Month: January 2022

Why both Left and Right distort CRT for political ends

January 28, 2022 • 11:00 am

I’ve written several posts trying to explain Critical Race Theory (CRT) as it is understood by scholars (see here and here, and here, for instance), and I won’t reiterate the definitions, which, of course differs from scholar to scholar. There is no “approved” definition.  But the variants all have certain things in common, including the concept of “white privilege,” intersectionality, systemic racism, and, usually, reparations and the complicity of oppressors (in this case, white people) in oppressing minorities. CRT is identity-centered rather than individual-centered.

I was going to write a corrective to the misconceptions of the Left about CRT, which are actually distortions because anybody who cares to can find out what CRT really is.  Likewise, the Right distorts CRT in an attempt to minimize the extent of racism. Both ends of the political spectrum, in fact, tailor their own definitions of CRT to meet their goals

Mona Charen at the Bulwark (see first article below) has written a sensible article on CRT (click on screenshot) which makes these points. It turns out that the Right-wing concept is closer to the real CRT than is the Left-wing version, but both sides distort what happens when an dumbed-down version of CRT is taught in schools.

Like me, Charen, doesn’t think there should be any laws against CRT on the books (most of them have been confected  by Republicans). In my case, given the various conceptions of CRT, telling schools what’s legal and not legal to teach infringes the freedom of teachers to teach what they think is best. (Note to creationists and IDers who will use my last sentence to justify the teaching of their nonsense: CRT is not evolution, which is a “theory” that happens to be a true theory as well, and, unlike CRT, one can’t with any rationality debate the truth of evolution.)

So, as Charen notes, the Left (including, recently, Paul Krugman) characterizes CRT simply as the idea, which is true, that there was slavery and oppression of black people for centuries, and that there is still racism, and both the history and current racism injures minorities and violates the tenets of our democracy. As we see below, most Americans agree with these claims. But they are not CRT!

.Charen (my emphasis below):

The laws some Republican-dominated states are passing to curtail CRT and its progeny are bad ideas for many reasons. But the depictions of those laws in big outlets like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post are frequently wrong or incomplete. A recent CNN report about Florida’s new law that would prohibit teaching methods that make people “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin” mangles the facts. The law, CNN claims, is a response to critical race theory, which the network defines as “a concept that seeks to understand and address inequality and racism in the US. The term also has become politicized and been attacked by its critics as a Marxist ideology that’s a threat to the American way of life.”

Not quite, though CNN is hardly alone in describing CRT in such an anodyne fashion. Paul Krugman argues that most people don’t know what CRT is (which is true), but goes off the deep end claiming that Republican “denunciations of C.R.T. are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.” [JAC: I think there’s some truth in what Krugman says!] One news outlet suggested that anti-CRT bills “may make it even harder to discuss African American history,” and it is common to see anti-CRT bills described as “efforts to restrict what teachers can say about race, racism and American history in the classroom.”

If you were judging by much of the mainstream press coverage, you would think that CRT is just a movement to ensure that the history of slavery, racism, and Jim Crow is not neglected in America’s classrooms. But 1) large percentages of both Republicans and Democrats favor teaching those things, and 2) that’s not what CRT is.

So what does Charen see as the “real” CRT? Here:

In their book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic state forthrightly that “Critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility, rejects the notion that racism is a character flaw in some individuals, declaring instead that “White identity is inherently racist.” That marks a dramatic departure from the traditional understanding of racism.

Critical race theory adherents favor teaching techniques that most Americans believe violate our commitment to colorblindness, such as “affinity groups” wherein people are segregated by race to discuss certain issues. In Massachusetts, the Wellesley public schools hosted a “Healing Space for Asian and Asian American students and others in the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community.” An official email explained that, “This is a safe space for our Asian/Asian American and Students of Color, *not* for students who identify only as White.”

And, contra Krugman and Scientific American, this kind of stuff, and not just the history of racism and slavery is actually taught in some schools.

In Virginia’s Loudoun County, teacher training materials encouraged educators to reject “color blindness” and to “address their whiteness (white privilege).” Each teacher was exhorted to become a “culturally competent professional who acknowledges and is aware of his or her own racist, sexist, heterosexist or other detrimental attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and feelings.” The training strayed into racial essentialism like this: “To the African, the entire universe is vitalistic as opposed to mechanistic. . . . This precept suggests that African Americans have a psychological affinity for stimulus change, often exhibit an increased behavioral vibrancy and have a rich and sometimes spontaneous movement repertoire.”

Democrats often object that CRT is “not taught in K-12 schools,” which is evasive. It’s true that third graders are not being assigned the works of Kimberly Crenshaw or Ibram X. Kendi, but affinity groups, “anti-racism” (in the sense of rejecting the ideal of color blindness), and other CRT-adjacent ideas are making their way into classrooms. New York City has spent millions on training materials that disdain “worship of the written word,” “individualism,” and “objectivity” as aspects of “white-supremacy culture.”

I’ve given other examples, such as the Smithsonian’s ill-advised (and now removed) characterization of white and black “culture”, and explicit demonizing of whiteness in classrooms, which is divisive and sometimes traumatic, and the recounting by students and parents in New York’s fancy prep schools about the divisive propaganda those schools purvey. There is no shortage of examples.

Republicans and righties aren’t immune, either, attacking perfectly warranted and sensible school units on racism. Charen gives the example of Republicans attacking a school district in Tennesee because on grade had a “Civil Rights Heroes” module that the plaintiffs said was “Anti-American, Anti-White, and Anti-Mexican [sic]”. There’s little doubt that their attempts to ban teaching CRT in schools is motivated at least in part by racism and a continuing attempt to efface American history.

So a pox on both ideological houses, especially because both Republicans and Democrats agree (as do I) that the nature, history, and damage of racism need to be taught.

It’s so easy—and remunerative—for progressives to characterize opposition to CRT as straight-up racism, and for conservatives to reach for heavy-handed, overbroad laws to restrict teaching they resent. But it is possible to oppose CRT for non-racist reasons, in fact for pro-national unity reasons, and even if Republicans are not making the case well or at all, it still needs to be made.

