone who did not want to defund the police was considered a right-winger? Or that to use national guardsmen to keep the peace was considered unthinkable on June 6, but by January 6 was bipartisan national policy? Or that Big Tech’s power was terrifying and evil, until it was used to put down Parler? Or that anyone who violated the lockdowns denied science, unless they were marching for the right political cause?
After the ritual (and necessary) statement that Weiss detested Trump and voted for Biden, she says a few words about her fractious experiences at the New York Times:
If I were still at a newspaper, I’d be compelled to write something about the inauguration — a riff about how it’s morning again (again) in America; the powerful symbolism of Eugene Goodman, the heroic police officer who faced down the rioters, escorting the vice president; Lil Wayne’s pardon.
But I am no longer at a newspaper. That’s because my politics — center-left on some issues, center-right on others, a centrism that most Americans still occupy — were unwelcome. I see the ideological capture and institutional transformation that occurred at The Times as a sign of what’s to come these next four years. Which leads me to the purpose of my newsletter and what I hope to cover in the Biden era.
I voted for Joe Biden. I think that he is past his prime. I also think he is an eminently decent and kind man. That fact that his decency seems positively refreshing is a tragic sign of where we are. But it does. And I welcome it.
I’ve said it many times, but I will say it here again: Trump was a malignant narcissist. Seeing that did not require a psychology degree. He coarsened everything and everyone he touched. He trashed all of our guardrails. He hastened our undoing.
. . . The truth is that Joe Biden is a fig leaf. He is a fig leaf for the deep problems that roil our country, for the totalizing ideologies spreading through the nation like wildfire, and for the dramatic political realignment that we are living through.
Weiss, properly, sees problems on both the Right and Left: the polarization that leads to the unrealistic expectations we’ve heaped on Biden, the Woke on the Left and the bigotry and fascism on the Right, with authoritarianism at both poles.
And so Weiss proposes “five litmus tests for the Biden era”. I’ll just give her headers and a few of her words (and my take) on each, as you should read her column (and consider subscribing).
Will the Biden administration make the case that America is good?
That’s not sarcastic or rhetorical. And it’s not a question about what’s in Joseph R. Biden’s heart.
I mean: Will his administration embrace the new re-understanding of America that shot through the streets this summer and issues forth daily from the mouths of our elites? That view goes like this: America was born for the purpose of upholding white supremacy and it remains irredeemably racist. Our founders were not primarily political geniuses but slaveholders who wanted to find a way to hoard their property. And while the rioters may have gotten a little out of hand, they weren’t wrong to target statues of men like Lincoln. . .
Yes, Biden will embrace that woke re-understanding. It’s already doing so. I didn’t realize that the power of the Woke rests in their ability to demonize others on the Left by calling them racists or bigots.
Will neo-racism be normalized?
A few months ago I spoke to a Trump administration official who confirmed that the president wouldn’t know what Critical Race Theory was if it smacked him in the face. Nevertheless, in September of 2020, Trump passed an executive order banning training for federal agencies and federal contractors that relies on this ideology. . . .
Biden just reversed this order, so CRT can be taught to our kids again. Not a good move, and another Biden order that worries me. It is not a conciliatory move, but a divisive one. Every white kid in America will now be taught that he/she/etc. carries a burden of guilt and is a racist whether they know it or not.
Will cancel culture become the culture?
Cancelling has become a normal part of American life. We are no longer surprised when someone is fired for a bad tweet, or when a publisher drops an author for an unpopular view, or when teenagers spy on one another like little Stasi and adults applaud.
But all of that could be child’s play compared to what will come from the strong alliance between the Democratic Party and the press, which are advocating that major tech companies crack down on “hate,” or “disinformation,” which has quickly become a synonym for “information I don’t like.”
Yes, expect more censorship and even more cancellation of those with the Wrong Opinons.
Can you make a living in the wealthiest country in the world?
One in five small American businesses will not make it through this pandemic. Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports seems to care more about that number more than anyone in Congress.
We live in the wealthiest country in the world, yet the three jobs with the most projected growth all earn less than $28,000 a year. They are home health and personal care aides at $25,280; fast-food and counter workers at $22,740; and restaurant cooks at $27,790, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. . .
Economics is beyond my bailiwick, so I’ll just wait and see.
This is what I worry most about: the continuing division in America that Biden has promised to heal. But I think if you’ve kept your eyes and ears open over the last few years, you’ll know that while Biden’s words sound good and soothing, they’re malarkey. How will Biden bring together Democrats and Republicans, each party hating the other and thinking it’s the embodiment of Satan?
Weiss:
Is there a way to end our ongoing uncivil war?
When the 46th president said at the inauguration that “disagreement must not lead to disunion,” and that “we must end this uncivil war,” I nodded along. Then I thought about the fact that serious people are calling for enemies’ lists and the banning of Fox News, and I wondered how, really, we could put an end to our current uncivil war.
Half of Americans say that other Americans — not poverty; not China — pose the biggest threat to the country.
During one of the presidential debates, Marianne Williamson set off a thousand memes when she said: “If you think any of this wonkiness is going to deal with this dark psychic force of collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up in the country, then I’m afraid Democrats are going to see some very dark days.” People laughed. But she got it mostly right.
If you think stability and normalcy are about to return to America, ask yourself if you said that there was no way in hell that Donald Trump could win the White House.
That last sentence should make you stop and think.
There’s also a podcast interview in which Megyn Kelly, conservative former broadcaster for Fox News (and then NBC News) interviews Weiss. I listened to 40 minutes of the 100-minute interview, and it wasn’t bad—so long as Weiss was talking. I found Kelly’s take too conservative and predictable, and I still remember her cringeworthy statements at Fox.
I suspect I’ll wind up subscribing to either Weiss or Sullivan (I already subscribe to him) but not both. In the meantime, I’ll read their weekly columns.
