Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 20, 2023 • 6:45 am

Greetings on a Hump Day (“መዓልቲ ሃምፕ”  in Tigrinya): December 20, 2023, and National Sangria Day, which is not only cultural appropriation, but seasonally inappropriate. Still, it can be good on a hot summer’s day when made with real fruit juice and a decent light red wine.

It’s also Games Day, International Human Solidarity Day, Cathode-Ray Tube Day (patented on this day in 1938), and Sacagawea Day, honoring the Native American woman, a Shoshone, who accompanied and aided Lewis and Clark on their expedition (she’s believed to have died on this day in 1812). Here’s an imagined photo of her with Lewis and Clark from Wikipedia:

(from Wikipedia) Sacagawea (right) with Lewis and Clark at the Three Forks, mural at Montana House of Representatives

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 20 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Potentially big news: The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled Donald Trump ineligible for the state’s Republican primary vote:

Former President Donald J. Trump is ineligible to hold office again, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday, accepting the argument that the 14th Amendment disqualifies him in an explosive decision that could upend the 2024 election.

In a lengthy ruling ordering the Colorado secretary of state to exclude Mr. Trump from the state’s Republican primary ballot, the justices reversed a Denver district judge’s finding last month that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which disqualifies people who have engaged in insurrection against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it from holding office — did not apply to the presidency.

They affirmed the district judge’s other key conclusions: that Mr. Trump’s actions before and on Jan. 6, 2021, constituted engaging in insurrection, and that courts had the authority to enforce Section 3 against a person whom Congress had not specifically designated.

This is on hold until January to see if an appeal is filed. It will be. And if the Supreme Court, by some miracle, upholds the Colorado decision, then Trump is finished, as other states will follow.  Good news (for now)!

*The UN Security Council vote for a ceasefire in Israel—which, if it passed calling for a permanent ceasefire, would be the end of Israel and restore Hamas’s reign—was supposed to take place yesterday but has been delayed, apparently because the U.S. will veto the present resolution, as it should.

The delay into Wednesday suggests agreement hasn’t yet been reached on language that could gain a “yes” vote from the United States, or at least an abstention, which would allow the measure to pass.

“We’re still working through the modalities of the resolution,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN during a Tuesday afternoon briefing at the White House. “It’s important for us that the rest of the world understand what’s at stake here and what Hamas did on the 7th of October and how Israel has a right to defend itself against those threats.”

The draft resolution is said to have originally included a call for a “cessation of hostilities” to allow much-needed aid to enter Gaza. Diplomats were hopeful that changing the language to “suspension of hostilities” could gain American support.

The key questions for the U.S. would be two: how long would this cessation be, and how many hostages would be released. I suspect that if the answers are “forever” and “not all of them”, the U.S. will veto the resolution.  The rest of the world’s countries, including some of our European allies, apparently are wishing for the slow attrition of Israel.

*The Economist‘s new article: “Israel and Palestine: How peace is possible” recycles the same old bromides: new leadership on both sides (agreed!), a mutual desire for peace (not so sure: Palestinians generally want Israel eliminated) and outside help (again, dubious) to create a two-state solution (almost impossible):

And yet something changed after October 7th. Israel’s strategy of marginalising the Palestinians and their dreams is broken. Both sides have a chance to find new leaders with a new vision. And after years of neglect, outsiders may be ready to help, crucially including a group of Arab countries. They must not fall into the trap of thinking that peace requires sweating the detail yet again. Success depends on the two sides wanting peace and—much harder—believing in it.

If the fighting is to make any sense it must lead to peace, which means two nations living side by side. Israel’s bombardment has killed over 16,000 Palestinians, including Hamas fighters. Although some Palestinians have been radicalised by that and the daily humiliations of occupation, many detest Hamas and its unwinnable wars and would live with Israel if they could prosper. So long as the men with guns do not get in their way, those people will seek peace. Israel, too, needs a new strategy. The old one failed to fulfil the state’s basic promise to create a land safe for Jews; 1,400 people were killed or kidnapped by Hamas, hundreds of thousands more have been evacuated.

Peace also requires new leaders, because the present ones are discredited. In Israel Binyamin Netanyahu is an obstacle to a genuine reconciliation, the sooner he goes the better. America could usefully signal that it expects Israel to hold elections soon. Polls suggest that he will be replaced by Benny Gantz, a former general who understands the toll of war. Mr Gantz has not endorsed a Palestinian state, but neither has he ruled one out.

New Palestinian leadership is needed, too. Hamas is an avowed enemy of peace: for as long as it runs Gaza, Palestinian pledges to embrace peace will not be believable. On the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the Palestinian Authority is corrupt, ossified and lacks any democratic legitimacy. Amid the rubble of war, Gaza will need time to rebuild and re-establish some kind of stable administration. Moderate Arab countries should sponsor a transitional Palestinian leadership for the West Bank and Gaza that can begin building trust among its own people and, vitally, with the Israelis, before holding elections. By running both Gaza and the West Bank, it would become a more credible partner for peace.

Sounds good, no? The big problem is that the Palestinians don’t want a two state solution. They want Israel gone, an ex-Israel, singing with the choir invisible. And where will they get new leadership for Palestine. It can’t be the Palestinian Authority. Truly, I now believe a two-state solution is untenable because a Palestinian state contiguous with Israel is a recipe for continued terrorism. I’d like to see them try, and wish them well, but do people really believe that the terrorism is over, especially when so many more Gazans approve of Hamas now than they did before October 7?

*Crikey, there are even more allegations of plagiarism by Harvard President Claudine Gay. These are detailed in the conservative Washington Free Beacon,but clearly if you don’t believe them you can check for yourself.  Some excerpts:

Harvard University on Tuesday received a complaint outlining over 40 allegations of plagiarism against its embattled president, Claudine Gay. The document paints a picture of a pattern of misconduct more extensive than has been previously reported and puts the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body—which said it initiated an “independent review” of Gay’s scholarship and issued a statement of support for her leadership—back in the spotlight.

The new allegations, which were submitted to Harvard’s research integrity officer, Stacey Springs, include the examples reported by the Washington Free Beacon and other outlets, as well as dozens of additional cases in which Gay quoted or paraphrased authors without proper attribution, according to a copy of the complaint reviewed by the Free Beacon. They range from missing quotation marks around a few phrases or sentences to entire paragraphs lifted verbatim.

The full list of examples spans seven of Gay’s publications—two more than previously reported—which comprise almost half of her scholarly output. Though the Harvard Corporation said earlier this month that it initiated an independent review Gay’s work in October and found “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct,” that probe focused on just three papers.

“[I]t is impossible that your office has already reviewed the entirety of these materials,” the complaint reads, “as many … have not been previously reported or submitted.”

All allegations of faculty plagiarism must be reviewed by Harvard’s research integrity officer, according to the school’s official policies, and if deemed credible are referred for further investigation. A guilty finding can result in a range of consequences—including “suspension,” “rank reduction,” and “termination of employment.”

She’s toast. This has become a huge embarrassment for Harvard, and it will have little choice but to let her go.  While I predicted before that they’d wait a longish while before discharging her (this was when the second batch of plagiarisms was revealed), now I think it will be a matter of a month or two. There’s no way she can explain them away.

There’s another complaint against Schmarvard, too: they legally threatened the NY Post for defamation after it broke the story on Gay’s purported plagiarism:

The new complaint could force a more comprehensive reckoning at a time when even liberal media outlets, including the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Crimson, are taking concerns about Gay’s scholarship seriously. It could also hold Harvard’s feet to the fire over the school’s legal threat to the Post—a move the complaint says violated the school’s own research misconduct policy, which forbids retaliation against complainants.

Here’s one egregious example which is simply copying someone else’s acknowledgements. The similarities simply have no explanation except straight-up stealing.

*Ships in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal (through which an appreciable part of commercial shipping passes) are now in danger of being hijacked or attacked by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. (Houthis are Shia Muslims in Yemen, on the side of Iran):

Hours after the U.S. announced a multinational task force to protect commercial traffic through the Red Sea, shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said it would send its vessels around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa instead.

The message was clear: Shipping firms, oil companies and insurers remain jitteryabout a possible snarl to one of the world’s most crucial trade routes.

Attacks on merchant vessels by Houthi forces in Yemen, a militia group backed by Iran, continued this week—including two on Monday. The attacks have mostly taken place near the southern end of the Red Sea, called Bab el-Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears.

The rising threat has prompted many of the world’s biggest shipping companies to find alternate routes.

Fearing widespread disruption to trade flows that could reignite inflation by boosting prices for goods and energy, the U.S. said this week that its navy would lead a force involving almost a dozen countries to deter the Houthi strikes.

The naval forces will improve matters. But look: Iran is behind the whole thing, just as it is behind Hamas and Hezbollah. I’m starting to think that unless there is regime change in Iran, or it goes to war with the West and is defeated, terrorism will always be with us. Iran would like nothing more to destroy Israel, and if it gets nukes, watch out Tel Aviv! It also brutally represses its own people, as we know from Masih Alinejad’s intrepid reporting (see tweet below). I’m hoping, but not optimistic, that internal opposition will bring down the theocracy.

*The Washington Post reports on a new paper in PNAS that, to them, suggests that “humanity’s complex social networks have deep evolutionary roots.” (I haven’t gotten the link to the paper yet.)

Louise lost touch with her sister Loretta. Life just got in the way. After a move from California to Ohio, and then another all the way to Japan, it had been 26 years since she had seen her sibling.

But recently, when Louise came across a photo of Loretta, her eyes lingered on her features: Her dark eyes. Her thin hair. Her big ears.

Louise is a bonobo, a primate that is one of humanity’s closest living relatives. In a study published Monday, researchers say they found that bonobos and chimpanzees that see photos of old friends, family members and groupmates appear to remember them.

The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, amount to some of the longest-lasting memories ever recorded in the animal kingdom. The discovery suggests that humanity’s complex social networks have deep evolutionary roots, with long-term memory probably being a trait possessed by the common ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos several million years ago.

The study “time-traveled 7 million years ago into the mind of our common ancestor we had together, in a way we’d never done before,” said Brian Hare, a cognitive scientist at Duke University not involved in the study.

To peer into the apes’ minds, researchers enticed 26 chimps and bonobos at zoos in Scotland and Belgium and at an ape sanctuary in Japan to saddle up to a monitor. Using a straw with fruit juice to keep their heads still and an infrared camera to track their eye movement, the team showed the animals a pair of side-to-side images for three seconds. The apes were not restrained during the experiment.

“It’s an elegant, quite simple way to encourage them to keep their heads still,” said Laura Lewis, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the study.

One image was of an ape they had previously lived with. The other was of a complete stranger.

On average, the bonobos and chimps that saw both images looked at their old groupmates for about a quarter of a second longer than the stranger.

Michael Platt, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has also done eye-tracking research, stopped short of saying the experiment showed that bonobos and chimps truly recognized their old buddies. Instead, he said, the results suggest the animals may have had a feeling of familiarity with images of old groupmates.

“The authors interpret this difference to reflect face recognition,” said Platt, who was not involved in the most recent study. “It would seem that what the authors uncovered is evidence of familiarity.”

In the study, the amount of timesince an ape lived with its old groupmatedidn’t appear to affect the results. The bonobo Louise, for instance, last saw her sister at the San Diego Zoo in 1992 before being moved to the Cincinnati Zoo and then the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan. When it comes to long-term memory, chimps and bonobos join the ranks of humans and dolphins. Previous research has found dolphins can remember each other’s whistles for more than two decades.

I haven’t read the paper so can’t really judge the results, but I’m not impressed with the 0.25-second difference in gaze length. And this is not the same thing at all as showing ‘deep evolutionary roots”, which requires really remember groupmates over the long term to foster solidarity and reciprocity. Further, even if it is real, remembering groupmates could have evolved twice independently in the human lineage on one hand and on the chimp/bonobo lineage on the other (Data from gorilla recognition would help settle the issue.) Finally, there’s the statement by Michael Platt about the difference between individual recognition and “familiarity.” I don’t understand the distinction unless members of a troop have some kind of generic facial similarity—something that seems unlikely.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is depressed:

A: Why are you sitting here?
Hili: I’m waiting for better times.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu tu siedzisz?
Hili: Czekam na lepsze czasy.

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

An ornithologist was clearly not consulted when this sign was prepared:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy, probably more correct than he knows (it may also be photoshopped):

From Rob:

From Masih: a teacher kept in electronic shackles. 500,000 Tooman is about $12, and 5 million Tooman is $118.  I don’t think the U.S. charges for electronic monitoring!

Carole Hooven on the waning tolerance at Harvard. She asks, who gets the blame?

From Malcolm, who says, “Quite a story.” Indeed. Look at that hole in his head!

Here’s the famous Richard Armour couplet on the issue, and Science girl’s tweet about how to avoid it:

Shake and shake the ketchup bottle
None’ll come, and then a lott’ll

 

Guess! (I know!):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy gassed along with his mom. He was only seven months old:

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First, a murmuration of starlings (I had one by my office window this morning). Nobody knows why they do it:

A nail-biter, but because it’s from the Dodo, all is well:

42 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    1192 – Richard I of England is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after the Third Crusade.

    1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

    1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to attempt to secede from the United States with the South Carolina Declaration of Secession.

    1915 – World War I: The last Australian troops are evacuated from Gallipoli.

    1917 – Cheka, the first Soviet secret police force, is founded.

    1924 – Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison.

    1946 – It’s a Wonderful Life premieres at the Globe Theatre in New York to mixed reviews.

    1951 – The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs.

    1955 – Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom. [Rather than being based in a fixed location, Welsh kings would maintain an itinerant court.]

    1973 – Assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco: A car bomb planted by ETA in Madrid kills three people, including the Prime Minister of Spain, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco.

    1987 – In the worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector. in the Tablas Strait of the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official). [I’m not sure how the death tolls differ so much.]

    1989 – The United States invasion of Panama deposes Manuel Noriega.

    1991 – A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.

    1995 – NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia.

    1999 – Macau is handed over to China by Portugal.

    2004 – A gang of thieves steal £26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, one of the largest bank robberies in British history.

    2007 – Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch in the history of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years and 243 days.

    2019 – The United States Space Force becomes the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces since 1947.

    Births:
    1629 – Pieter de Hooch, Dutch painter (d. 1684).

    1812 – Laura M. Hawley Thurston, American poet and educator (d. 1842).

    1868 – Harvey Samuel Firestone, American businessman, founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (d. 1938).

    1901 – Robert J. Van de Graaff, American physicist and academic, invented the Van de Graaff generator (d. 1967).

    1946 – Uri Geller, Israeli-English magician and psychic.

    1948 – Alan Parsons, English keyboard player and producer.

    1951 – Nuala O’Loan, Baroness O’Loan, Northern Irish academic and police ombudsman.

    1952 – Jenny Agutter, English actress.

    1957 – Billy Bragg, English singer-songwriter and guitarist. [Many British women’s rights campaigners have included his name in their X/Twitter handles in response to Bragg’s dismissive attitude towards them.]

    1957 – Mike Watt, American singer-songwriter and bass player. [Sometimes rated “one of the greatest bassists on the planet”, the Red Hot Chili Peppers dedicated their best-selling album, 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik, to him.]

    1969 – Alain de Botton, Swiss-English philosopher and author.

    I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
    1723 – Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, German physician and botanist (b. 1652). [Introduced several important innovations which were later used by other botanists (Carl Linnaeus among them). Also interested in astronomy, by the last decade of his life Rivinus was nearly completely blind from looking at sunspots.]I

    1783 – Antonio Soler, Spanish priest and composer (b. 1729).