Large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats favor teaching about slavery, racism, and other sins of American history. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans favor teaching that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. Ninety percent of Democrats and 83 percent of Republicans believe textbooks should say that many Founding Fathers owned slaves. Nearly identical percentages of Democrats (87) and Republicans (85) say textbooks should include the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and slightly higher percentages want children to learn about the theft of Native American land.

That is not the picture of a nation (or even one party) that is refusing to grapple with the history of racism. Where you do get partisan divergence is on whether schools should teach the concept of “white privilege.” Seventy-one percent of Democrats say yes, but only 22 percent of Republicans agree.

This is getting long, so I’ll refer you to Eric Kaufman’s long survey of the divisions in America about CRT (click on screenshot below). A lot of it is age-related, with young people approving the teaching of “dictionary CRT” while older people oppose it.  Kaufman draws a distinction between “cultural liberalis” (those “classical liberals” who oppose the strict construal of CRT, and “cultural socialists” (those who stress the importance of identity groups over individual rights and favor the teaching of CRT). The ratio of the former to the latter in the U.S. is now 2:1, but Kaufman thinks as the young people of today age, they’re going to remain cultural socialists.

(You can see Kaufman’s full data and analysis here—in a much longer article.)

The cultural socialists on the Left apparently include the editors of Scientific American. A comment the other day on my post “The inanities of Scientific American—almost all within just one year,” went as follows.

The commenter:

This aways confuses me. I have been reading Scientific American in magazine form for years, and I haven’t seen ANY of this offensive stuff. Indeed, the February 2022 issue has an editorial by the Board of Editors basically blasting “wokeness” in American History curricula, and recommending more material covering the treatment of minority groups both historically and currently.
It would really help me if all these critiques of the “failing Scientific American” could cite issues and pages, so I could see for myself.

I have the article below, which I’ll send to anyone who wants it (it’s in the paper edition). Scientific American makes the mistake of conflating CRT with “reality”, using the construal that CRT is simply teaching about racism and its history in the classroom. The article (no link):

Here’s the abstract:

Abstract:

The authors emphasize the importance of critical race theory (CRT) to a fact-based education in the U.S. They cite the implication of the election of officials who opposed CRT and enactment of legislation banning CRT from school curricula in some states for children’s education. They mention the significance of lessons about equity and social justice to young people. They point out that truth and reality will be removed from education if conversations around race and society are eliminated.

I won’t go on except to say that the editorial flirts with the classical definition of CRT, but then says that that all it does is teach us our “true history” and that it “teaches children about reality.”  This is a good example of how the Left deliberately misconstrues CRT so that they can call people who oppose the theory “racists.” But that’s not true.

The title tells all.

Have you heard the good news? THE BIDENS FINALLY GOT A CAT!

January 28, 2022 • 8:15 am

I’ve been kvetching about the lack of a cat in the White House for the entire year that Biden has been in office, after he and Jill promised—even before inauguration that they’d get a First Cat. But then time passed, and though my beefing continued, the Bidens didn’t listen.

Well, it’s come true—as I heard from a dozen readers, all of whom knew I’d want to know this immediately. Actually, this news is of such import that today it’s replacing the readers’ wildlife feature. (BTW, I need more photos!)

Here are two headlines about the moggy; click on either to read the happy tidings.

From the Washington Post:

And the New York Times:

It’s a female tabby named Willow. Granted, the name isn’t perfect, but it’s a CAT! (I thought that maybe Biden could work out a deal with Kyrsten Sinema by naming the cat “Kyrsten.”)

Here are photos:

In the White House!:

Willow, the Biden family’s new pet cat, wandering around the White House.Credit…Erin Scott/The White House

The backstory is nice, too. From the WaPo:

Willow is named after Jill Biden’s hometown of Willow Grove, Pa. The cat comes from an unnamed Western Pennsylvania farm where the Bidens made a campaign trip in 2020.

“Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks during a campaign stop,” wrote LaRosa in a news release. “Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden.”

The cat joins Commander, the German shepherd puppy the Bidens adopted last month, following the death of their dog Champ and the rehoming of their dog Major, both German shepherds. Major had trouble adjusting to his new home in the White House, having made headlines for several biting incidents. Major was the first shelter dog in the White House.

Willow will be the first cat to live in the White House since President George W. Bush’s cat, India, in 2009 — and one of only a dozen feline inhabitants in the entire history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Andrew Hager, historian for the online Presidential Pet Museum, attributes the disparity to personality — both the presidents’ and the cats’. Presidents tend to be extroverted, a trait they share with dogs, which have been the most popular presidential pet by far. [JAC: This shows that Presidents love sycophants. Trump would never have a cat.]

Two photos from NPR:

And from the NYT:

The cat’s arrival was much anticipated after Dr. Biden casually mentioned in a November 2020 interview that she’d love to have a cat in the White House, and later lightheartedly suggested that the animal was “waiting in the wings.” To feline fans everywhere, this might as well have been a blood oath that a cat would soon be revealed.

For more than a year, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was peppered with questions about the administration’s cat policy by reporters and other interested parties. She seemed aware of the stakes behind the cat’s public rollout.

“I’m also wondering about the cat,” she said during a question-and-answer session with Twitter users last January, “because the cat is going to dominate the internet.”

On Wednesday, Willow, a shorthair tabby with jade-green eyes, formally moved into the White House, just over a month after the Bidens revealed that they had added Commander, a German shepherd puppy, to the mix. Dr. Biden said in an interview with The New York Times this fall that the cat had been living with a foster parent who had grown attached.

And I like the choice of a regular tabby. It’s a Middle American cat, not some hoity-toity purebred that would send a signal of elitism.

I hope the press peppers the aposematic Psaki with even more questions, for she’s clearly afraid of losing the limelight!

As a cynic, I suspected that Joe did this to prop up his sinking approval ratings, but since the cat was procured by Jill Biden, I am reassured. I just hope Uncle Joe doesn’t trip over it!

 

h/t to everyone who sent me the news, too many to name!

Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

January 28, 2022 • 7:15 am

Another week at an end: it’s a cold Chicago Friday, January 28, 2022, National Blueberry Pancake Day. Those are some good pancakes, but don’t forget the pure maple syrup (darkest grade possible):

It’s also National Kazoo Day, Daisy Day, Pop Art Day, International Lego Day (see “1958” below), and Data Privacy Day.

News of the Day:

*From UN Watch, we have an amazingly stupid act of the United Nations, the dumbest among many dumb actions of that body. The screenshot tells the tale, but you can click on it if you want to read more.

An excerpt:

The 65-nation Conference on Disarmament, based in Geneva, is considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament efforts. The UN-backed body calls itself “the single multilateral disarmament negotiating forum of the international community.”

“Having the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-un preside over global nuclear weapons disarmament will be like putting a serial rapist in charge of a women’s shelter,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the United Nations.

“This is a country that threatens to attack other UN member states with missiles, and that commits atrocities against its own people. Torture and starvation are routine in North Korean political prison camps where an estimated 100,000 people are held in what is one of the world’s most dire human-rights situations,” said Neuer.

According to the article, the good news is that the post is “largely formal”, but seriously, what about the optic? The UN is already becoming a joke, and this won’t help:

“At a time when China, Russia, Libya, Kazakhstan and Venezuela are sitting on the UN’s human rights council, this won’t help.”

*Stephen Breyer handed Biden his own letter of resignation from the Supreme Court today, and the President gave him the due plaudits. However, even appointing a black woman Justice, as Biden promises, will do absolutely nothing to change the court’s move to the Right. (She had better be young!). The villain in all this, as usual, is Senator Mitch “666” McConnell, who, according to the NYT,

 issued a warning to Mr. Biden against making an overly ideological choice to succeed Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who formally announced his retirement on Thursday.

“The American people elected a Senate that is evenly split at 50-50,” Mr. McConnell said in his first statement since word of the retirement leaked. “To the degree that President Biden received a mandate, it was to govern from the middle, steward our institutions and unite America. The president must not outsource this important decision to the radical left. The American people deserve a nominee with demonstrated reverence for the written text of our laws and our Constitution.”

As if his hero Trump didn’t make ideological choices for Justices. Jebus, Amy Coney Barrett is about as far right as you can get. That sad part is that the next oldest justice after Breyer is Clarence Thomas, a decade younger. And you just know that Thomas will be sitting on the bench until they carry him out in a box. It will be amusing seeing the Republican Senators try to do down every one of Biden’s nominees.

*From FIRE we learn that Jason Kilborn, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago Law School who used two redacted slurs on a law school exam question about a hypothetical discrimination case (see guest post here) has not only been punished by UIC, but the university also reneged on its agreement with him. For doing exactly nothing wrong, Kilborn now must to undergo months of “training” and write “reflection papers”. This is about the most Stalinesque bit of performative wokeness I’ve seen in a public university. An excerpt from FIRE’s article:

UIC suspended and launched an investigation into Kilborn after he posed a hypothetical question — which he has asked in previous years — using redacted references to two slurs, in a December 2020 law school exam. The question about employment discrimination referenced a plaintiff being called “a ‘n____’ and ‘b____’ (profane expressions for African Americans and women)” as evidence of discrimination. But even redacting the terms didn’t save Kilborn from discipline by university administrators.

Kilborn reached a resolution with UIC in July, in which he agreed to alert the dean before responding to student complaints about racial issues and to audio-record his classes. Kilborn welcomed both of these stipulations in order to protect himself against spurious complaints, and had already decided to take those actions independently. As part of that resolution, Kilborn and UIC ultimately reached an understanding that Kilborn would not have to attend sensitivity training.

However, in November, under pressure from UIC’s Black Law Students Association and Jesse Jackson, UIC reneged on its agreement with Kilborn and is now requiring him to participate in months-long “training on classroom conversations that address racism” and compelling him to write reflection papers before he can return to the classroom. In a stunning display of unintended irony, the individualized training materials include the same redacted slur that Kilborn used in his test question.

With legal help from FIRE, Kilborn is suing UIC, a public college, for infringement of speech. I hope that UIC loses the case and has to pay tons of money in damages and attorneys’ fees.  Their punishment is stupid; their reneging on the agreement is reprehensible. 

In an op-ed at the Washington Post, author Dora Horn, who wrote the best-selling book with the provocative title, People Love Dead Jews, muses on why anti-Semitism in America still seems focused on the Holocaust. And the answer is the same as her book’s thesis: people love dead Jews like Anne Frank (who was much in the news last week), but don’t care so much about the ones who don’t die (like the hostages in Texas):

Unfortunately, as critical as teaching about the Holocaust is, it’s not the same as teaching about antisemitism. Instead, people mostly seem to think that antisemitism consists exclusively of the murders of 6 million Jews. Anything short of that is all in our heads. The feel-good stories people tell themselves about dead Jews make it easy to dismiss the here-and-now targeting of live ones.

The FBI eventually walked back its clumsy statement that the Texas attack was “not specifically related to the Jewish community.” But a reporter who spoke to two dozen residents of the synagogue’s neighborhood found they unanimously agreed. In fact, they were convinced their church down the street was equally at risk. “If it happens over there, it could happen over here, too,” one churchgoer said.

Clueless comments such as these reveal the warped funhouse American Jews now live in. After synagogue shootings in Pennsylvania and California, a kosher market attack in New Jersey, a Hanukkah attack in Upstate New York, a rabbi’s stabbing in Boston, street attacks in New York City and Los Angeles, and countless other vicious assaults on American Jews, this kind of plausible deniability has become a public ritual.

But everyone knows about the Holocaust. Holocaust education is now its own ritual, where middle-schoolers and public figures piously announce that Nazis are bad. The problem is that this a rather low bar to clear. We can all pat ourselves on the back for not murdering 6 million Jews. This absurd standard allows people to ignore a pervasive and very current hatred while feeling well-informed. Why should those nice neighbors, or the FBI for that matter, believe antisemitism is a problem if there aren’t millions of bodies?

