Saturday: Hili dialogue

December 30, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to SaturCaturday, December 30, 2023, and, being my birthday, it’s the LAST DAY OF COYNEZAA. On the Sabbath, too. It’s also the worst of all food days: National Baking Soda (Bicarbonate of Soda) Day, presumably to ease your tummy from holiday eating.

It’s also Bacon Day (much better, though not kosher), the fifth day of Kwanzaa, and the sixth of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 30 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I bet a lot of us, including me, have forgotten about the war in Ukraine. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be going well, and on Friday Russia inflicted severe damage on the small country with drone and missile attacks.

Russia fired more than 100 missiles at Ukraine on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, striking multiple residential buildings, a shopping center and other civilian infrastructure in the biggest barrage so far in an otherwise quiet winter.

The scale of the attack confirmed what many in Ukraine have feared for months — that Russia was conserving its missile stocks throughout the fall for massive strikes in the winter. Officials in Kyiv have also warned that stalled U.S. security assistance, which includes ammunition for U.S.-made air-defense systems, could embolden the Russians and place Ukrainian cities in peril.

Britain’s Defense Minister Grant Shapps said his country was sending hundreds of air-defense missiles to Ukraine to ensure it “has what it needs to defend itself from Putin’s barbaric bombardment.”

“Putin is testing Ukraine’s defense and the West’s resolve, hoping he can clutch victory from the jaws of defeat. But he is wrong,” Shapps said in a statement.

The Russians used a mix of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, Zelensky said. Unlike a year ago, Ukraine’s improved, Western-provided air-defense systems, which now include the Patriot system, contained the damage, shooting down most of the 110 missiles, the president added. Last year, millions of Ukrainians experienced outages when Russia repeatedly pounded the power grid.

. . . The attacks — intended to exhaust Ukraine’s beefed-up air defense, according to officials — hit sites across the country, from Lviv in western Ukraine to Odessa in the south to the capital of Kyiv to Kharkiv and Dnipro in the east. Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat told Ukrainian media there had never been so many targets at one time.

One of the missiles was in Polish airspace for a few minutes, which of course entitled Poland to shoot it down. But they lack the capacity.  It now looks very dire for Ukraine, and I’m sure they’re upset that all the world’s attention is focused on Gaza. And now a lot of Republicans don’t seem to want the U.S. to give aid to Ukraine. I’m neither a Republican nor agree with that stand.

*Now another state has barred Trump from the Republican primary ballot. That makes two, and for sure it’s going to the Supreme Court. This was an executive rather than a judicial decision:

Maine’s top election official Thursday barred Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s primary ballot, the second time a state knocked the Republican former president off its ballot and escalating a national legal effort to disqualify him from office.

In a 34-page written decision, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said the Constitution bars a second Trump term because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol following his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

Her decision, in which she found “he is not qualified to hold the office of the President,” comes after Colorado’s highest court ruled last week that Trump is ineligible for that state’s ballot. Both rulings invoked the same section of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment that disqualifies from public office those who swore to defend the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S.

The provision in the 14th Amendment, intended to keep Confederates from getting governmental power after the Civil War, says this:

“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.”

Back to the article:

In Maine, eligibility challenges are first adjudicated administratively. The secretary of state’s ruling, which she issued after holding a public hearing, marks the first time that a state election authority has excluded the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner from a primary ballot.

In her decision, Bellows said Trump “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” to “prevent a peaceful transfer of power.” She accused him of engaging in “incendiary rhetoric” and failing to take timely action to stop the assault on the Capitol.

“The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match,” she wrote.

*And, in Ohio, the Republican (!) governor vetoed a bill that prevented gender-affirming care as well as trans women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a measure Friday that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors, casting the action out of step with many in his own party as thoughtful, limited and “pro-life.”

He simultaneously announced plans to move to administratively ban transgender surgeries until a person is 18, and to position the state to better regulate and track gender-affirming treatments in both children and adults.

The vetoed bill also would have banned transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ and women’s sports.

At a news conference, DeWine said he is proposing a hybrid approach to gender-affirming care that he hopes can win the support of legislative Republicans — who have the votes to override his veto, if they choose — as well as serve as a national model to states, as gender-affirming care restrictions enacted across the country in recent years face lawsuits.

Ultimately, these tough, tough decisions should not be made by the government. They should not be made by the state of Ohio,” DeWine said. “They should be made by the people who love these kids the most, and that’s the parents. The parents who have raised that child, the parents who have seen that child go through agony, the parents who worry about that child every single day of their life.”

I haven’t a firm position on gender-affirming care except that it should be done by an objective therapist, preferably verified by another, that doctors should not be able to begin medical treatment until the gender-dysphoric child is past puberty, and, no, it should not be solely the parents’ decision. I’m not sure what kind of laws can assure that people can still transition knowing the risks, as some people are happy they made that decision, but there has to be some kind of laws given that until you’re is of an appropriate age, you’re not considered able to make this kind of decision.

As for trans girls and trans women participating in women’s sports, that’s a big NO to me on the grounds of fairness, and because of the athletic advantage that trans women have. Women’s sports should be a women’s space except in those sports where there’s not a palpable sex difference in ability.  Women’s sports in Ohio are now doomed, and the governor’s veto her was very unwise. But you can’t veto only part of a bill. They need new legislation that just bans trans women from participating in women’s sports.

*Forgetting stuff in your dotage? I am, but it’s nothing serious, or so I think. If I have a useful thought, I write it down, as I’ll often forget it later.  Here’s some help for the usual memory loss with age in a NYT article called “A neurologist’s tips to protect your memory.”  Here they are (to see the details of what you have to do, see the article), coming from neurologist Richard Restak:

a.) Pay more attention.  Some memory lapses are actually attention problems, not memory problems.

b.) Find regular everyday memory challenges. There are many memory exercises that you can integrate into everyday life. Dr. Restak suggested composing a grocery list and memorizing it. When you get to the store, don’t automatically pull out your list (or your phone) — instead, pick up everything according to your memory.

c.) Read more novels. [!] One early indicator of memory issues, according to Dr. Restak, is giving up on fiction. “People, when they begin to have memory difficulties, tend to switch to reading nonfiction,” he said.

I am! I’m reading Anthony Doerr’s latest novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land

d. ) Beware of technology. Among Dr. Restak’s three new sins of memory, two are associated with technology.  First is what he calls “technological distortion.” Storing everything on your phone means that “you don’t know it,” Dr. Restak said, which can erode our own mental abilities. “. . . The second way our relationship with technology is detrimental for memory is because it often takes our focus away from the task at hand.

e.) Work with a mental health professional if you need to. Your mood plays a big role in what you do or do not remember. . . Depression, for instance, can greatly decrease memory. Among “people who are referred to neurologists for memory issues, one of the biggest causes is depression,” Dr. Restak said. . . . . Your emotional state affects the kind of memories you recall.

f.) Determine whether there is cause for concern. not all memory lapses are problematic. For instance, not remembering where you parked your car in a crowded lot is pretty normal. Forgetting how you arrived at the parking lot in the first place, however, indicates potential memory issues.

To see if you have a concerning problem, there are doctors who can give you memory tests, and some kinds of dementia can be diagnosed with spinal taps.

*Barry points us to a new Smithsonian article which we all need to read: “Thirteen discoveries made about human evolution in 2023.”  It’s very useful to keep up with our genus, and I’ll give just four of the 13 discoveries:

Cut marks on a 1.45-million-year-old leg bone are potential evidence for hominins butchering and eating each other.  It seems Neanderthals may not have been the only ones with eclectic taste buds. While finding cut marks on animal bones is fairly common after the advent of stone tools in the archaeological record, finding cut marks on hominin bones is much more surprising.

Earliest use of wood for structural purposes is discovered in Zambia. Although stone tools get much of the attention in human evolution, ancient tools were sometimes made from other materials that do not preserve as well as stone. A study published in September by Lawrence Barham and colleagues presents evidence for the oldest structural use of wood—logs used to build a structure dating to 476,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens originate from two or more African paleo-populations.  The researchers used computer modeling to suggest that our species arose from at least two African populations that interacted and interbred with each other. Fossils from these populations would likely be physically and genetically similar. This study indicates that our species did not arise from a single geographically isolated origin population in Africa.

Homo sapiens were in southeast Asia thousands of years earlier than expected.  While ancient DNA allows researchers to investigate our species’ African origins, new fossils and archaeological sites can shed light on when our ancestors migrated to new places outside of Africa. A paper published in June by Sarah Freidline and colleagues describes new fossils and dates for members of our own species Homo sapiens and found that humans reached Southeast Asia sometime between 68,000 and 86,000 years ago.

The last one is the most interesting to me because it’s widely accepted that all modern H. sapiens come from a single migration event out of Africa that occurred about 50,000 years ago. If that’s the case, then a different form of Homo, represented by only two bones (part of a skull and tibia) found in a cave in Laos, left Africa a lot longer ago than we think, but then these far-traveling migrants went extinct without leaving descendants.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, all three cats wished me a happy birthday! (I’m told that Hili is referring to my battles against creationism, wokeness, and antisemitism.)

Kulka: Today is Jerry’s birthday.
Hili: You don’t have to remind me. Happy birthday, Jerry. I wish you many victorious duels in the next year.
Szaron: Many happy returns of the day.
In Polish:
Kulka: Dziś urodziny Jerrego.
Hili: Nie musisz mi przypominać. Wszystkiego najlepszego, Jerry. Życzę ci wielu zwycięskich pojedynków w przyszłym roku.
Szaron: Many happy returns of the day, Jerry.

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

From Linda, a Mike Lukovich editorial cartoon.  (I presume you get the reference.)

A DUCK cartoon on Rubes by Leigh Rubin from July 04, 2017:

From Kristen on Facebook:

From Masih, more brave unveiled Iranian women. They risk a lot taking off the hijab!

From Malcolm, spider cats:

From Jay. This crow appears to be helping the hedgehog across the road.  But did the hedgehog get over the curb?

First tweet: I don’t understand it. Second: is that some kind of condor? If so, which one?

Not a good move, careerwise. She’s been fired:

The profile:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a Dutch girl, only a bit less than two years old, was gassed to death upon arrival.

Two tweets from Professor Cobb. First, one he calls “La verité”. (Come on, you know some French!)

This one is “kot in basket”. Be sure to watch the whole short video:

77 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  2. On this day:
    1066 – Granada massacre: A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.

    1890 – Following the Wounded Knee Massacre, the United States Army and Lakota warriors face off in the Drexel Mission Fight.

    1902 – The Discovery Expedition under Robert Falcon Scott attained a Farthest South at 82°17′S in Antarctica.

    1903 – A fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois kills at least 605.

    1916 – Russian mystic and advisor to the Tsar Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is murdered by a loyalist group led by Prince Felix Yusupov. His frozen, partially-trussed body was discovered in a Petrograd river three days later.

    1922 – The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formed.

    1927 – The Ginza Line, the first subway line in Asia, opens in Tokyo, Japan.

    1935 – The Italian Air Force bombs a Swedish Red Cross hospital during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. [Protests don’t break out on US campuses or in Western cities, for a reason that escapes me.]

    1936 – The Flint sit-down strike hits General Motors.

    1943 – Subhas Chandra Bose raises the flag of Indian independence at Port Blair.

    1993 – Israel establishes diplomatic relations with Vatican City and also upgrades to full diplomatic relations with Ireland.

    1996 – Proposed budget cuts by Benjamin Netanyahu spark protests from 250,000 workers who shut down services across Israel.

    1997 – In the worst incident in Algeria’s insurgency, the Wilaya of Relizane massacres, 400 people from four villages are killed.

    2006 – Madrid–Barajas Airport is bombed.

    2006 – Former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein is executed.

    Births:
    1849 – John Milne, English seismologist and geologist (d. 1913).

    1865 – Rudyard Kipling, Indian-English author and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936). [D’oh! I hadn’t realised before that he had been awarded a Nobel Prize.]

    1906 – Carol Reed, English director and producer (d. 1976). [He is best known for Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Oliver! (1968), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director.]

    1924 – Yvonne Brill, Canadian-American propulsion engineer (d. 2013).

    1925 – Ian MacNaughton, Scottish actor, producer, and director (d. 2002). [Director and producer for all but four of the forty-five episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus from 1969 to 1974, director of the group’s first feature film And Now for Something Completely Different in 1971 and director of their two German episodes, Monty Python’s Fliegender Zirkus in 1971 and 1972.]

    1928 – Bo Diddley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2008).

    1929 – Rosalinde Hurley, English physician, microbiologist, and academic (d. 2004).

    1931 – Skeeter Davis, American singer-songwriter (d. 2004). [An American country music singer and songwriter who sang crossover pop music songs including 1962’s “The End of the World”.]

    1934 – John N. Bahcall, American astrophysicist and astronomer, co-developed the Hubble Space Telescope (d. 2005).

    1934 – Del Shannon, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1990).

    1942 – Michael Nesmith, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 2021).

    1942 – Fred Ward, American actor (d. 2022). [“Run for it? Running’s not a plan! Running’s what you do once a plan fails!]

    1945 – Davy Jones, English singer-songwriter and actor (d. 2012). [The second of The Monkees to have been born on this day.]

    1946 – Patti Smith, American singer-songwriter and poet.

    1947 – James Kahn, American author, screenwriter, and producer.

    1947 – Jeff Lynne, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

    1949 – Jerry Coyne, American biologist and author. [Our host, born on this the last day of Coynezaa. Best wishes for a wonderful birthday and many happy returns!]

    1959 – Tracey Ullman, English-American actress, singer, director, and screenwriter.

    1969 – Jay Kay, English singer and songwriter. [The video for Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity” is excellent and the special effects are based on such a simple idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE ]

    1975 – Tiger Woods, American golfer.

    1984 – LeBron James, American basketball player, producer and businessman.

    1986 – Ellie Goulding, English singer-songwriter and producer.

    I’m making out the report now. We haven’t quite decided whether he committed suicide or died trying to escape:
    1788 – Francesco Zuccarelli, Italian painter and academic (b. 1702).

    1885 – Martha Darley Mutrie, British painter (b. 1824).

    1906 – Josephine Butler, English feminist and social reformer (b. 1828).

    1968 – Trygve Lie, Norwegian journalist and politician, first Secretary-General of the United Nations (b. 1896).

    1970 – Sonny Liston, American boxer (b. 1932).

    1979 – Richard Rodgers, American playwright and composer (b. 1902).

    1992 – Romeo Muller, American actor, screenwriter, for screenplays like the 1964, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (TV special) (b. 1928).

    1999 – Sarah Knauss, American supercentenarian (b. 1880).

    2000 – Julius J. Epstein, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1909). [Best remembered for his screenplay, written with his twin brother, Philip, and Howard E. Koch, of the film Casablanca (1942).]

    2004 – Artie Shaw, American clarinet player, composer, and bandleader (b. 1910).

    2011 – Ronald Searle, English-French cartoonist (b. 1920).

    2012 – Rita Levi-Montalcini, Italian neurologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1909).

    2017 – Erica Garner, American civil rights activist (b. 1990).

    2022 – Barbara Walters, American journalist, producer, and author (b. 1929).

    1. I see that actor Tom Wilkinson died today, Jez. To my thinking, he was one of the best, most versatile working actors in the business for several decades.

      Every time I’d see him on the screen, I’d muse that, if ever I had a chance to make a movie, there’d damn sure be a role in it for him.

      1. Yes, sad news. He had an incredibly varied career – I think The Full.Monty was the first thing I saw him in.

    3. I thought – for a second – that she had a cat-splat shaped damp stain, which she was failing to obliterate with another coat of paint.
      Took me back to re-decorating flats as a student. It just has to be good enough to pass the moving-out inspection.

    4. Have to call fake here. There is no paint on her roller, no paint pan visible, no protective tarp on rug, etc.

  7. Happy Last Day of Coynezaa!

    Perhaps it has a special name, being the last, or would have … cats a leaping, or something?

  8. Happy birthday!

    —

    As for trans girls and trans women participating in women’s sports, that’s a big NO to me on the grounds of fairness, and because of the athletic advantage that trans women have. Women’s sports should be a women’s space except in those sports where there’s not a palpable sex difference in ability.

    I agree, but I don’t think that this is something that governments should be legislating. It should be up to the individual sporting bodies as to how they handle gender issues.

    —

    I’m relieved to know that my meagre French is well up to translating the Mary picture. When I was younger, it seemed to me a fairly obvious explanation for the virgin birth story. Now I’m older, the real explanation is more interesting (Matthew ret-conned a mistranslation from the Hebrew Isaiah to the Greek into a prophecy).

  9. Another birthday? Good going!

    As for the video you didn’t get of the woman roller painting, she wasn’t figuring out that it was a shadow of the banister on the wall, not some smudge that needed to be painted over.

  11. Happy Birthday, Dr. Coyne! Proud to share a birth date with you (1966). Thanks for all you do.

  12. A toast to our birthday host – Sto lat!

    (The Sto Lat song is the extent of my Polish, learned because my daughter-in-law was born there.)

  13. I haven’t a firm position on gender-affirming care …

    My position on sex-related medical interventions (a better term than the warm-fuzzy language of “affirming” and “care”) follows the interim Cass report, that is, don’t allow it for minors (except perhaps as part of carefully controlled medical trials).

    Currently there is way too little evidence that it benefits children/teenagers and way too much evidence that in many cases it is hugely harmful and leads to lifelong regret. I’ve not seen any decent-quality, long-term study showing that, overall, it improves their psychological well-being.

    If the gender dysphoria persists into adulthood (in many cases it does not), then at least you then have adult consent for any treatment.

    1. “Gender-Affirming Care” (also known as Life-saving Gender Affirming Care or just Health Care for Trans People) is I think deliberately unspecific, evoking images of warmth and necessity. “Sex-related medical interventions” is okay, but would also apply to hysterectomies or vasectomies.

      I prefer the term “Sex Trait Modification.” It’s accurate and less likely to be confused with other interventions.

      IMO Pediatric Sex Trait Modification should be banned. It’s funny how the same people whinging over “let the PARENTS decide” would most assuredly NOT think it okay for parents to decide to have their dysphoric child treated using methods which help them accept their sexed bodies. They want that banned. They’re not standing on some high ground of laissez-faire principle.

      And … Happy Birthday, Jerry! Many happy returns of the day.

      1. Sastra, I agree “Sex Trait Modification” is accurate and I am going to use the term in future. I stuck with “gender-affirming care” in my post below because I wanted to make it clear that such “affirmation” before puberty doesn’t involve modification of sex traits but is still harmful and the schools should not be allowed to facilitate it in secret from the parents, as many do. (Our host had expressed his opposition to drug treatment before puberty, which isn’t done.)

        What the laws in I think now just about half the states (but not including half the population) do is recognize that no, it should not be “solely the parents’ decision” to “trans” their kids. So then who constitutes the rest of the decision-making power? Doctors can’t treat any minor over the objection of the parents or legal guardians (except in the case of emancipated minors) and are afraid of regulatory sanction or suits alleging civil-rights violations if they decline to provide the treatment demanded by the parent on behalf of a gender-confused child. Besides, this is a lucrative business. If you shop around, it’s easy to find someone who will prescribe what you want. So for practical purposes, the parents do have the sole decision-making power to demand or oppose it, in laissez-faire states. (And it is these laissez-faire states that have banned non-medical treatment as what they call conversion therapy.) There is therefore no alternative but for the state to ban Sex Trait Modification in minors, stepping in where professional self-regulation and parental responsibility have failed to protect vulnerable children.

      2. I like sex trait modification, thanks! It’s clear and nonjudgmental.

        Have you seen The Transgender Family Handbook in New York Magazine’s The Cut? It’s full of “helpful” tips. So many ways to support your child’s confusion, and get the school on board.

        I would like to see a reality-based- family handbook for how to legally and politely reject gender ideology when it comes to your child’s school.

        1. I’ve seen When Kids Say They’re Trans highly recommended for parents trying to deal with this situation, although I don’t know if it says much about dealing with schools, etc.: https://www.amazon.com/When-Kids-Say-Theyre-Trans/dp/1634312481

          In England, the government has finally issued guidance to schools. It’s not perfect, but a good step in the right direction and it’s open for public consultation at the moment.

    2. Social transition is the only gender manipulation that is done before puberty. It is harmful because, like puberty blockers given at Tanner 2 puberty, it locks in a path to irreversible treatment with wrong-sex hormones. And as Hannah Barnes points out, children started on the transition path get even less “time to think” because they are now considered “decided”. The clinics spend their time with kids who are still on the fence. A prescription is considered a win, not a period for further contest. There is no evidence that gender-affirming care has any benefits beyond placebo effect whatsoever. The bill prohibits its use in minors, as it should.

      The reason for the legal ban on boys in girls’ sports in schools is primarily a safeguarding issue: injury on the field and protection of girls in changing spaces from teenage boys. National sports governing bodies don’t extend their purview down this far and so the state must step in if these legitimate interests are to be protected.

      My contacts in Ohio tell me the legislature will over-ride the veto. The governor presumably knew this and vetoed the bill for political reasons.

  14. Happy birthday!

    The flying bird is probably an ordinary Black Vulture. A condor is much larger and with a different wing pattern, and a much bulkier head which is pinkish in an adult (and this would have to be an adult condor if it were a condor, since the plumage is black).

    1. Yup, definitely a Black Vulture (Coragyps atratus). It’s in the same family as the condors, though.

      1. Black Vultures have recently become popular pets among bird-lovers. They apparently are sociable and affectionate. The Black Vulture in the video is absolutely certain to be such a pet, not a wild bird.

  18. And, on a totally different subject, put into a separate comment so as not to sully your birthday greeting…

    Here’s a shout out to the Amazon moron who posted a swastika on her profile. Her job prospects are now restricted to Nazi employers. Maybe she’ll starve now that she will never have another source of income.

  20. Happy birthday from me and all my kitties! The video of the wall-climbing cats is amazing; obviously that is a textured covering, but nonetheless….

  21. “Cut marks on a 1.45-million-year-old leg bone are potential evidence for hominins butchering and eating each other.”,

    Well… it is good evidence for the butchering part. They may have also been eating, but we know that Neanderthals ritually processed their dead and one way humans (modern, and maybe ancestral) do that involves removing flesh from bone in various ways, including cutting it off with knives.

    (Apologies for the run-on sentence.)

    1. That is what I was thinking. What would sway me to think of cannibalism would be removal of bone marrow. Or cooking.

    2. Speaking of ritual processing, how about taking Communion every Sunday ?
      Happy B-day PCC. ! Open a good bottle to night in celebration.

    3. Agreed on the butchering versus eating.
      But at 1.45 Myr, you’ve also got to consider whether the species who provided the bones to butcher was the same species as the one doing the butchering.
      Our current situation – of only one hominid species on the planet – is historically unusual compared to most of the past history of our lineage.

  26. Regarding the latest attack on Ukrainian civilians by russian terrorists:

    It was extremely expensive for the Russians to launch

    It has had no measurable result (so far) on Ukraine’s ability to wage war

    It has caused no significant damage to Ukrainian infrastructure such as power generation

    If anything, it has helped make the case to Ukraine’s supporters about the need to aid the country more.

    https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-61-the-two-attacks

    P.S. Happy Birthday

    1. As one of my former colleagues used to say, “True, true, and unrelated”; Ukrainians are still dying to fuel Putin’s megalomania, not that I think you’re suggesting otherwise.
      It’s shameful that Congress hasn’t passed Biden’s request for money for Ukraine and Taiwan, and Israel – though I’m getting less happy by the day with the tactics that Bibi is using; at least for the first two I see it as being a case of “fight them there, or fight them here”.

  27. Happy Bday, Jerry. Visiting this website restores some of my dwindling confidence in the intelligence of the species.

  32. My dad told me I got my start on new years eve 1950, two days after the very first Coynezza. Happy birthday Jerry!

  34. A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.

    Plus ça change…

  36. I bet a lot of us, including me, have forgotten about the war in Ukraine.

    I was … amused by the broadcast earlier today of “Fiddler on the Roof”, with it’s story of pogroms against the Ukrainian Jews of the late 19th Century (the Singer sewing machine pins it to a bit after 1860, I think). Was someone in the Beeb’s scheduling department making a comment on the competing war coverage?

  37. Professor Coyne I wish you a happy birthday and a successful 2024 and thank you for hosting this site, a point of sanity in an otherwise insane world.
    Long may you continue.

  39. Happy Birthday, Jerry! May you have a great day and a truly wonderful 2024 filled with fun and adventure. As others have mentioned, thank you for “Why Evolution Is True, “your daily gift to us.

  44. Happy Birthday Prof (E). Have a great day!
    I hope you stick around for this coming year (retire the site) and not let us loose into the great unwashed.

  45. As I write this with my right hand, I am raising a glass of decent Bordeaux with my left in order to toast you on your birthday. Sláinte! And thanks for this great site.

  46. Happy birthday, Prof. Coyne. I am in awe of your work ethic. I am not envious of living through winters in Chicago.

  47. “I bet a lot of us, including me, have forgotten about the war in Ukraine”

    It’s a bit difficult to forget with the use of drones being used as a form of documenting the battle footage and the aftermath. I won’t give details but I have seen true life events I thought I’d never see.
    The armchair and coffee, podcast and YouTube wars of the 21st century.
    “Hunger Games” comes to mind… I’m not fixated on it but it is part of trying to stay informed.

  48. My wife and I are celebrating New Year’s Eve early so we can look after the grandchildren tomorrow while their parents have some richly deserved adult time with friends. We are toasting PCC(E)’s birthday with white wine and oysters (OK, not kosher but no disrespect) and a couple of petits filets in an hour or so.

    A very happy Coynezaa to Jerry and to all.

  50. Happy birthday, PCC(E). Thanks for keeping your site going. If I miss a day or two I always need to catch up. The commenters are informed and intelligent. I love to read WEIT for the pleasure it gives me everyday.

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