    1862 – Robert Knox, Scottish surgeon and zoologist (b. 1791).

    1921 – Julius Richard Petri, German microbiologist (b. 1852). [Generally credited with inventing the device known as the Petri dish, which is named after him, while working as assistant to bacteriologist Robert Koch.]

    1968 – John Steinbeck, American novelist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902).

    1971 – Roy O. Disney, American banker and businessman, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (b. 1893).

    1973 – Bobby Darin, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1936).

    1982 – Arthur Rubinstein, Polish-American pianist and composer (b. 1887).

    1984 – Stanley Milgram, American psychologist and academic (b. 1933).

    1996 – Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and cosmologist (b. 1934).

    2009 – Arnold Stang, American actor (b. 1918). [The voice of Top Cat, one of my earliest TV memories. I’m astonished to find that they only made a single series of 30 episodes.]

    2020 – Fanny Waterman, British pianist (b. 1920). [Particularly known as the founder, chair and artistic director of the Leeds International Piano Competition.]

  3. “… waning tolerance at Harvard.”

    Herbert Marcuse has defined that as repressive tolerance.

    In case of confusion, I am not defending “repressive tolerance”, or expecting everyone to have read Marcuse.

  4. This line that Gay plagiarized – “He reminded me of the importance of getting the data right and following where they lead without fear or favor”
    – almost made me gag. If Gay and her likeminded colleagues have taught scholars anything, it is that they should fear losing their jobs and their reputations if they dare follow data that falsifies woke dogma. Witness her treatment of Roland Fryer.

    1. The thing that gets me is the sheer laziness of plagiarising what is supposed to be a personal expression of thanks. Also, she clearly has no originality of thought whatsoever.

      1. But isn’t putting value on “originality of thought” another example of, uhhh, “white privilege”, like “white empiricism”, and like valuing such things as good writing, objectivity, words, and numbers?

        On the other hand, maybe there is a sense in which this applies. It was in Europe, and not in the more tradition-heavy societies of India, Mesopotamia, Africa, or the American continent, that “originality of thought” led in several hundred years to numerous technological innovations. The sheer dynamism of European civilization, which the wokerati only complain about, raises some deep sociological questions. Of course, the answers to these questions need not be biological, but may relate to topography, or climate, or specific key inventions, or accidental side-effects of other aspects of the culture. I myself would put money on two 14th century inventions: eyeglasses and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.

    2. The students and faculty of Harvard really deserve better than this mediocrity in titular leadership. Is this the soft racism of low expectations from the Fellows is astounding as it drones on?

    3. Thanks for linking that throw-away line in her thesis to her attempt to fire a black professor. Most poignant illustration of woke hypocrisy in recent memory.

  6. I am not sure that UN resolution would be binding on Israel (the UN resolution setting up Israel doesn’t seem to be binding on her neighbors). If Israel were to ignore it, all that would happen is that the people who are already against her would add that to their list of crimes.

    1. No resolution by the United Nations can trump the national sovereignty of any member state. No country, least of all the United States or Israel, would join the U.N. if its survival hung on the good graces of its enemies on the Security Council.

      1. Yes, Leslie, again.
        UN opinions are as advisory as one wants them to be. Since the 1970s the rabble of the Islamic crowd has been bashing Israel and the USA and since then that rabble has been rightfully ignored.

        Personally my alignment has shifted lately from being generally pro-Israel to wanting to jump an El Al plane and sign up over there. And destroy the evil.

        Nuclear states need never apologize. Might doesn’t always make right (Russia, China, NK) but here it does. Israel is a legitimate state, more legitimate than many and an honest democracy. Verses the forces of darkness.

        D.A.
        NYC

  7. I am curious…can the US Supreme Court overrule the Colorado Supreme Court on matters regarding their own state’s decisions with respect to whom they allow on their ballots? Perhaps because the argument is regarding the US Constitution they can, but it feels very much like a situation where the states can determine it, as in the decision to split electoral votes or not. Can any experts in the crowd enlighten me?