Because Jews see things well-meaning neighbors don’t. . .

This is an unusually concise, powerful, and well written op-ed.

*Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 877,815, an increase of 2,530 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 5,658,539, an increase of about 9,300 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on January 28 include:

  • 814 – The death of Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, brings about the accession of his son Louis the Pious as ruler of the Frankish Empire.[2]
  • 1521 – The Diet of Worms begins, lasting until May 25.

That is a LONG time to eat worms!

  • 1547 – Edward VI, the nine-year-old son of Henry VIII, becomes King of England on his father’s death.
  • 1724 – The Russian Academy of Sciences is founded in St. Petersburg, Russia, by Peter the Great, and implemented by Senate decree. It is called the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences until 1917.
  • 1754 – Sir Horace Walpole coins the word serendipity in a letter to a friend.

But  Wikipedia, doesn’t mention the word itself.

[On 28 January 1754], inn a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a lost painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.” The name comes from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence Sarandib by Arab traders.[4] It is derived from the Sanskrit Siṃhaladvīpaḥ (Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka + dvīpaḥ, island).

However, as always, the Oxford English Dictionary gives the first usage, and it was indeed by Walpole:

1754   H. Walpole Let. to H. Mann 28 Jan.   This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity.

Here’s a video showing the first edition of this classic, which will cost you around $30,000 these days.

 

  • 1855 – A locomotive on the Panama Canal Railway runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
  • 1896 – Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h).

The usual walking speed is about 3 mph, so cars had to go slower than pedestrians!

Gitmo is on a yearly lease, but Cuba has refused to accept the payments. Here’s a diagram of the base. The outdoor movie theater is at lower right (circled) and I’ve put an arrow by McDonald’s (yep, there is one!):

And McD’s, surrounded by razor wire!

  • 1933 – The name Pakistan is coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali Khan and is accepted by Indian Muslims who then thereby adopted it further for the Pakistan Movement seeking independence.
  • 1935 – Iceland becomes the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion.
  • 1956 – Elvis Presley makes his first national television appearance.

. . . here’s a very rare color film (without sound) of Elvis singing  April 25, 1955 at a Texas outdoor venue, a year before he was on television. It’s the first time Elvis was ever filmed anywhere.

  • 1958 – The Lego company patents the design of its Lego bricks, still compatible with bricks produced today.
  • 1965 – The current design of the Flag of Canada is chosen by an act of Parliament.
  • 1985 – Supergroup USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) records the hit single We Are the World, to help raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief.

Here’s the official video of “We Are the World”.  It was good to see all these people together in a common cause; I failed to recognize only two of the soloists. And where else will you see Willie Nelson singing with Dionne Warwick? Try listening to it first with your eyes closed to see how many voices you can recognize.  Dylan! Diana Ross! Stevei Wonder! The Boss! Kim Carnes! Ray Charles! Tina Turner! Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper! Paul Simon! Willie Nelson! It goes on and on and on. . . My favorite part is when Michael Jackson sings harmony with Diana Ross (1:35), who gives him the “okay” sign.

And note this: “[The song] was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian.”

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1873 – Colette, French novelist and journalist (d. 1954)
  • 1912 – Jackson Pollock, American painter (d. 1956)
  • 1936 – Alan Alda, American actor, director, and writer
  • 1968 – Sarah McLachlan, Canadian singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer.

Although this isn’t her own song, it’s my favorite performance by McLachlan.  I believe it’s Luke Doucet on guitar.  I can’t decide whether I like this version better than McCartney’s.

Those who said their last farewells on January 28 include:

  • 814 – Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor
  • 1547 – Henry VIII, king of England (b. 1491)
  • 1939 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1865)

Here’s Yeats in 1903. Below him, his “muse” Maud Gonne, an Irish nationalist. Yeats proposed to her four times, and was rejected every time.  He was completely infatuated.

Maude Gonne in 1900.  They “did it” only once—in Paris in 1908—and then, despite Yeat’s ardor, the relationship became platonic again:

  • 1960 – Zora Neale Hurston, American novelist, short story writer, and folklorist (b. 1891)
  • 1986 – Space Shuttle Challenger crew
    • Gregory Jarvis, American captain, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1944)
    • Christa McAuliffe, American educator and astronaut (b. 1948)
    • Ronald McNair, American physicist and astronaut (b. 1950)
    • Ellison Onizuka, American engineer and astronaut (b. 1946)
    • Judith Resnik, American colonel, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1949)
    • Dick Scobee, American colonel, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1939)
    • Michael J. Smith, American captain, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1945)
  • 1988 – Klaus Fuchs, German physicist and politician (b. 1911)
  • 2021 – Cicely Tyson, American actress (b. 1924)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making the Cat Decision, which usually goes only one way:

Hili: I’m thinking.
A: What about?
Hili: Whether to push it off or leave it alone.
Hili: Myślę.
Ja: Nad czym?
Hili: Czy to zrzucić, czy zostawić?

And here’s Leon in nearby Wloclawek. I don’t understand why cats are so eager for Friday. Is it because the staff can attend to them more over the next two days?

Leon: Waiting for Friday.

In Polish: “W oczekiwaniu na piątek”

A meme from Bruce:

From Not Another Science Cat Page: This is only a misdemeanor!

And a special feature from reader Pliny the in Between: Korean Wedding Ducks:

When my brother was in the service he brought home a pair of Korean wedding ducks from Seoul as a wedding gift for me and my partner.  By tradition, as long as the ducks are beak-to-beak it symbolizes harmony in the relationship.  In a couple of weeks, ours will have been holding that position for 30 years.

I hope they don’t have a cat! You know what would happen, and then the relationship would be kaput. . . (in fact, I’ve since learned that a cat did chew the bll off one duck, but the relationship survived).

From Ginger K.  This must be for an OnlyFans cat group:

A tweet by one friend directing you to an article by another friend (and co-author on my one philosophy paper). The title is certainly provocative; I haven’t yet read Maarten’s article but will; in the meantime go see what he means:

Tweets from Matthew. He says this first one is an “old one”, but it’s also wonky. Who on earth would make cheesecake and cookes sister groups? Cheesecake is closer to a pie or even a “true cake” than to a cookie, for crying out loud!

I might have shown this before, but I can’t see it too often: it’s one of Nature’ most remarkable cases of mimicry:

Facial diversity in foxes, which are Honorary Cats®:

Adam Rutherford thinks this is the best letter ever written!

Holy cow! A Picasso?

Runner ducks crossing! This person will have to wait a while . . .

Google translation from the Dutch: “Hi boss I’m a little late…. uhm I have to wait for some ducks crossing.”

The Elect at Princeton University decide that ballet is racist, sexist, white supremacist, and thoroughly problematic

January 27, 2022 • 11:30 am

People might beef because the article below not only appeared in The American Conservative, but was written by arch-conservative Rod Dreher. For those who ignore reports from such sources, you might skip this and see the post from the Guardian above, but I pity such folks for refusing to engage with Right-wing sources, for those sources are almost the sole documentors of the woke shenanigans that may bring Republicans back to power.

To satisfy those who can’t stand to read Rod Dreher, I’ve quoted only his sources, with the rest of the post being the words of the censorious and ultra-Woke Elect Princeton University. It turns out that Princeton is going after ballet, having decided that that genre of dance is racist, white supremacist, and “ableist”. It also needs land acknowledgments before every performance!

Before I start, let me say that I’m not much of a ballet fan, but I do see the beauty in some virtuoso performances. And although it’s traditionally white, like much dance, that barrier is being broken down by people like Misty Copeland and the advent of black ballet companies. What concerns me more, knowing that ballet will inevitably become more diverse, is the credible claim that ballerinas are pressured to maintain a slender image, which may cause them to develop eating disorders. I’m not sure how common this is, but it’s a concern. But it’s impossible to do “traditional” ballet if you can’t jump around onstage, which requires at least an absence of obesity.

Click on the screenshot to read:

Here’s Dreher’s introduction. I’ve omitted his fulminations, which you can read at the site:

A source at Princeton University passed to me two documents sent out by the president of Princeton University Ballet (the student-run recreational ballet club), regarding the club’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity initiatives. I quote them both below, in full. The first was written by the club leaders, who in it affirm that “we are all entering this space with a mindset that what we see as perfect is a white standard” and “we aim to decolonize our practice of ballet, even as ballet remains an imperialist, colonialist, and white supremacist art form.” (Gosh, better not tell these woke dingbats about Alicia Alonso, the Cuban prima ballerina, founder of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, and ardent Castroite.)

The second document is about “Action Plan Guidelines”. I am told that it was not written by the students, but by Princeton alumni who led the “EDI Circuit.” The document was given to all the clubs that participated. The source says, “I don’t think it was mandatory for all the performing arts groups. Still, it was organized by the University’s offices, namely the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and the Lewis Center for the Arts.”

I’ll quote only bits from the first document, and assume that it’s genuine.  I was going to bold parts to emphasize them, but really, the whole screed needs bolding. This is only part of that first document:

Ballet is rooted in white supremacy and perfectionism. We are all entering this space with a mindset that what we see as perfect is a white standard. Unlearning that will be difficult but rewarding. Before we begin detailing our action plan, we want to acknowledge that our leadership and those who composed this plan are all white.

Firstly we would like to add land acknowledgement to our shows, in addition to historical context in our programs. We rarely shed light on the problematic history of our art form, and want to bring it to the forefront of our performances.

We aim to decolonize our practice of ballet, even as ballet remains an imperialist, colonialist, and white supremacist art form. We realize our distinct freedoms as a college run dance group, which is that we do not report back to any sort of board or funding programs that would restrict our choices. In selecting new members and cultivating our style, we want to centralize artistry instead of technique, in the hopes of maintaining our core purpose as a ballet company but doing away with some of the stringent and exclusive standards that pervade the art form. As this is particularly important during auditions, we will be prefacing audition discussions with a frank recognition and repudiation of our own biases. . .

. . . We hope to take steps to ensure that PUB membership, not just leadership, requires a commitment to EDI work. As such, we have decided that participation in service and outreach to local communities will become a requirement of every company member. We partner with an organization that members can sign up to volunteer with, but there are numerous other opportunities for dance service on campus. Even though we cannot change some of the biases and prejudices that exist in ballet off campus, we can dedicate ourselves to combating that exclusivity in our local communities and for the next generation.

. . . We would also like to open a conversation about body image and take steps to heal and deconstruct the harmful and racialized ideas about body image that many of PUB’s members enter the company with just by virtue of being a ballet dancer. Historically, PUB has been neutral on this issue, and while body neutrality is something some may strive for individually, it is not realistic or helpful for a group of ballet dancers who have internalized damaging ideas about how they should eat and what they should look like. We are hoping to bring someone in from outside the company to train the officers or the company as a whole on how to talk about body image and how to create an environment where we feel comfortable talking about our struggles with body image while also helping to deconstruct our assumptions about it.

The last paragraph does have a point, but the aesthetics of an athletic, healthy body is essential for ballet, as it is for sports. But the pressure to develop a thin and graceful body type does not seem to be “racialized” to me. All ballerinas, black or white (and there are now many of the former, including entire companies) will have to deal with the need to be athletic in a way that makes the performance aesthetically appealing.

Maus banned in a Tennessee school distrinct because of eight swear words and a naked rodent

January 27, 2022 • 9:30 am

Today we’ll have two posts on how the “Elect”—et’s use that instead of “woke”, so as to conform to John McWhorter’s supposedly non-pejorative word—are changing or banning art to both confirm virtue and prevent others from enjoying good painting, dance, and writing. One source will be the liberal media; the other the conservative media. This first post deals mainly with literature, but I’ve put some “racialization of art” stuff at the very bottom.

Let’s start with the liberal media, which of course reports Elect shenanigans less often than does the liberal “MSM”. In this case, however, the Guardian is the source. This concerns Art Spiegelman’s “graphic novel” Maus, which won the Pulitzer Prize for literature (the “Special Awards and Letters” category) in 1986.

Before I first read Maus, I was disdainful of “graphic novels,” thinking they were just comic books for adults, made for people who wanted to look at pictures rather than read.

Was I wrong! I first saw Maus at the 57th Street Bookstore soon after I arrived in Chicago, and, knowing the plaudits it got, I pulled it off the shelf.  I started reading, and then couldn’t stop. The artwork, I found, added immensely to the power of the book, especially the depiction of all characters as animals, though one wouldn’t expect that power in a book about the Holocaust. I bought it, which I rarely do with books due to my groaning shelves, and it’s now one of several graphic novels I own. (The other two are volumes of wonderful series The Rabbi’s Cat, given to me by a friend.) It’s not just that the books have moggies in them; the attraction is, as in Animal Farm, that messages can be driven home more deeply using animals as metaphors than by straight depiction of human actions.

At any rate, everyone should read Maus (and I also recommend The Rabbi’s Cat).  But, according to the Guardian the good (?) people on a Tennessee school board have taken it upon themselves to deprive students of this access—for no good reason.

Click on the screenshot below to read the piece. You know it’s gotta be egregious censorship if the woke Guardian reports it!

Why did the school board, which after deciding to redact the book, find it more practical to ban it outright? Because there was a single depiction of nudity OF A MOUSE and a few swear words that kids hear (and use) every day. An excerpt from the article (my emphasis):

A Tennessee school board has banned a Pulitzer prize-winning novel from its classrooms over eight curse words and an illustration of a naked cartoon mouse.

The graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by New Yorker Art Spiegelman, uses hand-drawn illustrations of mice and cats to depict how the author’s parents survived Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

The graphic memoir elevated a pulp mass medium to high art when it nabbed a slew of literary awards in 1992 but appears not to have impressed educators in Mcminn county.

Ten board members unanimously agreed in favour of removing the novel from the eighth-grade curriculum, citing its use of the phrase “God Damn” and drawings of “naked pictures” of women, according to minutes taken from a board of education meeting earlier this month.

Here’s the only passage about nudity (OF A MOUSE) in the school board minutes (have a look at the link above):

Mike Cochran- I will start. I went to school here thirteen years. I learned math, English, Reading and History. I never had a book with a naked picture in it, never had one with foul language. In third grade I had one of my classmates come up to me and say hey what’s this word? I sounded it out and it was “damn,” and I was real proud of myself because I sounded it out. She ran straight to the teacher and told her I was cussing. Besides that one book which I think she brought from home, now I’ve seen a cuss word in a textbook at school. So, this idea that we have to have this kind of material in the class in order to teach history, I don’t buy it.

. . .We are talking about teaching ethics to our kids, and it starts out with the dad and the son talking about when the dad lost his virginity. It wasn’t explicit but it was in there. You see the naked pictures, you see the razor, the blade where the mom is cutting herself. You see her laying in a pool of her own blood. You have all this stuff in here, again, reading this to myself it was a decent book until the end. I thought the end was stupid to be honest with you. A lot of the cussing had to do with the son cussing out the father, so I don’t really know how that teaches our kids any kind of ethical stuff. It’s just the opposite, instead of treating his father with some kind of respect, he treated his father like he was the victim.

We don’t need this stuff to teach kids history. We can teach them history and we can teach them graphic history. We can tell them exactly what happened, but we don’t need all the nakedness and all the other stuff.

At least Mickey Mouse had the decency to cover his shame with pants!

At first they thought about just redacting the panels with nudity and cussing, but that would lead to copyright violations:

“There is some rough, objectionable language in this book,” director of school, Lee Parkison, is recorded as saying in the session’s opening remarks.

Parkison continued to say he had “consulted with our attorney” and as a result “we decided the best way to fix or handle the language in this book was to redact it … to get rid of the eight curse words and the picture of the woman that was objected to.”

Board member Tony Allman supported the move to remove the “vulgar and inappropriate” content, arguing: “We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff.”

. . . After much discussion over the redaction of words the members found objectionable, the board eventually decided that alongside copyright concerns, it would be better to ban the graphic novel altogether.

Eventually they voted to entirely remove the book from the eight-grade curriculum. Those kids are about fourteen years old, and you tell me that none of them has seen a drawing or photo of a naked woman before, or heard (much less used) the words “God damn”.

But apparently the use of animals was said to”brutalize the Holocaust”, as if it wasn’t sufficiently brutal. Indeed, to bring home the nature of the Holocaust, pictures (either photos or artwork) are essential; words alone are insufficient:

Board member Tony Allman supported the move to remove the “vulgar and inappropriate” content, arguing: “We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff.”

“I am not denying it was horrible, brutal, and cruel,” Allman said in reference to the genocide and murder of six million European Jews during the second world war.

“It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” he added.

Allman also took aim at Spiegelman himself, alleging: “I may be wrong, but this guy that created the artwork used to do the graphics for Playboy.”

“You can look at his history, and we’re letting him do graphics in books for students in elementary school. If I had a child in the eighth grade, this ain’t happening. If I had to move him out and homeschool him or put him somewhere else, this is not happening.”

Mike Cochran, another school board member, described parts of the book as “completely unnecessary”.

“We are talking about teaching ethics to our kids, and it starts out with the dad and the son talking about when the dad lost his virginity. It wasn’t explicit but it was in there,” Cochran said.

“We don’t need this stuff to teach kids history. We can teach them history and we can teach them graphic history. We can tell them exactly what happened, but we don’t need all the nakedness and all the other stuff.”

Here we have a bunch of Pecksniffian parents making the decision that fourteen-year-olds shouldn’t have access to a famous, powerful, and moving graphic novel.

Spiegelman’s reaction:

Spiegelman said he was “baffled” by the outcome in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday. “It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” the 73-year-old author said, adding he thought the school board was “Orwellian” for approving the ban.

