Month: February 2021

NBC’s invidious portrayal of Orthodox Jews

February 28, 2021 • 12:45 pm

I’m not going to get bent out of shape about this incident, or call for heads to roll at NBC, but I can say that if this kind of stereotyping—and erroneous stereotyping—occurred with Muslims, blacks, or Hispanics, fulsome apologies would be tendered and heads would roll. It’s apparently okay for Jews, though.

I’m not going to defend the silly religious beliefs of the Orthodox, or their extreme form of Haredi Judaism, for those tenets are just as mythological and unfounded as the beliefs of any other faith. But you’d think that the writers of television shows depicting religions would at least get the beliefs right. In this case it’s a Hasidic Jew and his father (Hasids are a subset of Haredi Jews).

The clip is from the NBC show Nurses, which I haven’t seen, and it involves an Orthodox boy whose leg has been hurt and who needs a bone graft to fully heal. If you’re a Hasid, as Allison Josephs is in her article below (from an Orthodox site called “Jew in the City”), you’ll cast a kitten:

Okay, what’s the problem? Allison explains it in the video and the article below that. I’ll show an excerpt (there are multiple gaffes):

But if you weren’t offended yet, buckle up, because then the show really gets nasty. Israel is told by the doctor that he’ll need a bone graft to fully heal. Israel doesn’t understand what this means, so the doctor explains that he’ll have to have part of a dead person’s bone surgically inserted into his leg.

Cue the horror! Israel and his father are distraught at the notion that he’ll have a dead person’s body part in his body and that it will be a “goyim”[Sic] part to boot! But even worse than that – it could be an “Arab” body part or an “lady” body part. Or as the nurse reminds them, “an Arab lady” body part. (See this disturbing clip in my video explanation below.)

Despite my invitation to Hollywood producers to consult us when they do their “token Hasidic Jew” episode, Hollywood insists on remaining ignorant and promoting lies about the Orthodox community. Let’s unpack how badly they did with this aforementioned scene:

  1. There is no prohibition on getting a dead body part surgically inserted into one’s body. In fact, Jewish law says we should use the best medicine of our times to recover from our illnesses.
  2. There is no prohibition to get a non-Jewish body part inserted, nor is there a prohibition if the part belongs to a woman or an Arab.

Now, are there Orthodox Jews who look down on non-Jews and Arabs? You betcha. And are there Orthodox Jews who are misogynists? Unfortunately, yes for that one too. But the idea that such a surgery would be problematic in general or problematic because of where the bone came from not only is categorically false according to Jewish law, it is a vicious lie that endangers men who walk around with curled side locks and black hats.

Read the article below, because there are a lot of other gaffes in this very short clip and in the show as a whole. Don’t they even know that “goyim” is plural of “goy” and if you want an adjective for a gentile body part, it’s “goyische”.  All I can say is “Oy, gewalt!”

 

I wanted to see if NBC actually did apologize—I didn’t expect it—so I Googled “NBC apology for Nurses clip”. I found an article that says that NBC has actually withdrawn the episode, apparently the season finale, from its platform:

After facing backlash from the social media users and Jewish organizations, NBC pulled the season finale from its digital platforms, according to a report by Deadline.

The scrutiny over the resurfaced Nurses clip comes after NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) also facing backlash for an anti-Semitic joke about Israel and coronavirus vaccines.

Guess which site that is? Breitbart! (No, I don’t read it; it came up on Google!). And nearly every other site that you get when you Google “NBC apology for Nurses clip” is conservative site like Fox News, Mediaite, or The Daily Mail. I tried the Washington Post, Huffpost (including their anti-Semitism section) and the New York Times specifically, and—no dice.

Is there a reason that the liberal media would ignore a distortion of Judaism this grotesque, but would feature it prominently if it involved the same finagling with African-Americans or Muslims? (“What, doctor: you want to put a PIG HEART VALVE in my son? No way!! Best leave him in the hands of Allah.”) Of course there is, and you know the answer.

Had I seen the show (I wouldn’t have) and had I known the grotesque distortions of belief involved (I didn’t), I would have kvetched a bit here, but my activism about mocking or distorting religion stops there. I’ll just point out the potential hypocrisy involved in this fracas being something that the right-wing but not left-wing media would highlight. It reminds me of an old joke, one that you won’t have heard:

A guy walks into a bar and notices a man talking to the bartender down at the other end. The guy does a doubletake because the man talking to the bartender really resembles Hitler.

