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.
Here we have three videos by music expert Rick Beato explaining why rock/pop music (the distinction isn’t quite clear to me) has gone badly downhill since its glory days, which just HAPPENED to coincide with my teenage years and young adult years. Yes, yes, I have heard those who tell me—and there’s some truth in it—that people always think that the best music is the music that they grew up with. But Beato, who is 13 years younger than I, didn’t grow up with the best music, and yet he still recognizes it as music from 1960-1980 or so (I’m being generous with the 1980 ending). Beato wasn’t even born when the Beatles formed, and was only eight when the Beatles broke up. And yet he clearly recognizes them as one of the apogees of rock music.
This first video has already garnered nearly 1,800,000 views in only 4 days since its release. The YouTube notes:
In this episode, I discuss the crisis in music in two acts: Act I – Music is too Easy to Make Act II – Music is too Easy to Consume …and their cumulative negative effect.
If you’ve listened to Beato’s earlier videos, you know why he thinks music is getting worse: autotuning, drum machines, unimaginative tunes, lame lyrics, a lack of diversity and, of course, the business itself, which rakes in the dosh without the big expense of live recording in studios with real human beings. He adds, in Act II, that music is simply too easy to access, with the result that people don’t really pay attention to it.
And he doesn’t just palaver: he gives recordings to demonstrate his points.
It’s probably useless to email me telling me I’ve missed groups as good (or better than!) the Beatles. I’ve never found such claims to be even close to accurate.
I was glad in the next video to see Beato compare Taylor Swift, a phenom as popular now as the Beatles used to be, with the Fab Four, and to find Swift overrated. (Beato claims he likes her songs, even though I don’t think he really does.) And, at any rate, her songs are written by consortiums of writers. I’ve listened to plenty of Swift because of her popularity, and I just don’t see a “there” there. But the hubbub around her is just as frenetic as it was around the Beatles. What gives?
Of course a rock song is not going to be great without a great tune, and words are secondary. But words are nevertheless important, for you must have both to have a great song. In the third video, whose title gives the upshot, Beato shows us some lyrics of modern rock and compares them to words from the days of yore (note his emphasis on the Beatles). When seen nakedly, without a tune, modern lyrics are absolutely pathetic, as Beato notes in the title. Even the overrated Beyoncé and her monster hit “Texas Hold “Em” (watch the video, which is dreadful) come in for a deserved drubbing.
Hip-hop and rap don’t move me at all, and it’s not because it’s “black people’s music”. So was soul music, but it’s infinitely better: great tunes, complexity, and decent lyrics. Here are four from my long list of best rock music (under the “soul category”, and available for the asking), each better than any rap or hip hop ditty ever issued. (Yes, of course I recognize that this is subjective, but see Beato’s analysis above.)
It was hard to pick four out of my very long list, but here goes:
I don’t much like the article below, from Stat Significant, as it doesn’t describe how to distinguish different categories of music, but it does give the right answer: rock was at its best from 1960-1980:
Rock burned bright for two decades, and then it was gone, sequestered out of the mainstream. Since then, this singular genre has been rebranded as “classic rock” or (worse yet) “dad rock,” while its predecessors have fragmented into subgenres such as indie, folk, and alternative.
Click to read, but remember, it’s not a great piece.
Below are three articles, the first one in The Economist, the second in the NYT, and the latest from Colin Wright’s Substack site, showing that both the U.S. government and WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health: the most influential organization dealing with doctors and therapists who provide care for gender dysphoric and trans people) have been pressuring scientists to get rid of minimum age limits for “affirmative care”. (WPATH, by the way, though purporting to be a “World Professional Association”, is influential only in North America, having almost no bearing on transgender care in other countries.)
As you know, “affirmative care” is that form of care for gender-dysphoric adolescents that guides and pressures them to become trans people, affirming (rather than exploring) their feelings that they’re in the wrong bodies. Beyond cursory “rah rah” therapy, the program then gives adolescents puberty blockers that supposedly pause their development to give them time to decide, and then urges hormonal treatment and—sometimes—top or bottom surgery. It’s the “affirmative” part—the idea that the child’s views and desires must be catered to—that bothers many of us. Involved in this are three issues:
1.) Are adolescents to be trusted with making decisions about medical care that can affect their lives in a major way, decisions that involve taking hormones and having surgery that can sterilize them and (in the case of bottom surgery) lead to severe complications? Shouldn’t there be a minimum age limit for making such decisions? According to the NYT article below, the Biden administration had issued draft guidelines, but these were never enacted. (To my mind, these guidelines seem way too young. 17 for genital surgeries and 14 for hormone treatments?)
The draft guidelines, released in late 2021, recommended lowering the age minimums to 14 for hormonal treatments, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgeries, and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.
Now, it appears, many people want NO age minimums, and that includes the U.S. government.
2.) The long-term effects of puberty blockers on adolescents are not known very well. In some European countries the use of such blockers as regular therapy is banned, and blockers are employed only in clinical trials.
3.) The bulk of cases of gender dysphoria resolve themselves on their own, without dysphoric people needing hormones or surgery before puberty, and many on hormone therapy stop that therapy, which may not (as gender advocates say) be completely irreversible. Many of these children resolve as homosexuals, which involves neither medicine nor surgery. As Pamela Paul of the NYT noted, with links:
Europeans are taking a more watchful approach to these questions, but somehow in the U.S. many gender activists want no minimum age limit for affirmative care (including the use of blockers when kids are quite young), only perfunctory therapy for gender-dysphoric adolescents (perhaps only a single session), and make decisive (and erroneous) pronouncements that puberty blockers are not only perfectly safe, having no long-term effects, but are also completely reversible.
This first report, from the Economist (click to read) shows that WPATH tried to impede the work of scientists and researchers working on reviews of transgender issues, reviews meant to inform WPATH’s own guidelines for transitioning. In other words, WPATH wanted researchers to come up with only those results that the organization wanted, results that buttressed affirmative therapy.
Both this article and the NYT article resulted from discovery documents and emails released in a court case challenging Alabama’s ban on transgender medical care for minors.
Here are some experts showing how WPATH resisted systematic analysis of relevant data. (WPATH adamantly denied the results of the NHS’s Cass Review in England, which put considerable brakes on affirmative care in the UK).
Court documents recently released as part of the discovery process in a case involving youth gender medicine in Alabama reveal that WPATH’s claim was built on shaky foundations. The documents show that the organisation’s leaders interfered with the production of systematic reviews that it had commissioned from the Johns Hopkins University Evidence-Based Practice Centre (EPC) in 2018.
From early on in the contract negotiations, WPATH expressed a desire to control the results of the Hopkins team’s work. In December 2017, for example, Donna Kelly, an executive director at wpath, told Karen Robinson, the EPC’s director, that the WPATH board felt the EPC researchers “cannot publish their findings independently”. A couple of weeks later, Ms Kelly emphasised that, “the [WPATH] board wants it to be clear that the data cannot be used without WPATH approval”.
There was then a negotiation stipulating that WPATH didn’t have to approve the data, but could offer review and feedback to the researchers without “meddling” in publication:
Eventually WPATH relented, and in May 2018 Ms Robinson signed a contract granting WPATH power to review and offer feedback on her team’s work, but not to meddle in any substantive way. After WPATH leaders saw two manuscripts submitted for review in July 2020, however, the parties’ disagreements flared up again. In August the WPATH executive committee wrote to Ms Robinson that WPATH had “many concerns” about these papers, and that it was implementing a new policy in which WPATH would have authority to influence the EPC team’s output—including the power to nip papers in the bud on the basis of their conclusions.
But only one review was ever published, about the effects of hormone therapy on transgender people, and, six years later, there are no more articles published, despite the fact that the EPC group has enough data for SIX more reviews. Something fishy is going on, but what it is we don’t know. (Bolding below is mine.)
No one at WPATH or Johns Hopkins has responded to multiple inquiries, so there are still gaps in this timeline. But an email in October 2020 from WPATH figures, including its incoming president at the time, Walter Bouman, to the working group on guidelines, made clear what sort of science WPATH did (and did not) want published. Research must be “thoroughly scrutinised and reviewed to ensure that publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender health care in the broadest sense,” it stated. Mr Bouman and one other coauthor of that email have been named to a World Health Organisation advisory board tasked with developing best practices for transgender medicine.
Since WPATH is all out for affirmative care, and demonizes those who call for caution (e.g., the Cass Review), the bit in bold above looks like arrant interference by WPATH with the scientific process. One could lump WPATH’s behavior in this case along with attempts by other ideologues to make reality comport with ideology—what I call the “reverse appeal to nature”, or “What we consider good and moral must be seen in nature.”
But what seems even worse, at least to American liberals, is that officials in the Biden Administration, including the trans woman who is the assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, have tried to get WPATH to drop all its guidelines for age minimums. And the pressure worked! WPATH has no more age guidelines.
Click below to read the NYT piece, or find it archived here
Some excerpts (I’ve added a link to Levine):
Health officials in the Biden administration pressed an international group of medical experts to remove age limits for adolescent surgeries from guidelines for care of transgender minors, according to newly unsealed court documents.
Age minimums, officials feared, could fuel growing political opposition to such treatments. [JAC: That apparently means that age limits indicate that there are issues involved with decisions to undergo such treatments. But this is not a political issue!]
Email excerpts from members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recount how staff for Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services and herself a transgender woman, urged them to drop the proposed limits from the group’s guidelines and apparently succeeded.
Now WPATH, an organization to which many American doctors and therapists adhere, has no age guidelines at all. If an eight-year-old girl says she feels like she’s in a boy’s body, then affirmative care could begin immediately, and hormones administered soon thereafter. And surgery at any age!
Now I’m not sure about the ethics of a trans woman in the government —or any person, be they cis or trans—pressuring a professional organization to drop age limits for “adolescent surgeries”, but it doesn’t sound kosher. No bureaucrat should be applying any pressure. for this is an issue best left to doctors and medical ethicists. Yet the pressure from Levine and her office was constant:
The email excerpts released this week shed light on possible reasons for those guideline changes, and highlight Admiral Levine’s role as a top point person on transgender issues in the Biden administration. The excerpts are legal filings in a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming care.
One excerpt from an unnamed member of the WPATH guideline development group recalled a conversation with Sarah Boateng, then serving as Admiral Levine’s chief of staff: “She is confident, based on the rhetoric she is hearing in D.C., and from what we have already seen, that these specific listings of ages, under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care. She wonders if the specific ages can be taken out.”
Another email stated that Admiral Levine “was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to care for trans youth and maybe adults, too. Apparently the situation in the U.S.A. is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them.”
There are a lot more emails that I haven’t read, but here’s one more bit showing that even within WPATH there was dissent about removing age limits:
In other emails released this week, some WPATH members voiced their disagreement with the proposed changes. “If our concern is with legislation (which I don’t think it should be — we should be basing this on science and expert consensus if we’re being ethical) wouldn’t including the ages be helpful?” one member wrote. “I need someone to explain to me how taking out the ages will help in the fight against the conservative anti-trans agenda.”
The international expert group ultimately removed the age minimums in its eighth edition of the standards of care, released in September 2022. The guidelines reflected the first update in a decade and were the first version of the standards to include a dedicated chapter on medical treatment of transgender adolescents.
The fact is that we know very little about the long-term effects of various medical interventions on the health and mental well-being of gender-dysphoric adolescents. And with WPATH and the government trying to impose their own dictates on what the results should be, gender care in America looks dire. Like any other branch of medicine and therapy, it should be informed by science, not ideology, and ideologues should not be dictating how the scientific results should turn out. Yet WPATH continues to make statements without evidence, preferring anecdotes:
The final WPATH guidelines state that distress about breast development in particular has been associated in transgender teenagers with higher rates of depression, anxiety and distress.
“While the long-term effects of gender-affirming treatments initiated in adolescence are not fully known, the potential negative health consequences of delaying treatment should also be considered,” the guidelines state.
“Gender-affirming surgery is valued highly by those who need these services — lifesaving in many cases,” Dr. Bowers said.
I’m pretty sure the “lifesaving part”, as epitomized in the advice given parents of gender-dysphoric children, “Do you want a live son or a dead daughter?” Gender dysphoria is often accompanied by depression and other mental issues, and there’s no evidence I know of that gender-dysphoria alone causes suicide in the absence of affirmative care.
UPDATE: I’d missed this article from Reality’s Last Stand, but it’s highly relevant. Click below to read it:
An excerpt, noting that apparently the NYT had even more damning emails but didn’t publish them (bolding below is the author’s):
Last night, I had drinks with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time, determined not to talk about The Issue. But a few minutes before I arrived, I found out that The New York Times had decided not to publish a part of a story about the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—an advocacy group that creates “standards of care” for trans medicine, which American medical groups avow to adhere to (they don’t) and claim are evidence-based (they aren’t).
That part of the story would have discussed recently unsealed WPATH documents, subpoenaed by the state of Alabama, as part of a lawsuit, Boe v. Marshall. Alabama parents, medical providers, and a Birmingham pastor named Paul Eknes-Tucker sued the state because of its ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors—and the criminalization of those who practice it.
. . .The emails show that Hopkins did conduct a systematic review, and that—like all the other SRs—it found diddly squat in terms of evidence supporting the efficacy of hormones and surgeries. But WPATH prevented Johns Hopkins from publishing these reviews because they didn’t come to WPATH’s preferred conclusions. WPATH hid this very important information from the entire world, then published standards of care saying an evidence review was impossible. And a government agency knew this!
We are talking about kids and the most invasive possible interventions here. We are talking about venerable academic institutions and government agencies and censorship and secrets.
. . . Turns out, there’s a whole heckuva lot more of these damning emails. The New York Times had access to them but chose not to cover them. A source told me this is because no one from Johns Hopkins would comment on the record. The documents will be available via the LGBT Courage Coalition tomorrow (I will add a link and start a thread when it’s up), but I had a chance to preview them. If you have not yet had what GIDS whistleblower Anna Hutchinson called her “holy fuck!” moment, now’s the time.
After discussing the concessions the Johns Hopkins researchers made to WPATH, apparently deep-sixing six review papers, author Davis says this:
Can you believe the John Hopkins folks agreed to this? This is not science. WPATH is not credible. And this is why we in America are the outliers: we’re not basing guidelines on systematic reviews, or reality. We’re basing them on an activist group’s political agenda, and even the HHS knows there’s no good evidence. In fact, AHRQ was asked to review guidelines for treating gender dysphoric youth back in 2020, because, the request said:
There is a lack of current evidence-based guidance for care of children and adolescents who identify as transgender, particularly regarding the benefits and harms of pubertal suppression, medical affirmation with hormone therapy, and surgical affirmation. While these are some existing guidelines and standards of care,2, 5-6 most are derived from expert opinion or have not been updated recently so a comprehensive evidence review is currently not available.
What did AHRQ decide, after communicating with the Hopkins researchers?
The EPC Program will not develop a new systematic review because we found protocols for two systematic reviews that addresses portions of the nomination, and an insufficient number of primary studies exist to address the remainder of the nomination.
Basically, they said someone was already doing it, and there wasn’t enough evidence to sort through. But the someone already doing it had already agreed to put science aside and only discuss benefits, not harms.
In future years the suppression of scientific research on gender medicine in America will be seen as a scandal. And besides unforeseen damage to people’s lives, we can expect a spate of lawsuits.
Both WPATH and the Biden Administration bear the blame for the latest series of missteps. In its efforts to placate the progressive Left (something I didn’t predict when Biden was elected), the Biden Administration has badly mishandled issues of sex and gender.
John Avise is here for his Sunday installment of bird photos. John’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.
Eastern Mexico Birds
The very first scientific paper I ever published (essentially my Masters Thesis from the University of Texas in 1972) dealt with the genetics of blind Mexican cavefish in the genus Astyanax. Nearly 40 years later, the evolution of these eyeless and unpigmented fish from their fully-eyed surface ancestors had become a hot topic in evolutionary genetics, with literally dozens of researchers now involved. In 2011, I was invited to give an introductory lecture at a special Astyanax conference held near Tampico and Veracruz, Mexico. This week’s post shows several of the bird species that I managed to photograph on the venue’s grounds during this three-day-long event.
Welcome to Sunday, June 30, 2024. It’s my sister’s birthday (she’s exactly 2½ years younger than I) and my own half-birthday. Happy birthday, sis! Here she is:
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said on Friday that if Israel embarks on a “full-scale military aggression” in Lebanon against Hezbollah, “an obliterating war will ensue.”
The warning came after the Israel Defense Force attacked several Hezbollah positions, in response to the Iran-backed terror group’s latest barrage on northern Israel hours earlier, amid escalating tensions on the Lebanese border.
Writing on X on Friday, the Iranian UN mission said that if Israel were to launch a war on Hezbollah, “all options, including the full involvement of all resistance fronts, are on the table.”
Here’s that tweet, which is now pinned to make it scarier:
Albeit Iran deems as psychological warfare the Zionist regime’s propaganda about intending to attack Lebanon, should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue. All options, incl. the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts, are on the table.
— I.R.IRAN Mission to UN, NY (@Iran_UN) June 28, 2024
Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hezbollah, Hamas, Yemen’s Houthis, and other groups in Syria and Iraq, has been targeting Israel since October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Iran itself also launched an unprecedented missile-and-drone strike on Israel on April 14, two weeks after an alleged Israel airstrike near Tehran’s embassy in Damascus killed several senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian strike was almost entirely repelled by Israel, the United States and other allies, though a 7-year-old girl was seriously injured in the attack.
. . .Diplomatic efforts led by the US have so far failed to make the terror group retreat beyond the Litani River — some 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the border with Israel — in accord with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have been steadily mounting, with a US official cited in Politico on Thursday as saying that the risk of war is higher than it has been for weeks. According to the official, a major attack by either side could spark a war, which could happen with “little notice.”
. . . Soon after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Israel evacuated much of its north, fearing Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, would carry out a similar attack. Some 60,000 residents of northern Israel remain displaced, as the country seeks to remove the terror group from its northern border.
If there is such a war, and I think there’s a good chance it will happen, it will be Hezbollah’s fault, as they’ve been firing lots of rockets at northern Israel, targeted at civilians, for weeks, in violation of a UN resolution. Why doesn’t anybody criticize Hezbollah for that war crime? You know why: because non-Jews are allowed to do stuff like this. Iran has given Hezbollah thousands and thousands of sophisticated rockets, and Israel would be fully justified in attacking Hezbollah to defend itself. Right now, however, the IDF is occupied with Gaza, but perhaps later. . . .
Israel has barely known a moment’s peace; it’s always getting attacked from the north and south (and now threats from the East) with no provocation. I hope that if there is a war with Hezbollah, the U.S. will make good on its promises and help out Israel.
. . . it would be nearly impossible for Democrats to replace him unless he chooses to step aside.
Delegates Biden won in the primaries are pledged to support him.
Every state has already held its presidential primary. Democratic rules say that the delegates Biden won should support him at the party’s upcoming national convention unless he tells them he’s leaving the race.
The president indicated that he had no plans to do that, telling supporters in Atlanta shortly after he left the debate stage, “Let’s keep going.” Biden campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt was even clearer, saying Friday: “Of course he’s not dropping out.”
The conventions and their rules are controlled by the political parties. The Democratic National Committee could convene before the convention opens on Aug. 19 and change how things will work, but that isn’t likely as long as Biden wants to continue seeking reelection.
The current rules read: “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
The vice president is Biden’s running mate, but that doesn’t mean she can swap in for him at the top of the ticket by default. Biden also can’t decree that she replace him should he suddenly decide to leave the race.
The Democratic National Convention is being held in Chicago, but the party has announced that it will hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin. The exact date for the roll call has not yet been set.
If Biden opts to abandon his reelection campaign, Harris would likely join other top Democratic candidates looking to replace him. But that would probably create a scenario where she and others end up lobbying individual state delegations at the convention for their support.
That hasn’t happened for Democrats since 1960, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson jockeyed for votes during that year’s Democratic convention in Los Angeles.
. . . .In addition to the vice president, others that had endorsed Biden in 2024 while harboring their own presidential aspirations for future cycles include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker and California Rep. Ro Khanna.
Nope, the only way that Biden will be off the ballot in November is if the either withdraws or dies. He’s already nixed the former, asserting that when you fall down, you pick yourself up. That’s what he’s gonna do, and it’s bad news for those of us who would be mortified if Trump were elected again.
*In a bipartisan result, the House of Representatives voted to prevent the State Department from using death tolls provided by Gaza death toll numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry, which of course is run by Hamas. Even the UN has rejected those figures, but apparently most Democratic Representatives think Hamas’s data are just fine.
Lawmakers voted 269 – 144, with 62 Democrats joining 207 Republicans to add an amendment mandating the change to an appropriations bill for the agency not to cite statistics obtained from the Gaza Health Ministry.
The bill needs to pass the Senate.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, told the House it is “disgusting” that lawmakers would support the legislation.
“This is genocide denial,” she said. “My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll. So let me read it into the record. Here are the latest casualties of Palestinians killed: 37,718 Palestinians, including more than 15,000 Palestinian children and more than 86,377 Palestinians have been injured,” said Tlaib, citing Gaza Health Ministry’s figures supported by the names of the deceased and tallies by international groups.
[CONTENT NOTE: The figures that Tlaib just read are grossly inaccurate]
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas.
More than 37,700 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 86,400 injured, according to local health authorities.
The vote may not survive, though, when it gets to the Senate.
Tlaib lambasted her peers in the House for the vote, suggesting that they harbor deeply-ingrained “racism” against Palestinians. She dismissed the amendment as an effort to “dehumanize” Palestinian people.
“Since 1948, there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence,” Tlaib said before the vote. “My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll.”
Tlaib is bonkers. The vote was not to cite statistics known to be grossly inaccurate from a terrorist organization. It is shameful that this one-issue antisemite is serving in Congress. And I’m betting that every member of the Squad voted with Tlaib. This is especially distressing to me as an ex-scientist as those Democrats were voting for the promulgation of figures know to be cooked: they were voting for lies.
*The Washington Post claims that after the Supreme Court decision saying that race could not be an explicit factor considered for college admission, the colleges are indeed complying. I don’t believe the article at all, for we’ve heard of the many ways that colleges try to circumvent this decision to maintain diversity of race. An excerpt from the WaPo (Adrienne Oddi is vice president of strategic enrollment and communications at Queens College):
A year later, many of the nation’s most selective universities have snapped into compliance with the court’s vision of a colorblind America, reconsidering all the ways they use race as a factor. But that vision has reverberated far beyond academia: Programs meant to diversify companies, public boards and government contractors face a legal onslaught unleashed by the landmark ruling, pushing American society at large toward a new race-neutral era.
While the changes at colleges like Harvard have been dramatic, the principle of race-neutrality is being felt more subtly at universities like Queens that accept more applicants than they turn away. Oddi said the ruling brought more of an “emotional shift than a practical shift” to her office and described how she blinds herself to a student’s race if the student mentions it in an application essay. The Supreme Court wrote that students could discuss race so long as it’s relevant to an experience, such as a time they overcame racial discrimination.
Before the ruling, Oddi said she could “brighten” certain parts of an applicant’s identity while evaluating them “holistically” — including the applicant’s race and ethnicity. If a student wrote about being a biracial woman with a father from the Philippines, for example, an admissions official might note that the university does not see many Filipinos in the applicant pool and that “we would love to have more Filipinos in the community,” Oddi said, posing a hypothetical.
But today, she said, that conversation would not happen at Queens. In fact, Oddi said she feels barred from acting on the student’s racial information at all. Instead of brightening that aspect of a student’s identity, she feels forced to erase it. And that has instilled in her a sense of “sadness” — not necessarily for herself but rather for the students who may feel dissuaded from writing about their whole selves, including race and ethnicity.
But if Oddi is telling the truth about how applicants are evaluated, she’s a rarity. Here’s what one site says (their bolding)
Now that race-based affirmative action in college admissions has been overturned in a landmark Supreme Court decision, colleges, and universities are scrambling to diversify their student bodies without running afoul of civil rights law.Several top-ranked schools are rolling out a slew of new essay prompts that fish for demographic information with leading questions — and some are going so far as to directly ask about prospective students’ race.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore asks students to “tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual…”Meanwhile, Rice University in Houston asks applicants: “What perspectives shaped by your background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity inspire you to join our community of change agents at Rice?”
And every single Ivy League school has added an application question about students’ backgrounds, according to college admission expert and Ivy Coach managing partner Brian Taylor.It’s a clever loophole: ask about race … without expressly requiring students to write about their race.
And some schools aren’t even remotely subtle about their motivations. Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, even cites the Supreme Court’s decision in its essay prompt.
“In the syllabus of a 2023 majority decision of the Supreme Court written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the author notes: ’Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s 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,’” the Sarah Lawrence application reads.“Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced, or affected by the Court’s decision.”
The DEI steamroller will keep chugging away. One solution is to cast the net more widely, and require SATs for application, both of which will help boost ethnic diversity—if that’s the kind of “diversity” a school is aiming for.
*I continue to monitor the NYT op-eds for their views on Biden’s performance and their advice on what he should do. Yesterday, Mo Dowd, in a column called “The ghastly vs. the ghostly” (guess who’s who!), advises Biden to drop out. But there’s another column with the opposite advice.
Here’s Mo:
He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself.
I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the other president.
In Washington, people often become what they start out scorning. This has happened to Joe Biden. In his misguided quest for a second term that would end when he’s 86, he has succumbed to behavior redolent of Trump. And he is jeopardizing the democracy he says he wants to save.
While nearly all the main columnists, including the mushies Tom Friedman and Nick Kristof (and now Ross Douthat–no surprise!) share Dowd’s views, there’s a dissenter: Stuart Stevens, identified as “a former Republican political consultant who has worked on many campaigns for federal and state office, including the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney”. His column is called “Democrats: stop panicking.”
As a former Republican who spent decades pointing out flaws in the Democratic Party, I watch the current Democratic panic over President Biden’s debate performance with a mix of bafflement and nostalgia.
It’s baffling that so many Democrats are failing to rally around a wildly successful president after one bad night. But it does remind me of why Republicans defeated Democrats in so many races Republicans should have lost.
Donald Trump has won one presidential election. He did so with about 46 percent of the popular vote. (Mitt Romney lost with about 47 percent.) The Republican Party lost its mind and decided that this one victory negated everything we know about politics. But it didn’t.
One debate does not change the structure of this presidential campaign. For all the talk of Mr. Biden’s off night, what is lost is that Mr. Trump missed a great opportunity to reset his candidacy and greatly strengthen his position.
Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by a margin of seven million and needs new customers. He could have laid out a positive economic plan to appeal to middle-class voters feeling economic pressure. Instead, he celebrated his tax cuts for billionaires.
He could have reassured voters who are horrified, in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, by the stories of young girls who become pregnant by rape and then must endure extremist politicians eager to criminalize what was a constitutional right for two generations. But Mr. Trump bizarrely asserted that a majority pro-abortion-rights country hated Roe v. Wade and celebrated his role in replacing individual choice with the heavy hand of government.
He could have said he would accept the outcome of the next presidential election. He refused.
For 90 minutes, Mr. Trump unleashed a virulent anti-American rant. The America he lives in is a postapocalyptic hellscape of violence, with people “dying all over the place” — more “Mad Max” than “morning in America.”
So we’re not supposed to worry because Trump screwed up? But Stevens is an adviser to the Lincoln Project, which is a no-Trump group of Republicans, which explains the column, He tells Biden—and us Democrats—to hang in there and fight.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California showed Democrats how to fight after the debate: “You don’t turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”
Unfortunately, for the moment, it’s much of the Democratic Party establishment. Many of the same people wrote off Mr. Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries after he was crushed in Iowa and New Hampshire. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina refused to panic, stuck by Mr. Biden and helped save the campaign. Let his courage and steadiness be a model. My one plea to my new friends abandoning Mr. Biden is simple: Suck it up and fight. It’s not supposed to be easy.