Spiegelman’s Jewish parents were both sent to Nazi concentration camps and his mother took her own life when he was just 20.

“I’ve met so many young people who … have learned things from my book,” Spiegelman said. “I also understand that Tennessee is obviously demented. There’s something going on very, very haywire there.”

Well of course not all of Tennessee is demented, but there are some school board members who are acting, well, I won’t give my reaction.  Let’s just say it’s similar to Neil Gaiman’s:

*************

I don’t know where else to put this item, but it appears that Wokeness Electness has invaded the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I don’t know how far the rot has spread, but readers might check for themselves.  We know, at least, that David and Canova, were racists.  They could at least have depicted Socrates as a person of color!

Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

h/t: Jean

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 27, 2022 • 8:45 am

Today we have a panoply of DUCK photos by Emilio D’alise, whose notes and short descriptions are indented.  You can enlarge these beautiful mallard pictures by clicking on them.

Mallard or wild duck (Anas platyrhynchos)

These mallards were all photographed in Monument, Colorado, on a pond behind the Public Library. There is a large population of ducks and geese that inhabit the pond nearly year-round, in part because people feed them.

Flapping:

Hens [JAC: note the difference in bill patterns, the hen’s “fingerprints”]:

Thursday: Hili dialogue

January 27, 2022 • 7:30 am

Good morning on a frigid Chicago Thursday, January 27, 2022, National Chocolate Cake Day. Make mine a Sachertorte. It’s also National Geographic Day (the society was founded on this day in 1888), Thomas Crapper Day (he invented the ballcock, and died on this day in 1910), World Breast Pumping Day, and these two liberation holidays:

News of the Day:

*The good news is that Joe Biden finally gets to nominate a Justice to serve on the Supreme Court. The bad news is that it’s just to replace one of the three liberal justices already on the court: Stephen Breyer. For Stephan Breyer has announced his retirement. CNN reported that Breyer will stay on till the end of the term (summer, I think) or until a replacement is confirmed. Biden hasn’t commented but  has said that his first nomination for a Justice will be a black woman.

The ideological balance of the court won’t change, but Democrats have urged Breyer to retire now lest the balance of Senatorial and Presidential power change towards Republicans. And he did that. Now if only Clarence Thomas could retire, too. . . isn’t he getting up there?

*This new paper in Science Advances reports that a cocktail of five drugs, put in a “BioDome”—a plastic device affixed to the amputated limb of an African clawed frog—promoted substantial regrowth of the limbs, to the point where  frogs could swim with it. This is, to my knowledge, the first limb regrown to such an extent in vertebrates that aren’t salamanders (salamanders can regrow limbs). The Wall Street Journal, covering this, also reports:

In previous research, scientists tried to prompt limb regrowth in various animals using techniques including electrical stimulation and cell transplants. For the new study, a team led by Tufts University biologist Michael Levin took a different approach. They amputated the hind legs of more than 100 anesthetized African clawed frogs and treated the stumps of some of the frogs with five growth-promoting drugs.

Silicone caps containing a drug-infused gel—including compounds known to encourage the growth of nerve, blood vessel and muscle tissue and to block the formation of the collagen involved in scarring—were sewn onto the stumps. The caps, which the scientists call BioDomes, were left in place for 24 hours before being removed.

Within two weeks, the researchers saw a significant increase in soft tissue growth among frogs that had been treated with the drug cocktail. Over the next 18 months, those frogs also showed increased bone regeneration and nerve and muscle development compared with their untreated counterparts. Ultimately, the treated frogs grew appendages with new knee joints and several boneless toes—not fully formed legs but good enough for the frogs to swim with.

The drugs were not leg-specific, and that raises the question of whether this technique would work not only in other species, but in humans. It’s all unclear now (humans, for one thing, begin producing scar tissue almost immediately), and way into the future, but I’m betting that in a few years, new human amputees will be lining up for trials with the BioDome. Imagine if we could regrow severed limbs!

*In a NYT op-ed, Thomas Edsall discusses the increasing political polarization in the U.S. and reports on a new study of polarized democracies, “What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?,” written by Jennifer McCoy of Georgia State and Benjamin Press of the Carnegie Endowment. The U.S. has not only become more polarized politically, but is among the most polarized democracies on Earth. Here’s a chart from the paper showing comparisons of polarizations in several areas over four decades:

Note: Polarization ratings are aggregated among countries by region, with not all regions shown. A rating of 0 indicates that opposing political groups tend to interact in a friendly manner, ranging to a rating of 4 that indicates that they tend to be hostile.Source: Varieties of Democracy Institute By The New York Times

What happens in polarized democracies is not good. They generally become less democratic:

In their report, McCoy and Press make the case that there are “a number of features that make the United States both especially susceptible to polarization and especially impervious to efforts to reduce it.”

The authors point to a number of causes, including “the durability of identity politics in a racially and ethnically diverse democracy.” As the authors note,

The United States is perhaps alone in experiencing a demographic shift that poses a threat to the white population that has historically been the dominant group in all arenas of power, allowing political leaders to exploit insecurities surrounding this loss of status.

An additional cause, the authors write, is that

binary choice is deeply embedded in the U.S. electoral system, creating a rigid two-party system that facilitates binary divisions of society. For example, only five of twenty-six wealthy consolidated democracies elect representatives to their national legislatures in single-member districts.

The outlook? According to Edsall, bad:.

As the McCoy-Press report shows, only 16 of the 52 countries that reached levels of pernicious polarization succeeded in achieving depolarization and in “a significant number of instances later repolarized to pernicious levels. The progress toward depolarization in seven of 16 episodes was later undone.”

That does not suggest a favorable prognosis for the United States.

*Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who disappeared after she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier of China, of sexual misconduct, still seems to be missing. While she made an occasional awkward (and apparently staged) appearance in government video, the Women’s Tennis Association, which has suspended all play in China, hasn’t been able to talk to her directly. And now she’s saying her initial accusations were “misunderstood,” and has retracted them.