So the guy goes up to the man and says “Excuse me, but did anybody ever tell you that you look like Hitler?”

The man says “Oh, but I am  Hitler. I have been reincarnated and I am back on Earth to kill 10 million Jews and 33 geese!”

“Oh, my God! That’s terrible! But why 33 geese?”

Hitler then turns to the bartender and says “See? I told you that nobody cares about the Jews.”

Oh, and let me note this at the end. Though some Haredi sects are opposed to organ donation after death, the Haredim are known for their willingness to be live donors, giving kidneys to other people, and not just other Jews. In fact, it’s more of a mitzvah if you don’t know who the recipient is. In Israel, the Haredim donate to everyone, including Israeli Arabs.  For verification, see Wikipedia, which has a reference to the U.S. data:

Haredi Jews have a high rate of live organ donations. In 2014, 17% of all live kidney donations to strangers in the United States were donated by Haredi Jews, even though they are only 0.2% of the US population.[8] Other studies of other live organ donations in the US and Israel show similarly high donation rates for a variety of organs.[citation needed]

A new letter to Adam Gopnik

February 28, 2021 • 10:30 am

As I wrote about two weeks ago, Adam Gopnik, a well-known writer who’s on staff at The New Yorker, is engaging me in an Internet discussion about “ways of knowing” on the “Conversation” site of Letter. I was going to post only when the exchange—which will involve either three or four letters each—was complete, but I decided that I’d let readers know as each letter goes up.  I’ve just posted my response to Adam, which is my second letter and #3 in the series at the website below (click on screenshot to read). Each week should see a new letter.

The discussion is mostly about literature, where Adam’s expertise lies, and whether knowledge can be discerned from literature alone. But I won’t go into the specifics, as our thoughts will be laid out for all to see. Feel free to comment below, though, and remember, this is a civil discussion between Adam and me, that we’re friends, and that comments should also be civil—even when critical of either of us.

Why do woodcocks rock when they walk?

February 28, 2021 • 9:30 am

First, have a look at these videos showing American woodcocks (Scolopax minor) walking. This bizarre way of walking (they do it only occasionally; see below), with a rocking motion and an absolutely steady head, is unique among birds. (People can’t resist putting this movement to music; turn off the sound if you don’t want to hear “Walk Like an Egyptian”!)

Juveniles do it as well:

Very young chicks also do it, though not as strikingly as the adults. Woodcocks eat earthworms and invertebrates (ants, millipedes, etc.) that they grub from the soil, and you can see this one probing a bit.

Finally, a range map from the Cornell bird site. If you live in the right place and are lucky, you might see one, though they tend to hunker down in the woods and become almost invisible:

 

I believe I showed a tweet of this behavior the other day and asked readers, “Why do they do this?”, noting that there are several hypotheses. I put the question to our expert ornithologist, Bruce Lyon of the University of California at Santa Cruz, who put me on to two papers (below), one of which may well have the correct answer. Let me add that we still don’t know the reason, and more observations and experiments are in order; but the one advanced in the second paper below makes the most sense given the data at hand.

Here’s the first paper, which summarizes several theories, but not the one that’s probably correct. It’s from a 1982 issue of The Auk (click on screenshot to read):

Marshall watched woodcocks intently—once for a total of 8 hours during three days in 1978—and describes the motion:

As the bird slowly walked about, its head and neck remained on a level plane, but its body was almost continually moving back and forth, best described as “rocking.” A line between the neck and dorsal feathers was obvious, because, while the body moved, the head did not. One foot was lifted high then placed down ahead with the weight on it; the other foot was lifted so that only the tips of the toes were in contact with the ground. This repetitious movement stopped when the bird picked a small worm from the surface, probed deeply to pull out a large worm, or extracted an insect from under a leaf. The head was well forward and held slightly to one side with the tip of the bill 3 cm or less above the surface.Sometimes progress was broken by repeated rocking in one place, and, less often, the bird stood motionless for several minutes.

He gives four explanations that had already been advanced at that time. The comments are mine:

1.) “A nervous action resulting from fear or suspicion”.  Given that this action calls attention to the bird, it would seem maladaptive to do this if there was a predator around. However, as we’ll see below, it may actually be adaptive in that situation.

2.) “Mimicry of leaves being moved by a breeze.” This seems unlikely as the birds do this when there is no breeze, as Marshall observes, and the rocking is not really very close to that of leaves, which move erratically.

3.) “Mimicry of prevailing shadows”.  As Marshall observes, they walk like this even when it’s overcast and there are no shadows, and the behavior, in fact, makes the birds more conspicuous, at least to a human observer, than when they stand still.

4.) Detection of earthworms or insects under the ground. The hypothesis is that the bird, by walking this way, exerts pressure on the ground that makes the worms and insects move, thus enabling the woodcock to detect them and eat them. At the time Heinrich wrote the paper below, 34 years later, this seems to have become the prevailing explanation. But, as we’ll see, it doesn’t seem likely. If you watched the first and second video above, you’ll probably see why.

Bernd Heinrich is a first-class scientist and naturalist, as well as a world-class long-distance runner, and I’ve read several of his books on corvids (he’s written a lot of popular books). This short paper, based on Heinrich’s observations of woodcocks, was published in Northeastern Naturalist (click screenshot to read the paper):

Heinrich’s observations show that woodcocks only walk like this under certain conditions: when they know they are being watched (Heinrich didn’t see them do it when he hid himself and watched with binoculars), and they do it in open habitat where it’s more likely that a predator would spot them. When Heinrich followed the birds, they rocked only when walking away from him. When he stopped, the birds stopped. When he started walking toward the birds again, the birds started their rocking walk.  Also, they don’t rock when they’re in the woods, where they’re more cryptic.

Although rocking, says Heinrich, occurs during foraging, it’s not likely that it helps the birds detect earthworms or other insects underground. For one thing, as you saw above, they do the “rock walk” on asphalt or on the snow, and there are no invertebrates to be found that way. Further, the way the birds walk is a gentle placement of the feet on the soil, and not, as Heinrich says, “the kind [of walk] designed to cause earth vibrations.” If that were the case, the bird would probably stomp forcefully on the ground, for violent vibrations are what make worms and insects move. (These are created in the American South by “grunters” who use a chainsaw to create violent vibrations in the soil to bring up worms for fishing.)

All of these considerations lead Heinrich to his hypothesis, which derives from observations of other animals that make themselves conspicuous to predators when they know predators are around:

In certain situations, some animals make themselves highly conspicuous to predators, as a defense. Alcock (2013) summarizes these deliberately conspicuous behaviors, such as the slotting of antelope (Pitcher 1979), the waving of the tail by an Anolis lizard when it had been discovered by a potential predator (Leal 1999), and the white tail flashing of fleeing Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmermann) (White-tailed deer), as “advertisements of unprofitability” that act to reduce the likelihood of attack by a potential predator. This hypothesis for the function of a potentially conspicuous behavior gives relevance to the visually conspicuous “rocking” behavior of Woodcock, given the circumstances of when it occurs and an anecdote of my own.

Here’s a springbok “stotting” (also called “pronking”), one of the behaviors thought to be an alert to predators saying, “Don’t bother to attack; I’ve seen you already.”

Why would an animal do this? And why would it deter predators? If a predator knows the potential prey has seen it, and has let it know that detection by a conspicuous display, it’s to the predator’s advantage not to attack, because its advantage of stealth has been lost. Attacking would likely be a waste of time and energy. And it’s to the potential prey’s advantage to make such a display, because it uses less energy to “rock walk” than, say, to fly away,= and potentially leave a spot rich in food.  The evolution of this behavior would probably start by some individuals doing something that makes themselves conspicuous when they see a predator, and those would be individuals in species that have the ability to flee successfully when a predator is close. But it depends on the display deterring the predator, so some learning of the predator must also occur. (Later, that learning could actually become an evolved behavior by the predator to simply not attack when it sees the display.)

And this is, my Best Beloved, is How The Woodcock Got Its Walk. Here’s Heinrich’s hypothesis:

I suggest that the Woodcock rocking-walk display is a response to what it perceives as a mild potential threat situation that is not severe enough to initiate predator-avoidance tactics to disrupt it into flight or cryptic hiding. The Woodcock’s rocking-walk display may act as a signal in a situation of a perceived potential audience or a predator, indicating that it is aware and can explode off the ground and escape if the predator seems likely to attack. The display saves the bird the energy and bother of flying off and possibly being chased.

The rocking walk display is likely to occur during foraging, because foraging is centered at a food-rich place that the bird may be reluctant to leave. In most instances, available video clips of the behavior (displayed on the Internet by interested citizens) were made of Woodcock in potentially threatening ecological settings or during a discrete threat. The Woodcock were either out of their usually preferred woodland habitat (Bent 1927, McAuley et al. 2013) or near humans and were thus potentially “nervous from fear and suspicion” as Pettingill (1936) had originally supposed.

Good scientist that he is, Heinrich proposes further tests, and (not shown below) also suggests tests of the “worm detection hypothesis”.

That the bird’s behavior while walking is variable, including a teetering motion, is undisputed, but the reason(s) for this behavior is still uncertain. To test the display hypothesis that I propose would require observing the bird unseen (perhaps by remote video camera), both undisturbed in its preferred habitat and then under the influence of a mild (but not strong) potential threat in the presence of a resource of significant value to the bird.

Here’s Bernd himself, studying his beloved ravens; I’ve met him once or twice:

Heinrich, born in Poland in 1940 (Wikipedia says Germany, but it’s wrong), is also an “ultrarunner”, and was the best in America at long-distance running during the first half of the 1980s.  He held records in the 100 kilometer race and in the straight 24-hour run (oy!), the latter with a record distance of 156 miles (he was then taken to the hospital). Here he is finishing the record 100K (62 miles!):

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 28, 2021 • 8:15 am

It’s Sunday, and that means a new “themed” batch of birds from John Avise. His notes and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

More Avian “Hair-dos”

Two weeks ago, Jerry posted some of my photos of bird head-dressings (see “Avian Crests, Tufts, and Horns”).  Many additional avian species have other kinds of head adornments that are the subject of this next batch of photos.  Some of these birds look like they’ve had various “haircut” styles (such as a crew-cut, mohawk, punk-style, or long hippie-style), but of course feathers rather than mammalian hairs are involved.  Some species simply look as if they’re having a “bad-hair” day, while others appear neatly coiffed.

All of these photographs were taken in Southern California or Florida, where only the Peafowl is non-native.

Hooded Merganser female, Lophodytes cucullatus. hood up:

Hooded Merganser female, hood down:

Hooded Merganser male, hood up:

Hooded Merganser male, hood down:

Eared Grebe, Podiceps nigricollis:

California Quail, Callipepla californica:

Gambel’s Quail, Callipepla gambelii:

Elegant Terns, Sterna elegans:

Royal Tern, Sterna maxima:

Sandwich Tern, Sterna sandvicensis:

Belted Kingfisher male, Ceryle alcyon:

Golden Eagle, Aquila chrysactos:

Snowy Egret, Egretta thula:

Brown Pelican, Pelecanus occidentalis:

Red-breasted Merganser, Mergus serrator:

Indian Peafowl female, Pavo cristatus:

Indian Peafowl male:

Sunday: Hili dialogue

February 28, 2021 • 6:30 am

It is the Sabbath for humans and canids: Sunday, February, February 28, 2021, and the last day of this wretched month. It’s National Chocolate Soufflé Day, as well as Global Scouse Day, celebrating a stew associated with Liverpool, and, in India, National Science Day, celebrating the discovery, on this day in 1928, of the light effect called “Raman Scattering” by Indian physicist C. V. Raman. Raman won the Nobel Prize for this discovery, becoming the first Asian to win a Nobel in science. Here’s a photo:

And here’s Raman getting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm. The Wikipedia caption is “Raman at the 1930 Nobel Prize Award Ceremony with other winners, from left C. V. Raman (physics), Hans Fischer (chemistry), Karl Landsteiner (medicine) and Sinclair Lewis (literature).”

Wine of the Day:  After a lovely Spring-like day, with 20 (!) mallards descending on Botany Pond (I did not feed them, and Honey wasn’t among them), I figured it was time to crack the bottle below, a gift of the only postdoc I ever had, who, besides being a great scientist, was also a member of the Llopart family, famous for centuries for producing cava, the Spanish equivalent of champagne. She gave me this bottle for my last birthday. 

This is Llopart’s top-of-the-line cava, and it’s unavailable in America (it was carried back from Spain). Aged for at least eight years before release, this is from the highly rated 2008 vintage. Production is limited, with only a few thousand bottles produced per vintage (note the bottle number below), so I’m lucky to have it. And oy, was it good! Dry, but with the classic “toasty” nose of French champagne, it also had overtones of apple, so the best way I can describe the flavor is “toast with apple butter.”  At 13 years old, it’s not even close to being over the hill. It’s made from two Spanish grapes, Macabeo and Xarelo

I had the first half bottle with a juicy pork chop, rice, and green beans, and drank my second glass after dinner so I could savor it on its own.  Llopart cavas, of which there are about eight varieties, are always tasty and good values; try the Brut Rosés if you like pink champagne! Cava is often made with great care in Spain, and it’s a good and affordable alternative to overpriced French champagne. But shop carefully.

News of the Day:

People are kvetching because the design of the stage at the conservative CPAC convention resembles the collar insignia of volunteer units of Hitler’s Waffen SS.  You be the judge, but I think it’s a coincidence. Seriously, would they do this on purpose?

You’ll all be relieved to hear that Lady Gaga’s two French bulldogs have been found unharmed tied to a pole behind an alley in Los Angeles. They were abducted on Wednesday, and Lady Gaga’s 30-year-old dogwalker was shot. The dog-finder stands to get a $500,000 reward, and nobody seems to care about the condition of the injured dogwalker, who, by the way, is recovering.

Even better news is that the FDA has given emergency approval to Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is a single-shot jab (J&J are testing a two-jab regimen) that can be stored at refrigerator temperature. The efficacy, at about 72%, is lower than that of the Pfizer and Moderna alternatives, but it’s 100% effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths. With 100 million doses of this vaccine scheduled to be delivered by summer, the U.S. will be, as they say, “done and dusted.”

The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed the House, but narrowly and without bipartisan support, with all but two Democrats and no Republicans voting for the bill (the vote waas 219-212). It now goes to the Senate, where it faces a sterner test. The $15 minimum wage provision has already been effectively removed by the Senate parliamentarian, and two Democrats (Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema), are opposed to that anyway. It will pass eventually, but without the minimum wage provision, which, sadly, looks DOA.

Finally,  today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 511,850, an increase of about 1,500 deaths over yesterday’s figure  The reported world death toll stands 2,538,691, an increase of about 7,600 deaths over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on February 28, a busy day in history, includes:

Here’s a 19th-century painting of the incident, “The Martyrdom of Cuauhtémoc”, by Leandro Izaguirre.

  • 1849 – Regular steamship service from the east to the west coast of the United States begins with the arrival of the SS California in San Francisco Bay, four months 22 days after leaving New York Harbor.
  • 1874 – One of the longest cases ever heard in an English court ends when the defendant is convicted of perjury for attempting to assume the identity of the heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.

The case lasted three years, and the claimant (real name unknown) was sentenced to 14 years in prison for trying to get the inheritance of a family member presumed lost at sea.

  • 1933 – Gleichschaltung: The Reichstag Fire Decree is passed in Germany a day after the Reichstag fire.
  • 1935 – DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invents nylon.

Here’s Carothers with nylon, a polyamide compound:

You’re gonna want to know about this; here’s a bit from Wikipedia (it took them eight years to catch the error):

The word dord is a dictionary error in lexicography. It was accidentally created, as a ghost word, by the staff of G. and C. Merriam Company (now part of Merriam-Webster) in the New International Dictionary, second edition (1934). That dictionary defined the term a synonym for density used in physics and chemistry in the following way:

dord (dôrd), n. Physics & Chem. Density.

On 31 July 1931, Austin M. Patterson, the dictionary’s chemistry editor, sent in a slip reading “D or d, cont./density.” This was intended to add “density” to the existing list of words that the letter “D” can abbreviate. The phrase “D or d” was misinterpreted as a single, run-together word: Dord. This was a plausible mistake, because headwords on slips were typed with spaces between the letters, so “D or d” looked very much like “D o r d”. The original slip went missing, so a new slip was prepared for the printer, which assigned a part of speech (noun) and a pronunciation. The would-be word was not questioned or corrected by proofreaders. The entry appeared on page 771 of the dictionary around 1934, between the entries for The Dorcopsis (a type of small kangaroo) and doré (golden in color).

  • 1940 – Basketball is televised for the first time (Fordham University vs. the University of Pittsburgh in Madison Square Garden).
  • 1953 – James Watson and Francis Crick announce to friends that they have determined the chemical structure of DNA; the formal announcement takes place on April 25 following publication in April’s Nature (pub. April 2).

Let’s correct one error here: that Watson and Crick strode into the Eagle pub on Cambridge that day and announced that they’d found the secret of life. As Matthew noted in his post on Crick’s 100th birthday party, where Watson spoke,

[Watson] finally admitted that when he wrote in The Double Helix that Crick strode into the Eagle pub and proclaimed ‘We have discovered the secret of life’, this was not true. Watson said he made it up, for dramatic effect. Crick always denied saying any such thing, and historians have long known that The Double Helix cannot be taken as an entirely reliable source.

  • 1983 – The final episode of M*A*S*H airs, with almost 106 million viewers. It still holds the record for the highest viewership of a season finale.

Here’s the end of that last episode, the 256th:

  • 1986 – Olof Palme, 26th Prime Minister of Sweden, is assassinated in Stockholm.
  • 1991 – The first Gulf War ends.
  • 2013 – Pope Benedict XVI resigns as the pope of the Catholic Church, becoming the first pope to do so since Pope Gregory XII, in 1415.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1901 – Linus Pauling, American chemist and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)
  • 1906 – Bugsy Siegel, American gangster (d. 1947)

Bugsy was a nasty member of the group of Jewish mobsters called “The Kosher Mafia”. He was one of those responsible for making Las Vegas a gaming capital controlled by the mob, and was murdered at 41. Bugsy’s real name was Benjamin Siegel. Here’s a mugshot from 1928 and his memorial plaque at Bialystoker Synagogue in New York:

Read Medawar’s 1961 review of The Phenomenon of Man, a wooey book by the priest/scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; it’s the best nasty review of a “science” book ever! I wish I’d written it.

  • 1942 – Brian Jones, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer (d. 1969)
  • 1948 – Bernadette Peters, American actress, singer, and author

Peters is renowned both for acting and for her interpretations of the songs of Stephen Sondheim. (She was also in a relationship with Steve Martin for four years.) Here she is in 1994, with Sondheim at the keyboard, singing my favorite Sondheim song:

  • 1953 – Paul Krugman, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate

Those who bought the farm on February 28 include:

  • 2007 – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. American historian and critic (b. 1917)
  • 2020 – Joe Coulombe, founder of Trader Joe’s (b. 1930)

I just went to the local Trader Joe’s two days ago to pick up some packages of their frozen saag paneer, which is terrific. Here’s Trader Joe:

  • 2020 – Freeman Dyson, British-born American physicist and mathematician (b. 1923)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej exchange observations:

Hili: These lights and shadows are strange.
A: Indeed they are.
Hili: Dziwne te światła i cienie.
Ja: Rzeczywiście.

Here’s leaping Kulka (and Szaron) with the caption: “Paulina’s pictures from the life of Kulka.”

(In Polish): brazki Pauliny z życia Kulki.

Three cat memes today. This reenactment photo is from Fat Cat Art, and is titled “Girl with Purrl Earring”.

From Grumpy Cats:

From Facebook:

Another tweet from Titania that some poor schmoes will take seriously:

Cesar found this tweet from Nikole Hannah-Jones, the NYT’s head of the 1619 project, commenting on Ouou Kanoute, the Smith student whose false claims of racism (see here) ignited a firestorm on campus that’s still smoldering. Hannah-Jones seems to have erased this tweet, which she seems to do as often as Trump tells lies. She vowed to take a Twitter break, but, as Greenwald notes below, can’t stick to it. She’s a nasty piece of work.

(h/t cesar)

Tweets from Matthew. Sadly, this one doesn’t actually show the skunk using the rock to break ice, but it’s drinking from the bowl and holding the rock in its forepaw. FIRST KNOWN CASE OF TOOL-USING IN SKUNKS!

Here’s the latest from Statler, the aging and decrepit but game fruit bat at the Bat World Sanctuary. (I think I identify with him.) The keepers take him “flying” every day, which means walking him about as he flaps his agéd wings. They love him, and so do I. He’s now an internet personality!

Matthew highlights this amazing finding, but notes that people are missing how old it is! He says,

Everyone on Twitter is going nuts over this paper, linked to by Adam, where he says  “Well this is simply the most astonishing discovery that I can recall. A bacteria that photosynthesises from INFRARED LIGHT FROM A DEEP SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT.”  But the paper was published in 2005 (I missed it too), and has been cited 205 times, mainly by exobiology folk and photosynthesis people. So loads of people who are impressed by this, had no idea. Odd, eh?

I blame the science journalists:

Matthew sent me the tweet with an explanation (the bomb was 2 meters long), and I added his notes and retweeted it. Sound up: it’s a big bang!