    1. I suppose it all comes down to States’ Rights against the federal government, doesn’t it. Be careful what you wish for. Schools and lunch counters are a state responsibility, too.

      I will say that you will look like an odd country to foreigners if the front-running candidate for the nation’s highest elected office can be knocked off the ballot in states that he needs to win by the actions of state election commission bureaucrats acting on their own partisan interpretation of a Constitutional Amendment intended to keep Jefferson Davis and his henchmen from running for office after they were given amnesty.

      1. Be careful what you wish for. Schools and lunch counters are a state responsibility, too.

        I think you’re overlooking Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Leslie.

        … knocked off the ballot in states that he needs to win by the actions of state election commission bureaucrats acting on their own partisan interpretation of a Constitutional Amendment intended to keep Jefferson Davis and his henchmen from running for office after they were given amnesty.

        Donald Trump was not knocked of the ballot by the actions of state election commission bureaucrats acting on their own partisan interpretation of the US constitution. The elected secretary of state of Colorado brought an action in a Colorado district court seeking a definitive interpretation regarding the application of section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Colorado ballot. As Chief Justice John Marshall stated in Marbury v. Madison (1803), “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

        If the framers of the 14th Amendment wished to delimit the scope of section 3 to apply only to Jefferson Davis and his fellow confederates, they certainly had language available to them to accomplish this end. But that’s not the language they used.

        The animating “purpose” of the final clause of section 1 of the 14th Amendment was to ensure the equal protection of the laws to former slaves. But as even a passing familiarity with US case law decided in the 155 years since the 14th Amendment was ratified discloses, the Equal Protection Clause has been applied in myriad circumstances that have nothing to do with former slaves.

        1. Ken, thanks for correcting MacMillan’s erroneous claims. The lawsuit was brought by a bipartisan group of 6 folks that included influential Republicans. Our Democratic Secretary of State was named along with Trump as a Defendant since she had not pursued investigating Trump’s role in the insurrection of January 6. Both sides argued their cases and the Colorado courts have found that Trump’s participation precludes him from the Presidency.

    2. I’m no expert in election law per se, but the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision ultimately turned on its interpretation of section 3 of the 14th amendment to the US constitution. The interpretation of federal constitutional law ultimately rests with the United States Supreme Court, which will undoubtedly resolve this issue.

      1. And when it gets to SCOTUS, will Thomas recuse himself, since his wife was deeply involved with the insurrection? I’m sure he won’t, but I hope the media connects the dots and reports on it.

        Either way, I think this puts SCOTUS in a political pickle.

  8. The Colorado SC ruling very smartly included a quote by Neil Gorsuch while he was a federal judge and ruling on a case about who could run for office in Colorado: “A state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”

    Unfortunately, I have no doubt Gorsuch and the other MAGA Supremes will ignore logic and precedent in seeking to overturn the Colorado SC ruling.

    1. “A state’s legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”

      There is a piquant irony in having Donald Trump, who got his toehold in right-wing politics by claiming that Barack Obama was constitutionally ineligible for the presidency — spewing a steady stream of arrant lies about what Trump claimed to have been told by highly ranked, but unnamed, government officials and about what teams of private investigators he had hired to go to Hawaii had found out about Obama’s birth certificate — now finding himself excluded from a state ballot as being constitutionally ineligible to assume office.

  9. I read WEIT late at night – every day with comments –  so I rarely comment but I have to add my voice late today to say “KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK”.

    I write myself since I retired from Wall Street and the law: at the left edge (in the past) I wrote for for counterpunch and on the right for Forbes but my usual column is syndicated at Democracy Chronicals.org and TheModeratevoice.com – most of my articles read mainly on their social media sites. Which I don’t look at much myself. Being a fogie at 52 years of age! 

    I wouldn’t judge WEIT on number of comments alone as a metric as this is not in total alignment with popularity. Many read and don’t comment. And do not judge its value by number of comments alone! This is not a good metric to use!!
    Myself I’d rather the loyal readers I have ahead of sheer number eyeballs but, like WEIT, I don’t write for the money. Were I to do so my calculation might be different but I suspect PCC(E) and I have similar objectives.