But the WTA, whose leaders still have been unable to make direct contact with Peng, has not softened its stance or its demands, fearing that she has been coerced into the retraction.

“We appreciate seeing the support continue for Peng Shuai,” Simon [chief executive of the WTA] said Wednesday in an email. “The WTA is proud of Peng Shuai in speaking out for what is right, and we continue with our unwavering call for confirmation of Peng’s safety along with a full, fair and transparent investigation, without censorship, into her allegation of sexual assault. This is an issue that can never fade away.”

Magda Linette, a leading Polish player and member of the WTA player council, said she hoped Peng could speak with players directly or with Simon. “If we could see her in an environment where we know she is not being really controlled and we can have at least a conversation, because she has been refusing that, I think that would be a really good step to trying to rebuild the trust, trying to rebuild the relationship again to see how things are going and how she is actually,” Linette said.

*I thought fish could live longer than this. The Associated Press has a report on the oldest aquarium fish still alive, an Australian lungfish named Methuselah:

Methuselah is a 4-foot-long (1.2-meter), 40-pound (18.1-kilogram) Australian lungfish that was brought to the San Francisco museum in 1938 from Australia.

A primitive species with lungs and gills, Australian lungfish are believed to be the evolutionary link between fish and amphibians.

Here is (if I can use the phrase), the 84-year-old Senior Fish, who dwells at the California Academy of Sciences:

Senior biologist Allan Jan feeds Methuselah, a 4-foot-long, 40-pound Australian lungfish that was brought to the California Academy of Sciences in 1938 from Australia, in its tank in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

But is this the oldest known aquarium fish? Nope, but Methuselah isn’t far from the record:

Until a few years ago, the oldest Australian lungfish was at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. But that fish, named Granddad, died in 2017 at the age of 95.

*Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 874,733, an increase of 2,466 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 5,647,268, an increase of about 8,100 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on January 27 include:

  • 98 – Trajan succeeds his adoptive father Nerva as Roman emperor; under his rule the Roman Empire will reach its maximum extent.
  • 1302 – Dante Alighieri is condemned in absentia and exiled from Florence

It was politics, Jake! Dante (did he always wear a red robe?):

Posthumous portrait in tempera by Sandro Botticelli, 1495

Fawkes’s signature before (below) and after (top he was tortured.  The difference is clear:

There is no evidence that Polynesians were the first to discover (i.e., set eyes on) Antarctica.

Here are the Mussorgsky brothers in 1858, with Modest to the right and Immodest to the left:

The drawing of the lamp accompanying the patent:

Here’s Lenin’s body on display? Is it real, or is it wax? Who knows? I’ve seen Mao’s body in Beijing, and Lenin’s corpse is on my bucket list. I wanted to see Stalin, too, but they cancelled him and buried him by the Kremlin wall:

A short news report on the fire:

  • 1973 – The Paris Peace Accords officially ends the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict’s last recorded American combat casualty.
  • 1983 – The pilot shaft of the Seikan Tunnel, the world’s longest sub-aqueous tunnel (53.85 km) between the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō, breaks through.

Here’s that big breakthrough! The tunnel connects the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido (second picture):

  • 2010 – Apple announces the iPad.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1756 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian pianist and composer (d. 1791)
  • 1832 – Lewis Carroll, English novelist, poet, and mathematician (d. 1898)

Here’s a photo of Alice Liddell (yes, the Alice) taken by Carroll in 1858:

  • 1836 – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Austrian journalist and author (d. 1895)
  • 1885 – Jerome Kern, American composer and songwriter (d. 1945)
  • 1921 – Donna Reed, American actress (d. 1986)
  • 1956 – Mimi Rogers, American actress

She was born with a Jewish father and Christian mother, but then was a member of the Church (?) of Scientology for a long time. Rogers has since left the church(?). Here she is during her two-year marriage to Tom Cruise:

Those who perished on January 27 include:

  • 1596 – Francis Drake, English captain and explorer (b. 1540)
  • 1851 – John James Audubon, French-American ornithologist and painter (b. 1789)

Audubon has now been canceled, but here’s his photo and his painting of mallards from Birds of America:

  • 1901 – Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (b. 1813)
  • 1910 – Thomas Crapper, English plumber and businessman (b. 1836)
  • 1922 – Nellie Bly, American journalist and author (b. 1864)
  • 2004 – Jack Paar, American talk show host and author (b. 1918)
  • 2009 – John Updike, American novelist, short story writer, and critic (b. 1932)
  • 2010 – J. D. Salinger, American soldier and author (b. 1919)
  • 2014 – Pete Seeger, American singer-songwriter, guitarist and activist (b. 1919)
  • 2021 – Cloris Leachman, American actress and comedian (b. 1926)

Here’s Leachman, as Coach Popper’s wife, in the stirring last scene of The Last Picture Show.  Sonny, with whom she had an affair, comes to visit her long after their relationship had ended. Then they reconcile—or so it seems.  Leachman won the Best Supporting Actress in 1972 for her performance in this best of all American films. (If you haven’t seen it, you can’t be my friend.)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s dialogue is a bit hard to understand. Malgorzata explains, “Hili is learning formal logic and is having some trouble with it. Andrzej commiserates with her difficulties.”

Hili: If A then not B and out of two evils…
A: I do understand you.
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli A to nie B, to z dwojga złego…
Ja: Ja cię rozumiem.

From Jesus of the Day. This is a good person.

From Facebook:

A cartoon from Episcopal Church Memes via Jenny. Click to enlarge:

The tweet of God, who I’m sure is a Democrat (he’s Jewish, for crying out loud!)

From Paul, first animated lighthouses of Europe, then all the world’s lighthouse. Do you think there would be a way to do away with these cumbersome objects that are often inhabited?

Press the arrow to see the animation:

From Barry: an amazing glass octopus:

Watch this to find out more about the species (only 3 min long and a good video):

From Ginger K.  Of course some people will beef because they claim that Pluto isn’t a planet.

Tweets from Matthew. This is a very spiffy cat.

This anteater had cojones:

A nice reconstruction: