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.
Yes, I’m going to post only minimally on Christmas, as I have to get out of town before I’m apprehended as a Jesus-killer. But I’d like to post pictures of readers’ cats with a Christmas theme (in front of a tree, with their presents, etc.) If you have one of these, and we get a dozen or so, I’ll put up a Christmas Caturday post (Christmas is on Caturday).
Don’t forget to say a few words about your kitty, and include its name. And if you don’t have a picture at the moment, take one! (Remember, it must have a Christmas theme.) And please, only one photo per moggy.
A few days ago I wrote about Kimberlynn Jurkowsky, a librarian in a Washington, D.C. elementary school who was fired for making third-graders re-enact the Holocaust in the school library. These performances included one Jewish kid ordered to play Hitler and then pretend to shoot himself, children pretending to ride trains to the concentration camps, children pretending to dig graves for other children and then pretend to shoot them, and children pretending to be gassed. The children reported to parents that Jurkowsky, an African-American women, made anti-Semitic remarks during the grotesque theater, told one child that the Nazis killed the Jews because “the Jews ruined Christmas,” and then told the children not to tell anyone what happened.
To me the most likely explanation for this is anti-Semitism. Why else would Jurkowsky tell the children to keep their mouths shut, and make that remark about the “Jews ruining Christmas”? Could it be that I grossly misinterpreted her gesture, and she really was trying to evoke sympathy for the Jews through this charade? I doubt it, yet some readers thought that. Here’s part of one comment from a regular reader:
Ok, reading this I got a different impression. I’m going to make a guess that the librarian wasn’t trying to use this role-playing exercise to make a point against the Jews, but against brutal fascist regimes in general, and/or the Nazis in particular. The “anti-Semitic” comment here might have been a ham-fisted way of saying the Germans did it “for a stupid reason.” She didn’t think the school was doing a good enough job at depicting the horrors and wanted to test out her better idea by “tutoring” them. For real.
I’m not saying there’s not been a rise in antisemitism. There obviously has. But this story doesn’t strike me like that. It would have been different if she’d had the “Jews” rounding up the “Palestinians” for the Death Camps, of course.
Of course I had to examine my conclusions, especially because I know some of these commenters as thoughtful people who shouldn’t be dismissed. But upon re-examination, and some new information, I stand by my first conclusion: Jurkowski was an unstable woman trying to traumatize children and denigrate Jews out of anti-Semitism.
Some of the reasons are given above, but some readers said the children might have misreported the anti-Semitic comments, or the statement about Jews and Christmas might be misinterpreted. I think the most probable hypothesis is that the children reported correctly. I have no idea about how a statement that “the Jews ruined Christmas” as the librarian’s explanation of why the Nazis killed Jews cannot be plausibly interpreted in any way as sympathetic to Jews.
The woman also has a record for fraud, and was fired from her previous job:
OUTRAGEOUS – Kimberlynn Jurkowski, the 3rd grade library aid that forced 3rd graders to act out a Holocaust scene at Watkins Elementary School in DC is a FELON!
She had her license suspended & was convicted in 2013 of defrauding the Hamilton Township school district of $24,000. pic.twitter.com/x39NVGXuNb
Remarkably, her Twitter feed is still up, but appears to have been cleansed of her own tweets and contains mostly retweets. But the only retweets about Palestine and Israel she made that I could find were these. They surely don’t bolster the idea that Ms. Jurkowski is sympathetic to Jews or Israel:
This is the unfortunate truth with American politics when it comes to #Israel while these terrorists kill our people @CNNhttps://t.co/ZmUE8wmnsa
There are, as Angy Ngo says below, pro-Antifa tweets, and Ngo finds pro-BLM tweets, and pro-Nation of Islam tweets. The Nation of Islam is explicitly anti-Semitic, while BLM is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.
Now I know all the criticisms that have been leveled at Ngo for not being an objective reporter and for being anti-Antifa. But I don’t think he’d forge tweets.
Kimberlynn Jurkowski posted frequently in support of #BlackLivesMatter, critical race theory & leftist causes. She's now being investigated for having young school children re-enact out scenes from the Holocaust, including digging mass graves & being gassed to death. pic.twitter.com/wYtqz6MrOO
Kimberlynn Jurkowski shared a video promoting the anarchist communist union, International Workers of the World, along with posts in support of black nationalist group, Nation of Islam. pic.twitter.com/QQEaFB8aVe
I’m just wondering whether, in light of this, and in the complete absence of evidence that Jurkowski had any sympathy for Jews (indeed, she evinces the opposite), people still maintain that her actions were sympathetic to Jews, and that the bizarre Holocaust Exercise she promulgated was designed to make her students (probably mostly black, since she teaches in SW Washington, D.C) more fully feel the horrors of the Holocaust. To maintain that “She didn’t think the school was doing a good enough job at depicting the horrors and wanted to test out her better idea by ‘tutoring” them. For real.” seems to me a misguided attempt to gild Jurkowski’s acts in the face of all the evidence.
Given all of the above, I’d say that the priors make the best Bayesian inference one of anti-Semitism on Jurkowski’s part. If you have other evidence that she is sympathetic to Jews and wanted to impress on all her students the horrors of the Holocaust, by all means tell me.
Here’s a bit more (and I’m not done yet) about the fight to teach valid science in New Zealand rather than teach valid science in science class as coequal with indigenous “ways of knowing.”
The Royal Society of New Zealand has the formal name “Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi”, with the last two words being Māori for “group of experts”. But I’ll just call it the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ), for its legal name remains “Royal Society of New Zealand”). It is the Kiwi version of London’s Royal Society (abbreviated RS), and is a group of elite scholars chosen for their accomplishments. It gives out grants, publishes its own journal, holds meetings, promotes science and technology and, like the RS or the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, provides advice to their government. All of its activities are, by statute, limited to science and technology.
A short reprise. A while back a group of 7 scholars from the University of Auckland wrote a letter, “In defense of science”, published in a weekly NZ magazine called The Listener. You can see the letter here (read it again if you will, as it’s short). It’s largely a critique of the Kiwi initiative (fostered by the Government, by universities, and by many NZ academics) to have complete parity of teaching in science courses modern science with Māori “ways of knowing”, ormātauranga Māori (MM for short), literally “Maori knowledge”. While asserting that it was valuable to teach MM in school for cultural and historical reasons, these seven scholars (one a Māori) objected to teaching what is a gemisch of practical knowledge (sometimes gained empirically), mythology, morality, philosophy, and legend alongside modern science in science class.
Regardless of its intention to “empower” the Māori, the effect of teaching MM alongside real science would be to confuse everybody and wind up lowering the level of science in New Zealand, which has been dropping in international rankings for math, science, and reading scores for over two decades, and every academic in New Zealand knows this. (I’ll give more data on this in a future post.) Yet the RSNZ criticized the seven signers of the letter and, supposedly after a complaint, began investigating the two living members, Robert Nola and Garth Cooper, a Māori (another signer has died). This investigation that could result in these two distinguished members being booted out of the RSNZ—just for exercising free speech!
Here’s the statement issued in July by the RSNZ (click on screenshot to see it in situ:
I found the statement ridiculous, coming from an institution with the mission of promoting science. It explicitly argues that MM is a “valid truth” (wrong: for one thing, it’s creationist in its view of life and the universe), but also criticizes the seven people, including three RSNZ members, who signed the Listener letter. This is a chilling of free speech; there should be no such public pronouncement by the RSNZ touting MM as “valid truth”, much less demonizing three of its members publicly.
From: Jerry Coyne Sent: Saturday, 4 December 2021 7:36 am To: Roger Ridley Subject: Booting signatories out of the Royal Society
Dear Dr. Ridley,
I understand from the news that New Zealand’s Royal Society is considering expelling two scientists for signing a letter objecting to teaching “indigenous” science alongside and coequal with modern science. As a biologist who has done research for a lifetime and also spent time with biologists in New Zealand, I find this possibility deeply distressing.
The letter your two members wrote along with five others was defending modern science as a way of understanding the truth, and asserting that Maori “ways of knowing”, while they might be culturally and anthropologically valuable, should not be taught as if the two disciplines are equally useful in conveying the truth about our Universe. They are not. Maori science is a collation of mythology, religion, and legends which may contain some scientific truth, but to determine what bits exactly are true, those claims must be adjudicated by modern science: our only “true” way of knowing.
I presume you know that the Maori way of knowing includes creationism: the kind of creationism that fundamentalist Christians espouse in the U.S. based on a literalistic reading of the Bible. Both American and Maori creationism are dead wrong—refuted by all the facts of biology, paleontology, embryology, biogeography, and so on. That your society would expel members for defending views like evolution against non-empirically based views of creation and the like, is shameful.
I hope you will reconsider the movement to expel your two members, which, if done, would make the Royal Society of New Zealand a laughingstock.
Cordially,
Jerry Coyne Professor Emeritus Department of Ecology and Evolution The University of Chicago USA
Richard Dawkins also wrote to Roger Ridley, and you can see Richard’s letter here. I suspect he will get a very long response, for Dawkins’s email and his letter to “New Zealand friends of science and reason“, also published in The Listener, carry a lot of weight! In response to the barrage of letters, articles, and newspaper articles about the RSNZ’s “investigation,” its chief executive, Paul Atkins, issued a weaselly statement saying the RSNZ was supporting both science and MM and was launching a new program “to deepen understanding of mātauranga”
[The RSNZ will launch] ‘Mātauranga Māori and its Interface with Science’, to be run through our expert advice function, co-led by Professor Rangi Matamua FRSNZ, School of Māori Knowledge Te Pūtahi-a-Toi, Massey University. The aim will be to further explore and deepen the Society’s, its members’ and hapori communities’ understanding of mātauranga and its relevance to science and vice versa. The work will seek input from a wide range of experts, networks and perspectives.
I suspect this is a put-up job which will tout all ways of knowing as coequal. I deeply doubt whether the RSNZ will say flatly that “MM is not, as a whole, science” and shouldn’t be taught as coequal to science, even though several Māori academics have said just that! But we shall see. Will they ask Drs. Nola and Cooper to speak, and even Richard Dawkins?
This morning I finally got a response from Ridley, below (I’ve redacted email addresses):
From: Roger Ridley Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2021 9:03 PM To: Jerry Coyne Subject: RE: Booting signatories out of the Royal Society
Dear Professor Coyne
Thank you for taking the time to write with your email and views, and apologies for the delay in replying – we have received a lot of traffic on this issue as I’m sure you will know. Please be assured that the Society supports the principles of freedom of speech. For clarity, the Society itself has not brought any complaints against the authors of the Listener letter. However, as a professional body, we have a complaints procedure that we are obliged to follow when we receive complaints about a member from another member or a member of the public. That process needs to run its course. Media speculation about the outcome, which could include setting the complaints aside, are completely premature.
On the question of the content of the letter that sparked reaction from various quarters, the Society’s view is that that the current situation is unhelpful to constructive dialogue, and we are therefore putting in place a work program intended to bring the discussion back onto a more helpful footing.
Best wishes for the festive season
Roger Dr Roger Ridley Mātanga Rangahau | Director Expert Advice and Practice Royal Society Te Apārangi 11 Turnbull Street, Thorndon, Wellington 6011 PO Box 598, Wellington 6140, New Zealand ROYALSOCIETY.ORG.NZ
I’ve heard from one other reader who got a similar but shorter response; Ridley is not just sending out boilerplate responses, which is good.
However, his letter is still weaselly, and the reason why is detailed in the email I just sent him, which I’ve put below.
Dear Dr. Ridley,
Thanks very much for answering my email and clarifying that the RSNZ hasn’t itself brought any complaints against Dr. Nola and Cooper. But I don’t understand why your “complaints procedure” involves more than a very quick appraisal of the Listener letter and whatever “complaint” it produced. Your members were exercising free speech in a magazine, and for that reason alone the complaint should be quickly dismissed. There is nothing difficult about this decision.
What bothers me more is that the RSNZ did indeed issue a public complaint about the letter, and implicitly about its signatories. As you may recall, this is what that statement, signed by the then-President of the RSNZ as well as by the Chair of the Academy Executive Committee, said:
The recent suggestion by a group of University of Auckland academics that mātauranga Māori is not a valid truth is utterly rejected by Royal Society Te Apārangi. The Society strongly upholds the value of mātauranga Māori and rejects the narrow and outmoded definition of science outlined in The Listener – Letter to the Editor.