    I’ve loved WEIT since 2016 or so and it is an important part of my day every day.

    Person centric websites like WEIT are rare, particularly like WEIT where the boss is likable, interested in what I’m interested in and the comments are sane, through self-selection and PCC(E)’s studious editing of of cranks and nutters.So an attaboy from me!

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

    1. David, I agree with you. I, too, read later in the day and usually my feelings have already been expressed so I don’t repeat what’s already posted. I think it’s important that Jerry is cited fairly frequently on other sites and even in newspapers, which says something about the extent of his influence. Personally, I enjoy the variety of topics covered here and am extremely grateful that comments are moderated. I love reading the diversity of insights commenters express about current news items.

      I’m a year or two older than Jerry and, feeling my own energy decrease, can understand if he no longer chooses to spend the work and time it takes to continue. I hope he continues, but more than that, encourage him just to do what he wants.

      1. Thanks friends.
        As you note, WEIT is only the narrow light we see of PCC(E)’s influence.
        Obviously many of us look and hunt in similar places but very frequently on twitter I see WEIT’s posts amplified by Dawkins, Pinker, Reality’s Last Stand, Hooven, etc. All the smart people that journalists – and thus the intellectual world – notice – see these posts even if they don’t read WEIT.

        So when under-calculating WEIT’s effects by comments alone our host is neglecting the “soft power” of the amplification of WEIT.

        THIS is the kind of analysis I used as a proprietary trader on Wall St and it is very useful. See the entire picture.
        D.A.
        NYC

        1. I agree wholeheartedly with the preceding comments. I read every post published but do not always make comment.
          WEIT is a large part of my daily sanity and its loss would be very sad for me.
          Thank you Prof Coyne.

  10. Guess! (I know!)

    The upper one is a caiman, the middle one a crocodile and the lower one an alligator.

    1. It’s the upper one that’s the crocodile – look at the narrowness of the snout.
      The middle one’s the caiman – the curving bony ridge connecting the anterior limits of the eye sockets tells us it’s a spectacled caiman.
      And the alligator has a snout like the toe of a workboot.

        1. It’s croc, caiman, gator. Not all crocodiles have slender snouts, but American crocodiles do; and all crocodiles have the 4th tooth of the lower jaw sticking up. The ridge between the orbits, like the bridge of a pair of glasses, is how the spectacled caiman got its name. The gator has a broad, roughly parallel sided, snout, and is darker– young ones are black with yellow stripes, the stripes fading as they get older. In south Florida, all three species are found, the caiman being introduced.

          GCM

  11. It would be much nicer if the decision had come from a state that was red in 2020.

    If it holds in CO, some R will probably run there with a pledge to turn over their electors to the Cult 45 cabal if they win.

  12. The example of her plagiarizing in her acknowledgments section of her dissertation really pushed me over the top. Sure, she probably admired the catchy turns of phrase that she pilfered, but it is incredibly lazy. She couldn’t even take the time to thank people with originality. I know it was her dissertation. But I believe she was given an award for the dissertation, and it landed her the job at Stanford.

    (OTS, just got word from UW-Madison that I was rejected without interview for a social genomics position, which was part of a CLUSTER hire. Was it my whiteness? Did I not virtue signal hard enough in the diversity statement? Did they happen upon my X account that is clearly not woke? Good riddance. The position may have been to study disparities in genetics research or some other woke malarky, which I wouldn’t have been keen to do. Some years back, I was working at a cancer research center and in a grant writing workshop. They celebrated that they had a black woman putting in a grant on social disparities in cancer research for blacks. I wanted to vomit. Did the very senior, white, female supervisors not see that they encouraged a token black woman to take up brain-dead “science” because they wanted in on the diversity money from the NIH? Didn’t they see they were doing her a disservice? They wouldn’t have bothered writing that grant themselves, as they had biology to think about. But get the black girl to think it’s her idea to waste away her early career on a grant that takes ZERO brain cells. They had a moral obligation to encourage her to do breakthrough science, not get the low-hanging grant dosh. As much as DEI is being questioned right now by Rufo et al, nothing whatsoever will change in biology or medicine until the NIH stops incorporating DEI into grants. We need some conservatives in health at the federal government. I had a fellowship at the NIH 2011-12. I don’t think anyone I encountered was anything but shades of progressive, though some were closer to the classical liberal side. But most were full fledgedly progressive. And that was more than 10 years ago.)