Unfortunately, for the moment I find it hard to fight hard for a man who’s barely sentient. How can you get passionate about a candidate who can barely walk, and freezes up at odd moments? Yes, I suppose I’ll vote for him if he’s on the ballot, though in Illinois it won’t make a difference, but it would help if there was a candidate I could get excited about.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are on the hunt:
Szaron: What do you have there?
Hili: I don’t know because it’s hiding itself under my paw.
The Iranian regime is known for trying to kill or kidnap its opponents in other countries. Masih is one example of that, but here’s an Iranian official in London threatening protestors. I don’t think the finger across the throat is an accidental gesture. Sound up.
Death Threat on British Soil
To @metpoliceuk:
Today, in London, affiliates of the Islamic Republic issued death threats to peaceful protesters in front of the regime’s embassy during an election demonstration, as you can see in the video. They specifically referenced the regime… pic.twitter.com/vCBqWKy0d8
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, ensconced in Manchester and writing his book. First, a U.S./British translation guide (I’ll add that “quite” as in “quite nice” really means “not at all”):
Email translations:
“I was under the impression”
Translation: I’m furious
Bill’s take on the debate in 1.5 minutes:. “Trump told lie after lie after lie. . . he wouldn’t have gotten away with it if Joe Biden had been there.” As for Biden, “I’ve seen beauty pageant contestants answer questions better.”
Here’s Bill’s 10-minute monologue, in which he delivers a mock TED talk (with appropriate attire and gestures) telling young men how to find women using his “G.A.M.E.” strategy. And yes, it’s very sound, especially because Maher’s had a ton of experience.
The rescue of a cat from the seventh floor of a wrecked building, a cat who had been there for two months (it must have had a source of water). This was a complicated affair, involving a drone, a fire truck with a crane, and a lot of nice people. But it all ends well (all the animal stories I show do!). “We don’t care if it’s an animal or a human being,” one rescuer said, “Every life matters to us.”
The YouTube notes:
Shafa, a cat in Borodyanka, was rescued from a severely war-damaged building.
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As the AP reports, Max the cat, a beloved felid at Vermont State, has now officially received a degree. Click to read, but the full story is below:
The tail:
A Vermont university has bestowed the honorary degree of “doctor of litter-ature” on Max the cat, a beloved member of its community, ahead of students’ graduation on Saturday.
Vermont State University’s Castleton campus is honoring the feline not for his mousing or napping, but for his friendliness.
“Max the Cat has been an affectionate member of the Castleton family for years,” the school said in a Facebook post.
The popular tabby lives in a house with his human family on the street that leads to the main entrance to campus.
“So he decided that he would go up on campus, and he just started hanging out with the college students, and they love him,” owner Ashley Dow said Thursday.
He’s been socializing on campus for about four years, and students get excited when they see him. They pick him up and take selfies with him, and he even likes to go on tours with prospective students that meet at a building across from the family’s house, she said.
“I don’t even know how he knows to go, but he does,” Dow said. “And then he’ll follow them on their tour.”
The students refer to Dow as Max’s mom, and graduates who return to town sometimes ask her how Max is doing.
Max won’t be participating in the graduation, though. His degree will be delivered to Dow later.
. . . and a local news report:
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From Bored Panda, fifty—count them, fifty—destructive moggies. I’ll give a few, but click below to see them all:
Sources are given at the bottom of the photos:
I’d still eat the tortillas. Wouldn’t you?
However, I’d just sacrifice that beef cheek:
And the classic object of destruction:
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Lagniappe: Orange kitties from the FB page Food Trend:
I have, beside John Avise’s Sunday bird photos for tomorrow, only 1.5 batches of readers’ wildlife photos left. As I said, if I can’t get them (and I really don’t want to keep hectoring readers about this), I will simply make the feature sporadic instead of daily. And that is what’s happened.