It deeply regrets the harm such a misguided view can cause.
If you consider that the “current situation is unhelpful to constructive dialogue”, then your own Society, and the statement above, is largely to blame. This investigation should “run its course” in about one day, and then you should apologize to Drs. Nola and and Cooper (as well as the other four living signers), and issue a public statement that they were exercising their free speech by voicing their opinion in a magazine.
The RSNZ, by trying to somehow harmonize modern science with mātauranga Māori, is not only engaged in a futile task, but also practicing a kind of social engineering with the aim of empowering an indigenous people. This kind of well-meant attempt to reconcile two incompatible “ways of knowing”— and to teach them in science class as both “valid truths”—will result only in a further decline in the quality of science and math education in New Zealand, which as you know has been dropping for over two decades in comparison with other countries.
I urge your Society to act sensibly and stop asserting that mātauranga Māori is a “valid truth”. Some of that endeavor does convey practical truths, but a lot of it doesn’t, comprising as it does mythology and legend. Defending mātauranga Māori is not the same thing as defending science.
Cordially,
Jerry Coyne
Professor Emeritus
Department of Ecology & Evolution
The University of Chicago
If you want to write Ridley, email me and I’ll give you his email address.
Today we have some winter mountaineering, travel, and landscape photos from reader James Blilie. His captions are indented, and you can click on his photos to enlarge them.
Here is another batch of my landscape (and other) photos for your consideration.These are all scans of either Kodachrome 64 or Kodak Tri-X Pan black and white film, all 35mm.
First, a view of the Enchantment Basin and Prussik Peak, 1986. This is a Kodachrome image converted to black and white in Lightroom SW:
Next a view of a rocky outcrop in the Kahiltna Glacier, Alaska, May 1987:
Skiers ascending through untracked snow at Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, November 1988:
More figures in a landscape: Skiers ascending to the good runs, Garibaldi Provincial Park, British Columbia, November 1988:
Finally a couple of “ringers” First a lovely photo my Dad shot in 1950 in Bermuda: Boats in a regatta:
This is my Dad’s photo, taken in 1952 or 1953, at Tachikawa, Japan. This young man built for my Dad three solid-wood models of the planes my Dad flew on: B-24, C-97, and C-54. He’s holding the C-54, at Tachikawa City. We still have these models.
Well, Facebook to the rescue(!). I am a member of a Tachikawa Air Base group on FB and I posted the photo there. One kind Japanese member of that group tracked down this man. His name was Kozo Ozaki-san. He passed away in 2012; but his best friend, Tetsouro Miura-san sent the photo below of Ozaki-san late in life, and said the following, “This is my best friend Kozo Ozaki-san. Mr. Ozaki died of cancer on December 19, 2012. He was 84 years old . Both I and Mr. Ozaki met well at the airplane model club. I think Mr. Ozaki was very pleased to know Mr. Jim Blili [my father].”
My equipment: Pentax LX and K-1000 cameras, various Pentax M-series and A-series lenses; Tokina ATX 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom, a wonderful lens. Epson Perfection V500 scanner and its native software. Lightroom 5 software.
Welcome to what the Chinese would call 駝峰 (Hump Day): December 22, 2021: National Date Nut Bread Day. The bread is okay, but I’d prefer to just eat straight Medjool dates (the best!) I buy organic Medjools from Amazon, and favor this brand, which is reliable and fresh–not to mention huge and delicious. Kept in the fridge, and then warmed in the microwave, they’re a real treat.
And while we’re on the wonderful Medjool, here’s how they’re farmed, which explains why they’re so expensive:
At last! The White House, via the Washington Post, has an update on the promised First Cat (they just got another First D*g):
The Bidens also had indicated early on that they had plans to adopt a cat, with Jill Biden going so far as to say that one — an apparent female — was “waiting in the wings.” However, no White House cat has yet materialized, much to the chagrin of the president’s feline-loving constituency.
LaRosa confirmed Monday that the new cat is a female and said she will join the Bidens in the White House in January.
I’ll believe it when I see it. We’ve heard this stuff before. (h/t Karl)
*I’ve now decided that Russia is going to start trouble in Ukraine. They’ve already massed many troops along the border, but now are threatening a cyberattack on Ukraine, and how can the West counter that? Further, Putin is now making ominous statements about NATO, statements that imply that Russia might take military action. As CNN reports:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his country has “every right” to “react harshly to unfriendly steps” as the US and NATO continue to pressure Moscow over its aggression towards Ukraine.
He has blamed the current tensions in Europe on NATO’s expansion following the fall of the Soviet Union and said Russia has been forced to respond.
Putin also discussed the situation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday, the Kremlin said in a statement
According to a readout published by the Kremlin, Putin reiterated his demands to Scholz.
“Vladimir Putin informed [Olaf Scholz] about Russian proposals for long-term, legally binding security guarantees, excluding any further NATO advance to the east, as well as the deployment of offensive weapon systems in countries adjacent to Russia,” the statement said.
My prediction, which is mine: Russia’s going to invade Ukraine, though it may begin with cyberattacks.
*Several big telecommunication companies, like AT&T and Verizon, are rolling out 5G Internet in December or January, and getting rid of the old 3G frequencies. (This is why I had to get a new iPhone, as my old 5s couldn’t handle 5G.) But now two big-time airline manufacturers—Boeing and Airbus—have warned that 5G internet near airports could interfere with radioaltimeters, devices crucial for landing planes. Internet providers have said “it’s not a problem”, which isn’t a very useful response. However, I have seen plenty of people use their 3G cellphones in the air when they weren’t supposed to, and haven’t seen any issues with navigation. Remember, we were always told to turn off our phones because they could affect navigation, and I always did, but there were plenty of people chattering away before landing.
*Remember the 12 missionaries kidnapped by a gang in Haiti 2 months ago? Five additional hostages had been freed, and I reported that the remainder were freed a few days ago. It wasn’t clear whether any ransom had been paid (the kidnappers wanted $1 million per hostage). Well, it turns out the 12 hostages weren’t freed but escaped—they walked away to freedom. As the AP reports:
Over time, the hostages agreed to try to escape, and chose the night of Dec. 15 to flee.
“When they sensed the timing was right, they found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked, filed silently to the path they had chosen to follow, and quickly left the place they were held, despite the fact that numerous guards were close by,” Showalter said.
. . .Captive missionaries in Haiti found freedom last week by making a daring overnight escape, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the agency they work for, officials said Monday.
The group of 12 navigated by stars to reach safety after a two-month kidnapping ordeal, officials with the Christian Aid Ministries, the Ohio-based agency that the captive missionaries work for, said Monday at a press conference.
*Now is the winter of our discontent, or at least that’s what yesterday’s poll suggests, with only 15% of responders thinking that next year will be a good one:
Yep, a cool $180,000 in $50 and $100 bills, with a letter that went this way:
An enclosed letter to Dr. Menon explained that the cash was a donation meant to help needy physics and math students at City College.
. . . The letter explained the donor’s motivations. “Assuming that you are bit curious as to why I am doing this, the reason is straightforward,” wrote the donor, who said he or she “long ago” took advantage of the “excellent educational opportunity” of attending both Stuyvesant High School and earning a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics at City College, which helped lead to “a long, productive, immensely rewarding” scientific career.
All attempts to trace the donor, who used a fake name and a fake address, have been unsuccessful, but after a police investigation showed no evidence that the money came from crime, the department accepted the dosh, which will “two full tuition scholarships each year for more than a decade.” Now that’s what you call altruism (though probably not biological altruism)!
Beethoven was already becoming deaf by then (by 18 he couldn’t hear a thing), and it’s amazing to me that he could play in this state and write music while deaf. He must have heard everything in his head, but I suppose some composers do that anyway.
1864 – American Civil War: Savannah, Georgia, falls to the forces of General Sherman.
Here he is as a samurai, and then as PM. A stint in the University of London convinced Itō that Japan should become Westernized, and so he gave up his sword.
As PM:
1891 – Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered using photography.
To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.
The German Commander.
And McAuliffe’s famous (and true) reply, which was typed out and delivered by an American under truce:
To the German Commander.
NUTS!
The American Commander.
The German commander was confused at this reply, and asked the American what it meant. The reply, “In plain English? Go to hell.”
Here’s McAuliffe (circled) and his staff at Christmas dinner in Bastogne, December 25, 1944. The next day American troops relieved the troops.
And here being given the Distinguished Service Cross by George Patton for McAuliffe’s defense of Bastogne. (Note Patton’s ivory-handled pistol.)
One of my Chicago colleages, Manyuan Long, a geneticist, was forced to work several years as a farmer before resuming his education.
1984 – “Subway vigilante” Bernhard Goetz shoots four would-be muggers on a 2 express train in Manhattan section of New York, United States.
Goetz served a year for possession of a firearm, but not for attempted murder or manslaughter. He later was convicted in a civil suit but pleaded bankruptcy because he couldn’t pay the $43 million judgement. He’s still supposed to pay it off.
Here are the shoes, which failed to explode. Reid is serving a life-without-parole sentence in a Supermax prison, ADX Florence:
2010 – The repeal of the Don’t ask, don’t tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, is signed into law by President Barack Obama.
The story of Ramanujan, born to a poor family in India, and how he achieved his potential when G. H. Hardy took him on in Cambridge. Here’s a group of scientists in Cambridge, ca. 1914-1919, with Ramanujan in the middle and Hardy (of “Hardy-Weinberg” fame to geneticists) on the extreme right. Ramanujan died at only 32 of tuberculosis.
Ramanujan on an Indian stamp:
And a famous (and true) anecdote about Ramanujan (from Wikipedia):
The number 1729 is known as the Hardy–Ramanujan number after a famous visit by Hardy to see Ramanujan at a hospital. In Hardy’s words:
I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. “No”, he replied, “it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.”
1912 – Lady Bird Johnson, American beautification activist; 38th First Lady of the United States (d. 2007)
1949 – Maurice Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2003)
1949 – Robin Gibb, Manx-English singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2012)
The Gibbs (born very close to the day I was in 1949) were fraternal twins, of course. Here’s a short video featuring them singing together. I can’t believe that there’s only one Bee Gee left alive—Barry.
Fiennes played Amon Göth, brutal commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp in Poland. Here’s one scene of his performance (trigger warning: a shooting):
1940 – Nathanael West, American author and screenwriter (b. 1903)
1979 – Darryl F. Zanuck, American director and producer (b. 1902)
1989 – Samuel Beckett, Irish author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)
1995 – Butterfly McQueen, American actress and dancer (b. 1911)
2014 – Joe Cocker, English singer-songwriter (b. 1944)
Cocker and his doppelgänger John Belushi on Saturday Night Live in 1976. Belushi is fantastic:
Here’s some interesting stuff about Cocker from Wikipedia:
In 1978, Cocker moved onto a ranch owned by Jane Fonda in Santa Barbara, California. Pam Baker, a local summer camp director and fan of Cocker’s music, persuaded the actress to lend the house to Cocker. Baker began dating Cocker, and they married on 11 October 1987. The couple resided on the Mad Dog Ranch in Crawford, Colorado.
While performing a concert at Madison Square Garden on 17 September 2014, fellow musician Billy Joel stated that Cocker was “not very well right now” and endorsed Cocker for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before his tribute performance of “With a Little Help From My Friends”. Cocker died from lung cancer on 22 December 2014 in Crawford, Colorado, at the age of 70. He had smoked 40 cigarettes a day until he quit in 1991. Cocker is buried in the town cemetery in Crawford, Colorado.
2019 – Ram Dass, American spiritual teacher and author (b. 1931)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes her Christmas wishes known (notice that she doesn’t care about Kulka or Szaron!):
Hili: You have to buy something for the holidays.
A: Do you have any orders?
Hili: Yes, chicken breast for me and it doesn’t matter what you buy for yourself.
In Polish:
Hili: Trzeba kupić coś na święta.
Ja: Masz jakieś zamówienia?
Hili: Tak, dla mnie filet z kurczaka, a dla was wszystko jedno.
Capybara paradise in Japan. These are the chillest of all mammals save sloths, but they get a yearly warmup in a Japanese hot spring, complete with their favorite noms. A rodent onsen! Sound up:
Ahead of the winter solstice tomorrow, the capybara of Nasu Oukoku Zoo took their annual yuzu hot bath pic.twitter.com/IeYTnCWr8K
This piece by Fredie deBoer on his eponymous Substack column is free, but do subscribe if you read him often. It’s an analysis of the failure of the Left to unify themselves in a way that can appeal to middle American and defeat the Republicans—things I’m on about all the time. It also answers a question I get all the time: “Why are you always bashing the Left and leaving the Right alone when the Right is clearly more dangerous to America?” Well, I don’t really neglect the Right, and I do agree about the relative dangers. But I do concentrate on the Left, and deBoer explains why better than I can. And he pulls no punches.
Click to read:
The part I don’t wish I’d written, because I think it detracts from deBoer’s message, is that he writes a LOT about Chris Hayes—a political commentator on MSNBC—using Hayes as an exemplar of what’s gone wrong with the Left. In particular, after Trump was elected, says deBoer, Hayes got woke. This is just a short bit reflecting deBoer’s disappointment with Hayes (even though he says he admires him):
When I think of this refusal to practice introspection, I think of MSNBC host Chris Hayes. I see two great impediments to the American liberal project, and Hayes embodies both: a fixation on Trump that nears the pathological, trapping liberalism perpetually in yesterday’s war, and a studious refusal to speak plainly and critically about the way that the Democratic party has become captured by donors and staffers whose politics are not just wildly out of step with the median American but with the median Democrat. Whether for ratings or to satisfy the contemporary lie that Trump is the worst president ever – you can read Hayes’s own writing from the Bush era to understand why it’s a lie – Hayes cannot quit Donald Trump, and thus like his party cannot settle on a remotely coherent political vision. He’s trapped.
And that’s all I’ll say about Hayes, though deBoer has a lot more to say about him. I don’t think it’s wise to use Hayes as a whipping boy for Woke Democrats, simply because it detracts from deBoer’s message. Plus I don’t know squat about Chris Hayes!
I’m just going to give two long quotes by deBoer because he expresses some of my own sentiments more strongly and with more sarcasm than I could. The bold questions are mine that I think deBoer answers (indented bits):
First, why does he (and your host) concentrate on the perfidies of the Extreme Left rather than the Dangerous Right? deBoer:
Sometimes I get people asking me why I don’t write more criticism of Republicans and conservatives. I’ve made the basic point many times before: those with influence within the conservative movement are too craven or crazy for meaningful written engagement to be worth anything, and those who are interesting and honest have no influence within the conservative movement. You can engage with Ross Douthat, who’s sharp and fair but who the average conservative would call a RINO [JAC: “Republican in name only”], or you can engage with a roster of interchangeable lunatics who lie and dissemble in defense of a cruel revanchist movement. I tend to train my fire on the broad left of center because, as much as I would sometimes like to wash my hands of the whole damn lot of them, they are the half of American politics that could actually reform, that could improve. I see no positive outcome from going through Breitbart posts and pointing out the lies. But Hayes, and other liberal Democrats who grumble and groan about left on liberal criticism, seem to think that if we just keep talking about how awful Josh Hawley and the Proud Boys are, somehow these problems will all sort themselves out.
They won’t. If you’re obsessed with defeating Trumpism, you should realize that you can only do that through securing a broad multicultural coalition, and you can’t do that when you’re alienating Hispanic voters or failing to challenge people in your political orbit when they insist that white children should be taught that they’re inherently and irreversibly racist. 70% of this country is white, Hispanic voters are not remotely as left-leaning as people assumed, immigrants are far from uniformly progressive, women were never actually a liberal stronghold, and you can’t win national elections by appealing only to the kinds of people who say “Black bodies” instead of “Black people.” This is the simple point David Shor has made for over a year, and for his trouble he gets a columnist in the Nation flat-out lying about him. Imagine a political tendency where popularism – literally, the idea that you should do things that appeal to voters – is immensely controversial. Liberalism is not healthy.
And your host will add: yu don’t need me to bash Republicans because there are already a gazillion people who do it, and you can read them instead of me. Also, I feel more compelled to address problems in my own family (Democrats) than in that bad family across the street. It’s easier to settle family squabbles than reconcile the Hatfields with the McCoys. Finally, it distresses me that my family is riven by a thousand differences, as well as imbued with apparent ignorance of what Americans want in their democracy—both of which will help spawn Republican victories down the road. At any rate, deBoer is right: we need a multicultural coalition, and the “elites” aren’t helping with that.
Now deBoer is not in my position on the political spectrum. In his Substack bio, he describes himself this way:
I write about everything but have a few jams that I engage with consistently. I am a Marxist of an old-school variety, which means I frequently complain about liberals, social democrats, and whatever “democratic socialism” is.
Second, and finally, what does the Left need? deBoer, though perhaps “a Marxist of an old-school variety”, says this, first quoting Democratic ex-Senator Harry Reid, who, when asked what message he wanted to leave with America, answered “I want everybody in America to understand that if Harry Reid can make it, anybody can.”
And then deBoer riffs on that:
Does that sound anything like the message American liberalism wants to deliver now? Absolutely not. Today, American liberalism wants to tell you not that America can be a place of justice and equality where we all work together for the good of all, even as we acknowledge how badly we’ve failed that ideal. In 2021 liberalism wants to tell you that the whole damn American project is toxic and ugly, that every element of the country is an excuse to perpetuate racism, that those groups of people Hayes lists at the bottom are not in any sense in it together but that instead some fall higher on an hierarchy of suffering, with those who are perceived to have it too good in that hierarchy deserving no help from liberalism or government or the Democratic party – and, oh by the way, you can be dirt poor and powerless and still be privileged, so we don’t want you, especially if you’re part of the single largest chunk of the American electorate. Anyone who tows the line [sic] Harry Reid takes here is either a bigot or a sap, and politics is a zero-sum game where marginalized groups can only get ahead if others suffer, and Democrats fight to control a filthy, ugly, fallen country that will forever be defined by its sins. That’s the liberalism of 2021, a movement of unrelenting pessimism, obscure vocabulary, elitist tastes, and cultural and social extremism totally divorced from a vision of shared prosperity and a working class movement that comes together across difference for the good of all. In fact, I think I learned in my sociology class at Dartmouth that a working class movement would inherently center white pain! Better to remain divided into perpetually warring fiefdoms of grievance that can accomplish nothing. Purer that way. Now here’s Chris with part 479 of his January 6th series, to show us the country’s biggest problems.
Conservatives run roughshod over the country, and liberals are powerless to stop them, because liberalism has been colonized by a bizarre set of fringe cultural ideas about race and gender which they express in abstruse and alienating vocabulary at every turn. If anyone complains, liberals call them racist or sexist or transphobic, even when those complaining are saying that we can fight racism and sexism and transphobia more effectively by stressing shared humanity and the common good. Republicans tell the American people batshit conspiracy theories about communists teaching Yakub theory in kindergarten; Democrats fight back by making PowerPoint slides about why resegregating public schools is intersectional. We have reactionary insanity that expresses itself in plain, brute language and an opposition that insists that most voters don’t actually have any real problems, using a vocabulary that should never have escaped the conference rooms of whatever nonprofit hell it crawled out of. I cannot imagine a more obvious mismatch, the gleeful conspiracist bloodletting of the right against the sneering disdain and incomprehensible jargon of the left. I wonder who’ll win politically, an army of racist car dealership owners who have already taken over vast swaths of America’s state and local governments, keening for blood and soil? Or the guy in your anthropology seminar who insisted they were the voice of social justice while simultaneously making every conversation all about them?
This is all humorous and snarky, but also rings true. (I suppose deBoer’s Marxism is reflected in his concentration of class instead of race.) Be that as it may, the next time someone asks me why I bash the Left more often than the Right, I’ll just send them this post.
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Note to deBoer: it’s “toes the line,” not “tows the line.” And it’s a “vise grip” not a “vice grip.”