  13. I’m not sure we should be celebrating the removal of Tr*mp from the ballot. I’m not sure how many more MAGAs-to-be there are out there (one would think there couldn’t be that many more), but if overruled by the supreme court, surely there will be backlash that reinforces all the reasons MAGA exists to begin with. Will the disgust be enough to sway those who are on the fence about Biden Tr*mpward? Maybe. I won’t vote for Biden again, and will probably not vote at all in the general election if the choice is Biden or Tr*mp. But it doesn’t matter. I’m in Massachusetts, where my vote is pointless anyway. But in swing states, will more people be like me and just sit it out?

    1. “I’m not sure we should be celebrating the removal of Tr*mp from the ballot.”

      Agreed. I’m concerned about how the “guilty of insurrection” claim will play out both in public opinion and in other state courts.

      1. The relevant text of the 14th:
        “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

        A strong case can be made that Trump had “given aid or comfort” to the insurrectionists.

        1. A strong (partisan) case can be made, sure, but you all have to agree on how the case is proved.

          1. It was 4 Republicans and 2 unaffiliated voters who brought the case to the Colorado court, so the inception sure wasn’t partisan.

          2. As Mark noted, this was not a partisan effort. The Republican leadership in CO has been hijacked by the MAGA crowd which has led to overwhelming domination of Democrats I statewide elections. Hopefully the small number of sane Republicans can retake control and once again provide viable alternatives to Democrat policies and politicians.

        2. Any such case depends on an unconventional definition of “insurrection”, which heretofore has meant an attempt to overthrow the government entirely using military-level force (i.e., firearms). Neither condition was present on Jan 6.

          The rioters did not want to take over; they wanted the existing legislators do in earnest what Democrats have done for show several times this century.
          https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/sep/21/lee-zeldin/house-democrats-have-objected-presidential-electio
          The New York Times also published an article about this on Jan 6, 2021 (paywalled).

          I’m entirely in favor of Trump not being the nominee but that must be accomplished legitimately.

  14. You do pay for electronic monitoring in most states in the US, an initial setup fee of up to several hundred $ and a daily fee of single to double digit $ (California has stopped charging these fees in just the last couple years). You may be required to maintain a phone (sometimes a landline) and you must have electricity to charge the monitor daily. Doing this may be a requirement of pre-trial release and release may be denied if you can’t afford the fees or do not have the necessary infrastructure. Just getting to trial usually takes 6 mo. to a year. The fees are not refunded just because you are found ‘not guilty’.
    Being in jail or prison is also expensive in the US. If you can get a ‘job’ in jail (kitchen, laundry, maintenance), the pay is generally $.06 to $1/hr. (No pay in Texas). You may be charged a daily room and board fee and you have to pay for phone calls, items from the commissary (soap, toothbrush & paste, tampons, stationery, a pen, etc.) which usually cost 65-200% as much as they do in a store and they must come from the commissary, as well as co-pays for medical attention. The jail may get a ‘kick-back’ of up to 50% on commissary charges. The food is generally really awful and you are up to 6X as likely to get a foodborne illness as the general public; inmates with no particular knowledge of safe food handling prepare the food, so those who can afford it try to live on commissary food (ramen, rice, beans, coffee, tuna).
    Family members usually end up paying most of these costs. If you don’t have family or friends willing to bankroll your commissary account, you’re just SOL.
    I write this long comment because I think most of the readers here are blissfully unaware of the nitty gritty of our judicial punishment systems as I was until a family member was arrested. It is grim.

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