Another view:

You have to wait until the end of this one; the folks are completely taken aback!

A squabble: Andrew Sullivan and Mara Keisling on transgender women in women’s sports

February 27, 2021 • 12:45 pm

I don’t have time to listen to podcasts, as they’re invariably at least 90 minutes long, but this is a manageable six-minute extract from a recent podcast discussion between Andrew Sullivan and Mara Keisling, the founding executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (Keisling is a transgender woman, which I mention only because it’s relevant to the discussion).

Keisling claims not only that transgender women and girls have no advantage over biological women in sports, but that clearly that includes transgender women who have had no medical treatment. That, of course, is the same as asserting that there’s no difference between the performance of men and women and sports—a palpably false statement (see the data here). And, as I reported last week, there are substantial data that even hormone treatment of transgender girls after puberty leaves strength and size differences between them and biological girls in place.  To obscure the average sex difference or gender difference between biological and transgender women, Keisling bangs on about the variation within any class, which is irrelevant to average difference between classes, which is the issue.

Keisling hardens her position as the discussion proceeds, basically asserting that any difference between men and women in sports (and she’s clearly reluctant to admit the existence of such differences) may rest merely on “height” differences.  That, too, is not true, as height is largely irrelevant to sports like weightlifting except insofar as it’s correlated with weight and muscle mass.

Keisling’s is the position of extreme transgender advocates: there are no average differences in sports performance between men and women.

Note that Biden’s executive order of January 20—prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation—pretty clearly states that there should be no discrimination in sports based on gender identity, so that if your gender identity is that of a woman, regardless of whether you’ve undergone medical treatment, you should be able to compete as a woman. There is nothing in his order about any kind of medical treatment. Taken literally, Biden’s order spells the end of women’s sports in secondary schools. Here’s one quote (emphasis is mine).

Section 1.  Policy.  Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.  Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.  Adults should be able to earn a living and pursue a vocation knowing that they will not be fired, demoted, or mistreated because of whom they go home to or because how they dress does not conform to sex-based stereotypes.  People should be able to access healthcare and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.  All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.

In nearly all other respects, Biden’s order is not only useful, but salubrious. But sports is one of the exceptions, and it amazes me that transgender advocates like Keisling or Chase Strangio of the ACLU can maintain that there’s nothing wrong or unfair with medically untreated biological males, who’ve nevertheless assumed the identity of women, competing in sports against biological women.  The logical conclusion of that argument is that men and women should be able to compete in sports with each other even if nobody is transgender—that is, that there should be no division between men’s and women’s sports. And that’s the position that Keisling comes close to.

You can listen to the full podcast (yep, 90 minutes long) here.

h/t: Paul

A neologism for which I have no theory that is mine

February 27, 2021 • 11:00 am

Maybe this isn’t a neologism, but it’s a usage that seems to have become quite frequent in recent discussions about race. I encountered it repeatedly the last week as I was reading Ibram X. Kendi’s bestseller How to be an Antiracist. (If I’m to engage in the discussions of the day, I have to know the literature, and this is one of the two most important books.)

The term is “Black body”—not the Planckian object of physics, but a term that refers to black people as a group. (I haven’t seen “white body” used nearly so often.) Here’s one example from Kendi, but there are hundreds in his book and other in antiracist literature. This one’s a quote from a Guardian article on the book, as I don’t have Kendi’s book here):

“Racist ideas piled up before me like trash at a landfill. . . Tens of thousands of pages of Black people being trashed as natural or nurtured beasts, devils, animals, rapists, slaves. . . More than five hundred years of toxic ideas on the Black body.”

What he means, of course, is “toxic ideas about black people.” One can see this usage throughout antiracist literature, always referring to “black people”, and I’m baffled. For changing “Black people” to “Black body” seems to me a dehumanization of people, reducing them to a protoplasmic vessel of a certain hue. And, as far as I can see, that’s not the intent of using it this way, for of course Kendi is an African-American who is not trying to dehumanize black people. And I don’t think he’s using the term to refer to how racists see African-Americans.

Given that the term “slave” has now passed out of usage in this literature, becoming “enslaved people” for obvious and laudable reasons (a slave is a person, and we should remember that), why should “black people” become “black bodies”? It’s the reverse kind of change.

I really have no idea why this seemingly dehumanizing usage, which always bothers me, is the term of choice these days. Can anyone explain?