Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
The combination of Canadian wokeness and the migration across the Pacific of New Zealand’s “indigenous ways of knowing” trope has led to this ad by The University of Victoria. The U of V wants to hire three candidates in any branch of science with expertise “in either (a) working with Indigenous ways of knowing, or (b) in infusing Indigenous science approaches and perspectives into science.”
Click below to see the ad:
But before giving specifics, this being Canada, the ad has to have a VIDEO territory acknowledgment, to wit:
We acknowledge and respect the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day. We invite applicants to watch the “Welcome to the Territory” video and to visit the Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ Nations’ websites to learn more about these vibrant communities. To learn more about the Indigenous community on campus, please see the Indigenous Academic and Community Engagement (IACE) office’s website.
Well, whose territory is it? And shouldn’t they be giving the U of V back to either the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples? (I guess they first need to determine who morally owns the land.)
Oy! This is part of a job ad! Well, granted, it may help attract those three scientists who are tasked with furthering indigenous ways of knowing or melding them with modern science:
But now the real meat: the job ad itself. Bolding is theirs:
Indigenization and Decolonization at UVic The University of Victoria is committed to the ongoing work of decolonizing and Indigenizing the campus community both inside and outside the classroom. UVic released our second Indigenous Plan in 2023 and the Faculty of Science has drafted its Indigenization Implementation Strategy (2022-2026) as we prepare ourselves for the work ahead. Decolonization and Indigenization are integral aspects of the 2023 UVic Strategic Plan and the 2022 Faculty of Science Strategic Plan.
“The candidate has interest, potential or experience in either (a) working with Indigenous ways of knowing, or (b) in infusing Indigenous science approaches and perspectives into science.”
Do I need to emphasize once again that there are no “indigenous ways of knowing” beyond the ways that modern science “knows” things. To be frank, indigenous “ways of knowing” are inferior to modern science, which has a whole armamentarium for determining what counts as “knowledge” (experimentation, controls, replication, hypothesis-testing, pervasive doubt, and so on). In contrast, indigenous ways of knowing invariably come down to simple observation of natural phenomena or assertions (say, about the efficacy of plants as medicines) that aren’t tested using blind studies. And without verification and replication and testing, you don’t have knowledge; you have claims.
In addition, Indigenous “ways of knowing” are almost invariably gotten down with a large dose of spirituality, religion, or tradition. Some Native Americans, for example, deny that their ancestors came to the area around 20,000 years ago, saying that their tradition tells them that they were “always here.” Under indigenous ways of knowing, experiments must conform to what is sacred: you can’t build a telescope, for example, on Hawaiian land that’s seen as sacred, or send ashes to the Moon because “Grandmother Moon lit the way for our ancestors.” (There are better reasons not to clutter up the Moon.)
It’s also for these reasons that part b) above—”infusing Indigenous science approaches and perspectives into science”—is largely futile. What does this even mean? What is an “Indigenous science approach/perspective”? Does this mean that fish are best found in area X at time Y, and that berries are likely to be found in locality Z in the fall? Or plant Q can cure you if you have malady R? If so, then yes, that’s empirical “knowledge” of a sort, but it has to be tested using real science, not “Indigenous science approaches”. The approaches may suggest hypothesis, but these “approaches” cannot become part of modern science until they’re verified using the tools of modern science. In other words, there is not Indigenous science, only science done by Indigenous peoples using the methods of modern science.
It is, then, more or less of a travesty for the U of V to hire three Indigenous people to “decolonize” science, which means, of course, to throw away the tools of modern science, developed by oppressive colonizers, and use whatever empirical/spiritual knowledge the new professors have. Or, as Wikipedia puts it,
According to Mpoe Johannah Keikelame and Leslie Swartz, “decolonising research methodology is an approach that is used to challenge the Eurocentric research methods that undermine the local knowledge and experiences of the marginalised population groups”.
Yes, science, now used worldwide by many non-European people, is still seen as not only “Eurocentric”, but as “undermining local knowledge and experiences” of Indigenous groups. But that like science undermining, as some Māori insist, their tradition that their Polynesian ancestors discovered Antarctica in the 7th century A.D? If so, then “colonizing science”, which really means using modern science, is going to win, for it tells us that there is not a shred of evidence for such claims. As best we know, Antarctica was seen by Russian sailors in 1820.
These job ads, then, are threefold travesties. They undermine real science by replacing scientists who could be finding out real stuff with scientists committed to buttressing Indigenous “ways of knowing”. They suck up money by funding largely futile endeavors. And, worst of all, they confuse students (and the populace) about what science really is: a set of methodologies, developed over a few centuries, that gives us ever closer approaches to truth. It has no legends, Gods, or spirutuality.
One could add, I suppose, that these adds are really efforts to advance science, but a big DEI initiative to advance Indigenous people themselves. That’s fine, but you shouldn’t don’t do that by sacralizing their ways of knowing. Instead, you ensure that they get the opportunities to study and practice modern science—the so-called “Eurocentric” science that is the only real “way of knowing”. To do otherwise is to erode the understanding of science.
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Finally, we see below the racial requirements (their bolding). Note that you don’t really have to be an indigenous person; you only have to identify as indigenous, and do so in writing. But that is weird. If the University has an equity plan and the government a Human Rights Code limiting applicants to Indigenous peoples, on what basis do they allow a non-Indigenous person who self-identifies as one? (I doubt such people would be accepted for the job anyway.). Of course this would be considered a violation of the law in America, but Canada isn’t the U.S.
In accordance with the University’s Equity Plan and pursuant to section 42 of the BC Human Rights Code, the selection will be limited to Indigenous peoples. Our search committee will review the pool of applications from those who self-identify with this designated group. Candidates from this group must self-identify in their cover letter to be considered for this position.
If you’ve been following the charade that is South Africa’s (SA’s) claim at the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, you’ll know that SA—that paradigm of good governance and equity—is relying heavily on statements by Israeli officials and military people made right after October 7—statements to the effect that Gazans should be wiped out.
Those statements were either made in the heat of the moment or, as the article below shows, are simply misquoted. Further, if you want to see whether Israel is committing genocide, you don’t use quotations; you have to observe if its behavior is aimed at wiping out not just Hamas, but all the Gazans. Only a dolt would think that’s true: the IDF is clearly the world’s most moral army, warning Gazans of strikes, telling them where to go to avoid fighting, never deliberately going after known non-combatants, and so on.
In contrast, Hamas is among the world’s most immoral militant groups, deliberately trying to kill Israeli civilians (do they ever warn Israelis before they strike Don’t make me laugh.); firing rockets willy-nilly into Israel, sending terrorists across the border to blow up Jews, committing repeated war crimes by hiding behind civilians, and, of course, explicitly stating that their aim is to exterminate the Jews. (The deaths of Gazan civilians, reprehensible and sad as it is, can be largely laid at the door of Hamas, who seems to want Gazan civilians killed and facilitates it.)
Moreover, as Hamas has emphasized, the butchery of October 7 was just a rehearsal for repeated episodes of the same kind of butchery. It is shameful that although South Africa, the paradigm of current hatred and bad governance in Africa, can bring a case against Israel, no other nation in the world is willing to bring a case against Hamas, the group that runs Gaza. And that case would be much easier, since Hamas has declared its genocidal intentions.
The only upside for Israel of this sad episode is that when the country is found guilty—as is inevitable in such a lopsided world—it can and will simply ignore the Hague’s decision.
But it turns out that the Israeli quotes tossed around with such abandon by South Africa, supposedly approving of genocide, aren’t as damning as they seem.
Reader Norman, who sent me this article from The Atlantic, added his summary:
No, writes Yair Rosenberg in the Atlantic. Some on the far right have made stupid statements, but Israel’s leadership—Netanyahu, Gallant, Herzog—have not. They have called for the elimination only of Hamas. At least some of this chatter about the genocidal intent of Israel has been perpetrated by a reporter at NPR, whose conclusions were carelessly spread by other news outlets. (I don’t trust NPR on any subject.) Other claims of genocidal intent come from (indefensible) purposeful omissions, mistranslations from the Hebrew, missed plays on words, misinterpreted biblical allusions, as well as innocent—but careless—reportage. On balance, it seems to me that the media is all too ready to believe—and spread!—the worst interpretations of Israeli words and actions.
Click the screenshot to read, but more likely than not you’ll be paywalled. (NOTE: a kind reader gave a link, here, that’s good for 13 days; I’ve added it to the screenshot.) Judicious inquiry can also yield you a copy (I haven’t found it archived), but I’ll give a few quotes (indented) to show how flimly SA’s assertions are:
Rosenberg recounts how NPR reporter Leila Fadel interviewedDavid Crane, a lawyer with expertise in prosecuting cases of genocide at the Hague. Crane said that making a case against Israel would require proof that the head of state had directed those under him to destroy all or part of a people. The article goes on:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Crane said, had not made such a statement, which meant that legal intent could not be established. By contrast, he added, “Hamas has clearly stated that they intend to destroy, in whole or in part, the Israeli people and the Israeli state. That is a declaration of a genocidal intent.” Fadel was not convinced, and deftly countered with several damning quotes from the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant: “We are fighting human animals.” “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.” The segment ended inconclusively.
Last week, a similar exchange unfolded on BBC radio, when an anchor pressed British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. “The defense minister said, ‘We will eliminate everything,’ in relation to Gaza,” the host observed. Wasn’t this a clear call to violate international humanitarian law? Under repeated questioning, Shapps allowed that Gallant might have overstepped in the emotional aftermath of Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,000 Israelis, but insisted that the quotation did not reflect the man he’d been regularly talking with about “trying to find ways to be precise and proportionate.”
As it turns out, there’s a reason the quote did not sound like Gallant: The Israeli defense minister never really said it.
On October 10, as the charred remains of murdered Israelis were still being identified in their homes, Gallant spoke to a group of soldiers who had repelled the Hamas assault, in a statement that was captured on video. Translated from the original Hebrew, here is the relevant portion of what he said: “Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.” This isn’t a matter of interpretation or translation. Gallant’s vow to “eliminate it all” was directed explicitly at Hamas, not Gaza. One doesn’t even need to speak Hebrew, as I do, to confirm this: The word Hamas is clearly audible in the video.
The remainder of Gallant’s remarks also dealt with rooting out Hamas: “We understand that Hamas wanted to change the situation; it will change 180 degrees from what they thought. They will regret this moment.” It was not Gallant who conflated Hamas and Gaza, but rather those who mischaracterized his words. The smoking gun was filled with blanks.
But of course given the dislike of Israel by the mainstream media (NPR is a particularly frequent offender), the mistake spread (“duplicative journalism,” as Harvard would call it):
And yet, the misleadingly truncated version of Gallant’s quote has not just been circulated on NPR and the BBC. The New York Times has made the sameelision twice, and it appeared in The Guardian, in a piece by Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch. It was also quoted in The Washington Post, where a writer ironically claimed that Gallant had said “the quiet part out loud,” while quietly omitting whom Gallant was actually talking about. Most consequentially, this mistaken rendering of Gallant’s words was publicly invoked last week by South Africa’s legal team in the International Court of Justice as evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent; it served as one of their only citations sourced to someone in Israel’s war cabinet. The line was then reiterated on the floor of Congress by Representative Rashida Tlaib.
Does nobody do fact-checking anymore? Apparently not; one outlet copies another, and nobody checks the source. Could this be because the quotes are so convenient a way to indict Israel, even though you need much, much more than quotes to prove genocide? It turns out that this kind of distortion wasn’t rare:
Unfortunately, this concatenation of errors is part of a pattern. As someone who has covered Israeli extremism for years and written about the hard right’s push to ethnically cleanse Gaza and resettle it, I have been carefully tracking the rise of such dangerous ideas for more than a decade. In this perilous wartime environment, it is essential to know who is saying what, and whether they have the authority to act on it. But while far too many right-wing members of Israel’s Parliament haveexpressed borderline or straightforwardly genocidal sentiments during the Gaza conflict, such statements attributed to the three people making Israel’s actual military decisions, the voting members of its war cabinet—Gallant, Netanyahu, and the former opposition lawmaker Benny Gantz—repeatedly turn out to be mistaken or misrepresented.
Often people are referring to Hamas and not Gazans (as in Gallant’s characterization of Hamas as “human animals”, misrepresented by the antisemite Rashida Tlaib in her defense of the SA accusation. Those words may not present good “optics,” but they’re no.proof of genocide.
Likewise, Netanyahu did not broach the idea of deporting Gaza’s population—he was referring to Hamas. Netanyahu’s statement about Amalek (I won’t go into it; you can read it) was gotten wrong by the media: there are two such stories, and the media used the wrong one to imply that Netanyahu was calling for the extirpation of an entire people. He was not: he was referring to another story that calls for revenge for those who killed innocents. He was subject to yet another distortion when referring to a story in the Old Testament.
Make no mistake: Rosenberg is no fan of Netanyahu (nor am I):
I’ve written extensively about Netanyahu’s profound failures. He welcomed the far-right into Israel’s government and gave its members titles and ministries. He has regularly refused to rebuke their extremism because he fears losing power. He is the reason Israel is reduced to arguing that it is innocent of genocidal intent, not because its politicians haven’t expressed it, but because those politicians aren’t military decision makers. In other words, Netanyahu is the one who created the context in which banal biblical references could be understood as far-right appeals. But Jewish scripture should not be distorted by journalists or jurists in an erroneous attempt to indict him.
In the end, Rosenberg concludes this:
These omissions and misinterpretations are not merely cosmetic: They misled readers, judges, and politicians. None of them should have happened.
He doesn’t explain why, but it’s clear from the words above: this is part of an “erroneous attempt to indict [Israeli leaders].” Rosenberg is too kind. It is part of a pervasive dislike of Israel and the desire of the media to see the country found guilty.
Rosenberg comes to an anodyne conclusion—the media should get things right—but it’s still important, for this is an indictment of a country for genocide
Neutral principles like these can’t resolve the deep moral and political quandaries posed by the Israel-Hamas conflict. They can’t tell readers what to think about its devastation. But they will ensure that whatever conclusions readers draw will be based on facts, not fictions—which is, at root, the purpose of journalism.
The lazy days slip away in Davis, sadly veiled in sporadic rain and gray skies. However, all is not lost. For example, here’s a visit to my friend Phil’s lab in the Entomology Department of UC Davis, on the same floor where I spent three years as a postdoc in genetics.
Phil punches out paper tags to affix to his ant specimens:
A preserved ant is glued to the tag with special glue that has to be used immediately before it dries up:
The glued ants are then temporarily stored in boxes awaiting the collecting information:
The collecting information is put on other tags using offset printing on tiny labels. Here’s an example. The pencil shows how small the tags are:
This is a specimen of the world’s smallest ant, Carebara sp. nr. atoma, collected by Phil on a recent trip to New Guinea.
We measured it under the scope, which gives readouts in millimeters. Here’s the width of the head of the specimen above: 0.275 mm. It’s so small that it’s impossible to dissect the head, but inside is a brain that codes for a huge set of complex behaviors exhibited in all ants. This is amazing!
Body length: 0.76 mm.
To show you how small this ant is, here’s the specimen of Carebara next to a “regular size” ant also collected in New Guinea, Mesoponera sp. It’s about ten times as large as the tiny ant, which is just a speck on the paper:
These ants are so tiny you wouldn’t be able to see it: these are collected by sifting leaf litter or soil using a Winkler sack (see here).
Davis is the site of the University of California’s only veterinary school, and so they keep both large and small animals for teaching instruction. We visited the outdoor pens to see them.
Here I’m petting a friendly cow (photo by Phil Ward):
The cow stuck out its tongue at me:
They also had llamas. They spit on people when they feel threatened, so you don’t pet them.
This must be a fancy breed of goat. Look how high its eyes are placed:
There was also a tiny bearded goat. With its short legs, I wondered if it had a gene for dwarfism. (I know that at least one reader will be able to tell us about these goats in the comments.)
Davis also has a lovely duck pond near the administration building, so I was able to get my mallard fix. I do miss my ducks!
Here’s a drake with unusual markings and a lovely but very orange bill. I wonder if he’s a hybrid between a wild mallard and a domestic Pekin duck (the white ones):
Our dinner: I had a Double Double, animal style, with fries and a Diet Coke. That was a big burger!
In-N-Out was one of the late Anthony Bourdain’s favorite restaurants. Here he extols it and then eats a Double Double, also Animal Style. (Readers can explain that in the comments.)
Welcome to Monday January 22, 2024. It’s National Southern Food Day, and here’s a classic of the genre, the Meat and Three Plate. Can you identify the comestibles? The cup at the top surely contains sweet iced tea (“the table wine of the South”), and I’m sure the dessert at upper left is banana pudding, one of my favorites.
“Southern Food in Nashville” by Free Photo Revolution is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suspended his campaign for president on Sunday and endorsed the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, as the primary race in New Hampshire enters its final 48 hours.
The move cements the Republican contest as a two-person race between Mr. Trump and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, a little less than a week after Mr. DeSantis’s devastating 30-percentage-point loss to Mr. Trump in Iowa.
“We just heard that Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the race,” Ms. Haley said upon arriving in Seabrook, N.H., for a campaign event. “It’s now one fella and one lady.” Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to the news.
Even before Mr. DeSantis made his announcement, Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump were locked in an increasingly intense and personal battle ahead of Tuesday’s vote in the Granite State.
Ms. Haley has repeatedly upbraided Mr. Trump this weekend for his relationships with “dictators” and Mr. Trump gave her fodder at a rally Saturday night when he praised Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary (“It’s nice to have a strong man running your country”) and repeated his argument that presidents should have “total immunity” from prosecution for anything they do in office. She also questioned Mr. Trump’s mental fitness after he confused her with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a rally on Friday and dismissed her as lacking “presidential timber.”
Haley has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the nomination, and I don’t see that she can do much damage to Trump. His nomination is inevitable—so inevitable that Haley is reduced to appearing with Judge Judy. Her withdrawal inevitable, unless she wants to throw good money after bad.
*The NYT has a hyperbolic and one-sided interactive article called “America is under attack: Inside the anti-D.E.I. crusade“, an attempt to show that “antiwoke” attacks on D.E.I. (“diversity, equity, and inclusion”) are a right-wing conspiracy.” Even the title is slanted to that end.
Long before Claudine Gay resigned Harvard’s presidency this month under intense criticism of her academic record, her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism and her efforts to promote racial justice, conservative academics and politicians had begun making the case that the decades-long drive to increase racial diversity in America’s universities had corrupted higher education. Gathering strength from a backlash against Black Lives Matter, and fueled by criticism that doctrines such as critical race theory had made colleges engines of progressive indoctrination, the eradication of D.E.I. programs has become both a cause and a message suffusing the American right. In 2023, more than 20 states considered or approved new laws taking aim at D.E.I., even as polling has shown that diversity initiatives remain popular.
Thousands of documents obtained by The New York Times cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-D.E.I. movement — the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states. The material, which includes casual correspondence with like-minded allies around the country, also reveals unvarnished views on race, sexuality and gender roles. And despite the movement’s marked success in some Republican-dominated states, the documents chart the activists’ struggle to gain traction with broader swaths of voters and officials.
They’re citing efforts to eliminate DEI in one state—Texas, which is conservative and may well be motivated in part by bigotry—to tar the entire movement to get rid of the programs.
Centered at the Claremont Institute, a California-based think tank with close ties to the Trump movement and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the group coalesced roughly three years ago around a sweeping ambition: to strike a killing blow against “the leftist social justice revolution” by eliminating “social justice education” from American schools.
The documents — grant proposals, budgets, draft reports and correspondence, obtained through public-records requests — show how the activists formed a loose network of think tanks, political groups and Republican operatives in at least a dozen states. They sought funding from a range of right-leaning philanthropies and family foundations, and from one of the largest individual donors to Republican campaigns in the country. They exchanged model legislation, published a slew of public reports and coordinated with other conservative advocacy groups in states like Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas.
Opposition to DEI is couched as a covert form of bigotry. Opponents are even supposed to want the return of a patriarchy!
In public, some individuals and groups involved in the effort joinedcalls to protect diversity of thought and intellectual freedom, embracing the argument that D.E.I. efforts had made universities intolerant and narrow. They claimed to stand for meritocratic ideals and against ideologies that divided Americans. They argued that D.E.I. programs made Black and Hispanic students feel less welcome instead of more.
Yet even as they or their allies publicly advocated more academic freedom, some of those involved privately expressed their hope of purging liberal ideas, professors and programming wherever they could. They debated how carefully or quickly to reveal some of their true views — the belief that “a healthy society requires patriarchy,” for example, and their broader opposition to anti-discrimination laws — in essays and articles written for public consumption.
The entire tenor of this article is that critics of DEI are right-wing ideologues; and these opponents see DEI as “tools for advancing left-wing ideas about gender and race, or for stifling the free discussion of ideas.” Well, yes, DEI is used as an authoritarian tool to impose ways of thinking on colleges, so in that sense it does stifle the free discussion of ideas. But what the article neglects is that there are plenty of people on the not-extreme Left, or in the center, who oppose DEI for good reasons. It’s divisive, it discourages discussion and disagreement (the lifeblood of academics), it tries to police language and behavior, and it mistakenly imputes all differences in representation of groups to bigotry, leading it to misguided actions and accusations of racism. This article is a prime example of how the NYT puts an ideological slant on the news, and why I no longer subscribe. (I get it free through the library).
The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen after 10 days of strikes failed to halt the group’s attacks on maritime commerce, stoking concern among some officials that an open-ended operation could derail the war-ravaged country’s fragile peace and pull Washington into another unpredictable Middle Eastern conflict.
The White House convened senior officials on Wednesday to discuss options for the way ahead in the administration’s evolving response to the Iranian-backed movement, which has vowed to continue attacking ships off the Arabian peninsula despite near-daily operations to destroy Houthi radars, missiles and drones. On Saturday, U.S. Central Command announced its latest strike, on an anti-ship missile that was prepared for launch.
The Houthis, one powerful faction in Yemen’s long-running civil war, have framed their campaign, which has included more than 30 missile and drone attacks on commercial and naval vessels since November, as a means of pressuring Israel,bolstering their standing amidwidespread regional opposition to the Jewish state.
Administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, described their strategy in Yemen as an effort to erode the Houthis’ high-level military capability enough to curtail their ability to target shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or, at a minimum, to provide a sufficient deterrent so that risk-averse shipping companies will resume sending vessels through the region’s waterways.
“We are clear-eyed about who the Houthis are, and their worldview,”a senior U.S. official said of the group, which the Biden administration designated this week as a terrorist organization. “So we’re not sure that they’re going to stop immediately, but we are certainly trying to degrade and destroy their capabilities.”
With respect to the first paragraph, what would the paper have America do—let the Houthis stop all shipping in the area? In the meantime, the Houthis are gaining support in America solely because their target is Israel. Many–especially young folk–see them as glamorous pirates.
*Try buying shaving cream or deodorant at your local drugstore these days. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, the chances are that what you want will be locked behind glass, and you’ll have to scurry around to find someone to unlock it. Such is the result of rises in shoplifting and the reduced importance that the cops give to shoplifters.
This problem is particularly bad on the West Coast, notably in Portland, Oregon (in which ACAB) and in San Francisco. But we have it in Chicago, too, and it’s a pain in the tuchas. The Wall Street Journal now reports that three big retailers, failing to curb shoplifting, have simply pulled up stakes and fled Portland.
Target, Nike, and REI all complained about crime in Portland privately before announcing plans to close stores in the city in 2023.
The closures followed months—and in some cases years—of negotiations between company officials and the city over getting additional police patrols near their locations, improving response times and removing homeless encampments, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Ultimately the companies said the city didn’t provide enough support and they decided to shutter those locations, emails show.
The correspondence illustrates the behind-the-scenes tensions between the public and private sectors over how to address retail crime. Retailers boost the city’s economy, but limited resources hinder local leaders’ ability to satisfy the demands of each company. Oregon’s largest city has struggled with a rise in violent crimes, homelessness and a decline in its population.
. . .Nike temporarily shut down its Portland factory store in August 2022, without noting issues related to retail crime. It announced this past September that the location wouldn’t reopen, months after privately lobbying the city to boost the police presence near the store.
REI last April said that it would close its city store in February 2024 when the lease expires. The outdoor-gear retailer said the store in 2022 had the highest number of thefts in two decades and that it lost confidence in its ability to serve customers there.
Target in September said it would close three Portland stores by late October, adding that levels of theft and organized retail crime harmed staff and customers’ safety. The retailer said it only closes stores after taking “meaningful steps to invest in the guest experience and improve business performance.”
Many retail chains instruct store employees not to confront shoplifters. Some don’t report every incident to police and others prohibit employees from testifying in court if a suspect is prosecuted.
“That’s a recipe for absolute inaction,” said Portland’s safety director Stephanie Howard, adding that not having cooperating witnesses has resulted in fewer prosecutions of retail crime.
REI leaves Portland? Portland is one of the iconic homes for this outdoor-equipment operation!
Over a decade ago I visited Portand for the Evolution meeting, and spent some time there. Later I spent more time visiting Peter Boghassian and lecturing to his classes. On these visits I loved the city and thought, “Hey, this would be a good place to live.” Now you couldn’t drag me there with a team of mules. It is now a City of the Homeless, and they can’t or won’t do anything to solve the problem.
*Right-wing box of rocks Representative Lauren Boebert changed Colorado districts because she was facing stiff competition in next November’s election.. But the new district may not help her much.
Fleeing a tough reelection bid in the district where she lives, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is moving from the mountains to the plains, in the hopes of finding conservative pastures green enough to salvage her place in Congress.
To win, she’ll have to convince a new swath of voters that her brand of white-hot, far-right political activism — built on divisive one-liners and partisan ferocity in the U.S. House — is more needed in Washington than the home-grown Republicans she now faces in the primary.
While Boebert’s new district voted for President Donald Trump by a nearly 20 percentage point margin in 2020, more than double the margin in her old district, and some Republican voters are already admirers, others are greeting her with hands-on-hips skepticism.
“She feels she is a better candidate than the ones that we have,” said Robin Varhelman, seated behind a desk at the cattle auction she owns in Brush. “She’s gonna have to explain to people why.”
Well, how about the fact that she likes to have fun: vaping and canoodling in a movie theater while taking flash photos (and disturbing the patrons)? See the video below. (The really salacious parts, where she and her date groped each other’s bodies, aren’t shown.)
But wait! There’s more!
After Boebert eked out a victory by just 546 votes in 2022, her home district moved from Republican-leaning to a toss-up for 2024 — threatening the GOP’s already threadbare control of the U.S. House.
The narrow margin in Congress leaves both major parties fighting fiercely for every available seat in 2024. Boebert’s move to the new district, where she’ll have to take on at least nine other Republicans for her party’s nomination, probably gives the GOP a better chance to win both.
That’s part of her reason for switching, she said in a phone interview, but she gave another reason for jumping into a race that’s already considered safely Republican: “There is need for my voice in Congress.”
Only if you want a moron representing you!
Though Boebert might be escaping tough electoral odds, voters in the new district hold tight to the traditional values borne from that history — the same values that Boebert stepped on in the groping episode at a musical production of “Beetlejuice” in Denver.
That embarrassment was memorable enough to transcend district lines.
See above.
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Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains Hili’s words:
Andrzej has plenty of things on his desk. Mountains of paper. Bits and pieces. Both I and Jola (who cleans our rooms) complain about it. Often some of it lands on the floor. Hili just discovered some small pieces of paper full with what Andrzej has scribbled on them.
Hili comments;
Hili: I discovered something interesting.
A: What?
Hili: Your notes under your desk.
In Polish:
Hili: Odkryłam ciekawą rzecz.
Ja: Jaką?
Hili: Twoje notatki głęboko pod biurkiem.
And a photo of Szaron in the snow:
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From Alison. I love this meme:
And from Amanda (I suspect blue whales have larger babies):
From Masih; another example of how worthless the UN is:
The Islamic Republic of Iran will take the Presidency of United Nations Conference on Disarmament on March 18th. This is outrageous! The regime that’s sent arms to Putin in Russia’s war against Ukraine, planned the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and provided missiles to Yemen’s… pic.twitter.com/J9ykloTtKm
From David; reports from IDF soldiers coming out of Gaza (the tweet is long if you expand it):
After 70+ days the soldiers are coming out of GAZA: Here's what they saw..
They have gone house to house for over 2 months and are now rotating out for the 1st time back into Israel – they are saying don't believe this fake news about the innocence of GAZA. It's not innocent.
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, Matthew says that the Tweeter swears this is true. Read the text and then enlarge to watch the short video:
Parcel delivery firm DPD have replaced their customer service chat with an AI robot thing. It’s utterly useless at answering any queries, and when asked, it happily produced a poem about how terrible they are as a company. It also swore at me. 😂 pic.twitter.com/vjWlrIP3wn
We went to the grocery store, and, lo and behold, I found this. Look at that apartheid settler-colonialist candy! I didn’t buy it since I adhere to the BDS (Boycott and Divestment of Sweets) policy.
Photo by Phil Ward
As I said, the more the world comes down on Israel due to anti-Semitism, hatred of the Israeli government, and general distaste for Jews, the more Zionist I get, though of course I’ll never accept the superstitions of Judaism. It’s hard to remember that there was a time—not that long ago—when Israel barely crossed my mind.
In last year’s case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court ruled, as expected, that affirmative action (the preferential admission of students based on race or ethnicity) was illegal, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Wikipedia notes:
The majority opinion, written by Roberts, stated that the use of race was not a compelling interest, and the means by which the schools attempted to achieve diversity (tracking bare racial statistics) bore little or no relationship to the purported goals (viewpoint and intellectual diversity and developing a diverse future leadership).
Indeed, the arguments of my own graduate school in this case, angered me: not only did Harvard lie about its own admissions practices, but advanced the argument that Roberts shot down: racial diversity = intellectual and viewpoint diversity. This was the view that propelled the earlier Bakke decision: diversity was seen, sans evidence, as an innate good. Had affirmative action been justified as a form of reparations for people who were still suffering the effects of bigotry, I would have been more in favor of Harvard’s practices. But for years the justification of affirmative action has been rife with dissimulation.
Colleges, determined to keep racial diversity high, perhaps up to the point of equity (representation of racial groups among students equal to their proportion in the population), quietly began working on ways to violate or at least obviate this ruling. Fortunately for colleges, the Supremes had left a loophole. As the Independent notes:
While the ruling says race may not be a conscious factor in admissions, it does not prevent universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected their life “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university”.
After this, you could have predicted the results: colleges and universities would immediately begin to ask students to write essays in which they were asked how they overcame obstacles. And of course every student in a minority group, knowing the scheme, would somehow find a way to argue that their race or ethnicity imposed high obstacles to achievement, but that they had somehow surmounted these obstacles. This would of course tip off admissions offices that the applicant was in a racial or ethnic minority, and give their applications a boost. (Of course in some cases an overcoming-bigotry story would be true and could indeed speak to a candidate’s value, though it would probably say little to help universities increase their ideological or viewpoint diversity.)
Moreover, opponents of affirmative action would find this form of “holistic admissions” hard to detect, and lawsuits like last year’s would be much harder to bring.
I predicted this change in applications, which did take effect, but of course it isn’t rocket science. Universities are wedded for life to increasing racial diversity; the Supreme Court said that this was largely illegal, but left a loophole; and so colleges would exploit this sole loophole in a big way. And that, according to the article from the NYT, has come to pass. Click the headline below to read, or you can find the article archived here. The subtitle tells the tale:
This being the NYT, they begin the article by showing the advantages of this loophole, which enabled some students to “find themselves”. But the overwhelming impression you get is that both universities and students are gaming the system to get an admissions advantage. After all, why do colleges even need to ask students how they overcame adversity?
Have a look, for example, at the essay questions the University of Chicago posed during the last application cycle (as well as some questions from previous years): there’s one mandatory question and seven optional questions from which you pick one to answer. None of them involve “overcoming obstacles,” though question #7 gives you some leeway to sneak in race and ethnicity. Here’s a typical one (questions are often suggested by students):
Essay Option 2
“Where have all the flowers gone?” – Pete Seeger. Pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer. – Inspired by Ryan Murphy, AB’21
The clear goal of these questions is to look for creativity and novel viewpoints—in other words, to seek out and harvest viewpoint diversity.
I don’t think this will be the case at Chicago next year, but we shall see. But here are some quotes from the NYT article (indented). The piece begins with the upside:
Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.
Deshayne Curley wanted to leave his Indigenous background out of his essay. But he reworked it to focus on an heirloom necklace that reminded him of his home on the Navajo Reservation.
The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.
WHAAT? The corruption of an essay on chess into one on bigotry, solely to gain a racially-based admissions advantage, is ludicrous. But you can’t blame the student—you have to blame the unnamed university. The piece continues:
All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Notice that all three students didn’t really intend to dwell on their racial identities, but were forced to because a). that’s what the unnamed college asked about, and b). they realized that mentioning their race and heritage would help them get admitted. This is what’s known as “gaming the system.”
There’s more:
[The Supreme Court decision] led many students of color to reframe their essays around their identities, under the advice of college counselors and parents. And several found that the experience of rewriting helped them explore who they are.
Sophie Desmoulins, who is Guatemalan and lives in Sedona, Ariz., wrote her college essay with the court’s ruling in mind. Her personal statement explored, among other things, how her Indigenous features affected her self-esteem and how her experience volunteering with the Kaqchikel Maya people helped her build confidence and embrace her heritage.
For Julia Nguyen, a child of Vietnamese immigrants based in Biloxi, Miss., rewriting her essay made her more aware of how her family’s upbringing shaped her. Julia, 18, said she felt “more proud to have this personal statement because of the affirmative action case.”
In Keteyian’s case, he said he felt “a lot more passionate” about his essay after changing his approach. As a Black student interested in engineering — a field that has struggled to diversify its ranks —Keteyian concluded his personal statement with a mix of fear and hope.
“Coming to terms with the possibility I may be one of the few Black individuals at my workplace is intimidating,” he wrote, “but something to prepare for if the ruling stands, and an opportunity for me to rewrite reality.”
Now of course some of these answers may enable colleges to really increase their viewpoint diversity, ideological diversity, or even socioeconomic diversity, but one gets the impression that this is simply a way to obviate the law and the intent of the Supreme Court’s decision. And there’s another way to accomplish these aims, a way used by the University of Chicago. (I’m not bragging here; it’s just that our school is famous for its quirky and creative application questions.)
These essays on how you surmounted obstacles will spread throughout the country. I doubt, in fact, that more than a handful of colleges won’t have a question about “overcoming adversity” on their applications. But, of course, if you have more than two neurons to rub together, you know what’s going on here: in effect, admissions offices are asking students, in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling, to “tick a box” indicating their race. And then admissions officers can proceed with the same kind of race-based admissions they used before. In fact, some colleges explicitly admit this.
What this will produce is a spate of anodyne admissions questions and answers and, worse, a decrease in viewpoint diversity. Identity politics will become stronger than ever, and every student will absorb a narrative about how their racial identifies were crucial in getting them into college. More than ever, one’s race will become the dominant feature of one’s persona.
But there is the expected pushback, and at least the NYT mentions it. Many authorities and lawyers, as well as most Americans, don’t like it:
The court’s ruling was meant to make college admissions race-blind — answers to the race and ethnicity question on applications are now hidden from admissions committees. A recent Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans showed support for the ban on affirmative action. Some strongly believe race should not be considered during the admissions process.
“I think it’s wrong,” said Edward J. Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the case to the Supreme Court.
But the ruling also allowed admissions officers to consider race in personal essays, as long as decisions were not based on race, but on the personal qualities that grew out of an applicant’s experience with their race, like grit or courage.
Who are they fooling? If you think that mentioning that you’re black or Hispanic isn’t going to ring a bell in the admissions office, I have some land in Florida to sell you. And of course if you mention that you overcame difficulties imposed on you as an Asian or Jew, fuhgeddaboudit!
Further, even some students and parents don’t like it:
While some parents said they were glad their children got to reflect on their identities in their essays, others feared that the court ruling would make it harder for their child to find community while in college.
“Even with affirmative action in place, it’s always a struggle for people in our community to get to college and to succeed in college,” said Deshayne’s mother, Guila Curley, a college counselor on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.
Not all students appreciated the rewriting experience as much. Some found that the ruling made them feel like they were not writing for themselves, but for someone else.
Indeed! That is precisely the case. They are writing to alert admissions officers to their race, and then embroidering a story around that nucleus.
In her initial essay, Triniti Parker, a 16-year-old who aims to be the first doctor in her family, recalled her late grandmother, who was one of the first Black female bus drivers for the Chicago Transit Authority.
But after the Supreme Court’s decision, a college adviser told her to make clear references to her race, saying it should not “get lost in translation.” So Triniti adjusted a description of her and her grandmother’s physical features to allude to the color of their skin.
The new details made her pause. “It felt like I was abiding by somebody else’s rules,” she said. Triniti added, “Now it feels like people of color have to say something or if we don’t, we are going to get looked over.”
There you go. If this is not “ticking a box”, I don’t know what is. And some students are conflicted, as their guidance counselors force students to explicitly mention race against their wishes.
Some decided to leave out their race entirely. Karelys Andrade, who is Ecuadorean and lives in Brooklyn, kept her essay focused on her family facing eviction during the pandemic and being forced to live in a shelter. “That experience was a story that needed to be told,” said Karelys, 17.
In past years, some Asian American students avoided writing about their heritage, thinking affirmative action was largely unfavorable to them, said Mandi Morales, an adviser with Bottom Line, a nonprofit for first-generation college applicants catering mostly to students of color. But the end of affirmative action in colleges led some to reconsider, counselors said.
Ms. Morales cited one student who added a mention of his “conservative” Chinese family as an example. “The explicit disclosure of his ethnicity would not have made it to the final draft prior to the ruling,” she said.
Some experts argue that the court’s ruling encourages students to write on racial conflict, trauma and adversity.
Of course it does! Again, this is bloody obvious. But even some counselors who don’t push the “adversity” scenario still insist that the students mention their identities as people of color, merely noting that students should say that their race has been a salutary factor. But again, what’s emphasized is not the content of one’s character, but the color of one’s skin.
. . . Joe Latimer, the director of college counseling at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, said he believes it is not necessary for students “to sell their trauma.” Instead, he advises his students to present their identities as “strength based,” showing the positive traits they have built from their experiences as a person of color.
The NYT article begins with a positive nod towards identity applications, but ends with some people speaking truth to power:
Critics of affirmative action say they are worried about essays becoming a loophole for colleges to consider an applicant’s race. “My concern is that the system will be gamed,” said William A. Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell University who founded the nonprofit Equal Projection Project.
Since the court ruling, colleges and universities have affirmed their commitment to diversity, and some officials said their institutions will continue to foster it through outreach and tools like Landscape, a database with information about an applicant’s school and neighborhood. And officials have said race can still inform decisions, as long as they are based on the applicant’s character and its connection to the university’s mission.
But some students, including Delphi Lyra, a senior at Northfield who is half-Brazilian, have reservations about the new admissions environment.
“The idea behind the ruling is to not check a box,” said Delphi, 18, referring to the race and ethnicity question on applications. “But I think, in some ways, it has almost even created more of a need to check a box.”
Absolutely!
Again, I’m not denying that if one’s heritage does increase intellectual or ideological diversity, then that does meet the requirements of the court. But you know what will happen; I outlined it above.
It’s clear that although I favor some type of affirmative action to increase intellectual and ideological diversity, it has to be done in a way that doesn’t violate the law. After all, diversity of thoughtm does increase the proliferation of opposing viewpoints that’s essential for a good college education. So what do we do? I have two suggestions.
1.)Eliminate all questions on college applications that require you to explain how you overcame adversity. My suggestion would be to use questions that show your creativity or ability to think outside the box—in other words, questions like the University of Chicago used in the past. This increases creativity, quirkiness, and discussion. By concentrating on racial identities and how they held one back, the new system simply strengthens identity politics.
2.) Enforce the law. While it will become harder for authorities to determine if colleges are ticking racial boxes, it’s not impossible. Authorities can simply determine (given that recommendation #1 is followed) whether mentioning race somewhere on your application that you’re a member of an oppressed minority correlates significantly with your chance of admission. Again, you have to be careful, but it’s not hard if you use Chicago-style questions like this—the mandatory question that all applicants had to answer last year.
How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.
It’s not an inventive question (you have to answer an inventive one besides this), but neither does it prompt you to concentrate on your ethnic/racial identity. Admissions officers will be tearing their hair out, for now they have to judge solely on thoughtfulness and character.
One of the epicenters of life in Davis, California is the Farmer’s Market downtown, held every Wednesday and Friday. As it was rainy and miserable, and the market is largely covered, we got ourselves there to inspect the local foodstuffs. (Only locally grown or caught items are sold.)
Fust, two photos of the venue, the second a panorama:
Click (twice in succession) to enlarge:
It wasn’t exactly the food season, but here’s what was on offer:
Two old friends (biology professors), both buying the market’s famous cumin-laced Gouda cheese. If you are a biologist from Davis, you’ll recognize them.
Squashes: I hate ’em all except for pumpkin, and then only in pumpkin pie. I do like eggplant if it’s cooked properly, and I guess that counts as a squash.
Local almonds, fresh, crunchy, and tasty:
Meyer lemons, grown widely in Davis back yards (we have a tree):
I guess berries were in season, as they had four varieties. They ain’t cheap!
They offered us a gratis strawberry to taste, and it was fantastic, juicy and sweet. They don’t put the inferior ones at the bottom of the basket, an old and nefarious supermarket ploy:
Fresh bread:
. . . and several varieties of apples. These, called “Arkansas Black,” I’d never seen before, and they were quite dark. (The only apples I really like are Granny Smiths, which are tart, the way a good apple should be. Nowadays most commercial apples have all the flavor bred out of them, so they may be crispy but all you taste is sugar:
