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.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, November 23, 2024, and National Cashew Day, the finest of all nuts save the macademia.
Here’s a very short (1½-minute) primer on the cashew, and why they must be roasted (for more, see this video):
It’s also Dr. Who Day (the show began on this day in 1963), Eat a Cranberry Day (they are too sour!), Fibonacci Day (11/23 are the first four numbers of the series), and National Espresso Day (note that the second letter is an “s”, not an “x”, a mistake I see often).
*After Matt Gaetz dropped out of contention, Trump nominated a replacement candidate for Attorney General (article archived here). At least this one has some attorney general experience:
President-elect Donald Trump announced that he plans to nominate former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi to become the next U.S. attorney general, hours after former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) withdrew. Gaetz has been accused of sexual misconduct, allegations he has denied, and faced a narrowing path to confirmation in the Senate before dropping his bid.
Bondi, 59, is a longtime Trump loyalist who served on the defense team during his first impeachment trial. Her selection to be the country’s top law enforcement official follows a presidential campaign in which Trump criticized the justice system as “weaponized” against him and vowed retribution in a second term.
“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans – Not anymore,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!”
. . . . In 2010, Bondi became the first woman to be elected Florida attorney general and served two terms. She serves in leadership roles with the Center for Litigation and the Center for Law and Justice at the America First Policy Institute. Her selection for a Cabinet role reinforces the right-wing think tank’s status as a leading source of political appointees for Trump’s second term. The group helped lay the groundwork for a second Trump term but avoided the type of backlash levied against a similar effort, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
I know nothing about Bondi, but the fact that she’s a “Trump loyalist” as well as the attorney general of Florida does make one worry!
*As always, I’ll steal three items from the inimitable Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at the Free Press, called this week “TGIF: The ten-pound brain administration.”
→ Seth Moulton gets a protest: The other moderate Dem who has been trying to take a victory lap—this time by saying that maybe, just maybe, biological men shouldn’t compete in women’s sports—is now getting protested. A large Neighbors Against Hate rally took place outside his office. Jen Psaki, on MSNBC, said there is no evidence trans athletes “are a threat” to fairness, whatever that means exactly. And as John Oliver, with his signature tone—and this plays so well, guys—of how can you be so dumb not to get this, put it: “Trans kids, like all kids, vary in athletic ability. . . . It is very weird for you to be so focused on this subject.” Right, very weird. A little perverted, even, to be so obsessed with this difference between male and female bodies that you also invented. Anyway, you know my rants here. But what’s interesting now is: This is the hill Dems continue to throw themselves on. So. I just hope Don Jr. is a kind monarch.
→ The police in the UK only look for bad tweets: Cops in the UK are busy. They’re busy looking for tweets. Specifically, the bad ones. Allison Pearson, a writer for The Telegraph, tweeted something deemed offensive. The Essex Police then, I’m not kidding, set up something called a “gold group”—is this an Austin Powers movie?—a crime-fighting unit typically reserved for major crimes and terrorist investigations. A year later, they showed up at Allison Pearson’s door saying she was being questioned about her “hate incident.” They wouldn’t tell her what the offending tweet was but this appears to be it:
That’s the whole thing. That’s the tweet that British cops formed a gold unit and door-knocked over (they announced today they have dropped the case). I keep scanning it worried I’m missing the slur.
In the fallout of all this, others have come forward with their own run-ins with the law.
Winston Marshall, former member of Mumford and Sons, now a smart podcaster, said: “A week ago, my lawyer back home called me up and said ‘two of your tweets are technically illegal. You could be arrested when you return.’ ” And Julie Bindel, stalwart of British feminism, said she, too, got a visit from the cops for a tweet.
And former White House press secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki wants to make social media commentary that she doesn’t like illegal: “Local TV is held to a higher standard of accountability than social media platforms. . . . That is crazy. How does it change? How are people held to account? Laws have to change.” All of this reflects poorly on the state of free speech in the West, but it’s especially worrying for my cyberbullying of small businesses. What’s next, criminalizing my rants on Yelp? Like, sure, I threatened the life of one guy but the salmon filet was overcooked! Prisons are about to be filled with America’s busy moms who tweeted at Southwest Airlines in a blind rage after their flight was canceled.
→ Chicago is falling apart: Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson is trying to fill in the city’s catastrophic budget by adding a $300 million property tax after campaigning on a promise not to raise property taxes. In a rare moment of unity, the entire 50-member Chicago City Council voted it down.
Reminder of some of the $10 billion+ in demands his pals in the teachers union have been demanding and that he’s been seeking to pay out: “9% wage increases for Chicago teachers, a housing program for Chicago teachers, a 100% electric bus fleet and solar panels for Chicago school buildings.” All while spending has almost doubled since 2012, and proficiency has dropped. It’s unclear where Mayor Johnson is going to get the cash, but in response to his whopping loss, Johnson said “Am I aware of the trauma that has existed in city government? Absolutely.” Relevant? Not quite. Relatable? Yes. If there’s one word that describes my relationship with city government, it’s traumatic. I once called 911 because a crazy man with a machete was running toward me on the streets of West Hollywood, and the dispatcher asked me to remain where I was.
. . . and I have no room to give Nellie’s snarky take on the proposed Cabinet. It’s worth subscribing to The Free Press for these Friday columns alone.
*Peter Singer has an op-ed in the NYT saying that Presidents should stop pardoning turkeys on Thanksgiving, but it’s not what you think. Remember that Singer is a vegetarian and animal-rights activist.
The turkey sent to President Truman was killed and eaten, as were turkeys subsequently sent to President Dwight Eisenhower. But in 1963, in one of his last official acts before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy, when face to face with his live turkey, disregarded the sign hung around the bird’s neck that read “Good eating, Mr. President” and said: “Let’s keep him going.” Kennedy didn’t say anything about pardoning the turkey, but media referred to his act as a “pardon” and “reprieve.” President George H.W. Bush was the first to pretend that a turkey was receiving an official pardon.
We pardon people for crimes they have committed. Modern law has long abandoned the view that animals can commit crimes. That makes it impossible to take seriously the idea that turkeys need to be pardoned, no matter what they have done, but the annual presidential pardon is doubly absurd because no one has ever claimed that the turkeys sent to the president have done anything wrong — not even in the sense that your cat does something wrong when she punishes you for going on vacation by using your bed as her litter box.
. . .There are good reasons some people choose not to eat turkey. The turkeys eaten by Americans today are nothing like the wild turkeys supposedly eaten by the early European settlers in Massachusetts at the original Thanksgiving. More than 99 percent of the roughly 250 million turkeys produced in the United States each year are raised on factory farms, according to the Sentience Institute, crowded indoors all their lives in large sheds that almost always contain thousands of birds.
Today’s turkeys are not treated by turkey producers as individual birds capable of enjoying their lives, but as machines that convert cheap crops (which are also often subsidized) to something that can be sold at a higher price. The 46 million turkeys killed and eaten at Thanksgiving are almost all “broad-breasted whites,” selectively bred to have abnormally large breasts, because that is the part that most people prefer to eat. These birds have bodies so misshapen that they usually cannot reproduce on their own. They are the result of artificial insemination, which, especially for the females, is a procedure that they resist, but in vain.
Turkeys are also bred to grow fast, so that they are ready for slaughter at 3 to 5 months old. Their immature leg bones struggle to carry their weight. One study found that 60 percent had foot swelling and 25 percent had arthritis. They are often lame, because they experience pain when walking or standing. Sitting on the litter that covers the floor is not a good option, either, because the litter is full of bird droppings, which, when it comes in contact with moist skin, can cause caustic burns and blisters.
By the time Thanksgiving comes around, Mr. Biden will have less than two months of his term of office remaining. In common parlance, he will be a lame duck president. I suggest that he take that term, with its connotations of ceasing to be important, and give it a twist. He could become a lame turkey president — that is, a president who takes a stand on behalf of lame turkeys, by refusing to take part in the silly tradition of pardoning them.
I was a monthly columnist at Scientific American for nearly 18 years. On hearing this news, I emailed a number of people associated with the magazine to inquire what had transpired there—and more broadly why they think Helmuth and others allowed, or even encouraged, far-left politics to intrude into the pages of that once-storied publication. Very few people responded and those who did not only offered no comment but asked me to not even mention the fact that I had contacted them. What is going on here?
Merely being asked certain questions can put a person at a disadvantage, since one answer might be damaging, the other would be a lie, and a refusal to answer would be a de facto confession that those are the respondent’s two options. Witnesses who exercise their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by refusing to answer a question often do incriminate themselves in the court of public opinion.
I asked Pinker how this might apply to this specific case. He responded by email:
[C]ommunication takes place on two levels: the content of the message, and the common knowledge that stating the message generates. A source that ratifies what you (and the world) already know—that Helmuth was temperamentally unqualified for the job and damaged the institution, while they went along with it—would be confessing their own lack of integrity and courage, together with their willingness to kick a former colleague while she’s down. On the other hand, they could not deny it without forfeiting all claims to credibility and honesty. And by saying “no comment” they’d be acknowledging (that is, generating common knowledge) that those were their two options.
And of some of the crazy assertions made by Helmuth or her minions, like her tweet that the white-throated sparrow had four sexes (it has two, each with two pattern/color variants), Shermer adds this:
Does anyone actually believe such things? It seems some do and Laura Helmuth appears to be one of them. That is the most charitable assessment I can make of what has happened to the publication that inspired a dozen generations of budding scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians, and scholars. As in other science publications, along with mainstream media outlets, some corporations, and nearly all academic institutions, the people promulgating these woke ideas are mostly true believers—and the fervour of their faith only makes them all the more able to convince themselves of the truth of claims that everyone else can see have little-to-no contact with reality. Men do not menstruate and cannot get pregnant; women do not have penises and do not produce sperm; and transwomen—who are men—do not belong in women’s sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, prisons, or any other spaces designated for women only. No amount of ideological wishful thinking will change this.
Perhaps some—or even most—of the staff at Scientific American and other similar institutions do not support these ideological contaminations of science; they just want to go about their lives without being harassed by activists. Some may be virtue signalling without actually believing in any of the nonsense they are spouting, while others may be opportunists, capitalising on pluralistic ignorance: i.e. the fact that each individual is under the illusion that everyone else believes such shibboleths as the idea that human beings have more than two sexes (although, in fact, most people do not).
But the social environment is rapidly changing. Thanks to Donald Trump’s election, together with relentless pushback from political centrists and old-school liberals who are sick of being harangued by overzealous activists who accuse anyone who disagrees with them of bigotry, the pendulum may at long last be starting to swing back towards normalcy. Election postmortems and surveys have consistently identified the fact-free ideological capture of the Democratic party as a major factor in their defeat. The Left is in dire need of a course correction. Will that happen? Given what we know about the power of irrational belief, I am not at all confident that it will. Let’s hope I’m wrong, though—not only for the sake of the future of a once-great magazine, but for the sake of the American nation.
The world’s tallest woman and the world’s shortest woman met for the first time this week, sipping tea from china cups — and bonding over what they have in common while celebrating their differences.
Rumeysa Gelgi, from Turkey, stands at 7 feet and 0.7 inches, while Jyoti Amge, from India, is 2 feet and 0.7 inches.
“You’re so beautiful,” said Gelgi, 27. “Thank you — you too,” replied Amge, 30.
Jyoti Amge, left, and Rumeysa Gelgi meet for the first time. (Guinness World Records Day 2024)
Their meeting, over afternoon tea at London’s Savoy Hotel on Tuesday, came ahead of Guinness World Records Day, which is held annually in November to mark record-breaking achievements and encourage people to attempt records.The pair have been honored as “World Record icons” in the 70th anniversary edition of the Guinness World Records book.
“Meeting Jyoti for the first time was wonderful,” Gelgi said in a release Wednesday. “She’s the most gorgeous lady. I was waiting to meet her for a long time.”
Gelgi said the pair bonded over their love for makeup, jewelry and doing their nails.
Video footage showed them sitting down for tea, cakes and sandwiches stacked next to them, with the London Eye visible from the window.
Amge said in the release that she was “so happy to look up” and see the world’s tallest woman, whom she called “good-natured.” She added that it was difficult at times for the pair to make eye contact “due to our height difference.”
“Guinness World Records is all about celebrating differences,” its editor in chief, Craig Glenday, said in a statement ahead of Guinness World Record Day, which is on Thursday.
“By bringing together these two amazing, iconic women, they can share their perspectives on life with each other and, also, with us,” Glenday said.
Well, why do I feel that I’m putting up this item like it was a circus sideshow? Still, I couldn’t resist. Here’s another video of the pair from YouTube.
*Lagniappe: Here’s British barrister Natasha Hausdorff, legal advisor to UK Lawyers for Israel, discussing the injustice of the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galland for war crimes (h/t Bat)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili denigrates the intellectual stimulation that is supposed to be found on the Internet (but it’s a nice photo of her):
A: What are you doing here?
Hili: I’m looking for a place for a no-nonsense discussion.
A: On the window sill?
Hili: And where am I supposed to look for it? On the Internet?
From Masih, yet another Iranian woman blinded by the regime just for protesting (it’s not clear to me if she’s totally blind). There are English subtitles:
What would you do if your government shot you in the eyes for peacefully protesting?
Whenever you feel hopeless, listen to my fearless hero, Raheleh Amiri, who was blinded during the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising.
The world’s most boring machine, retweeted by Elon Musk:
The new tunnel boring machine designed by @boringcompany engineers can immediately start digging a tunnel anywhere with no prior site preparation (this is a really big deal) https://t.co/08zbixZ6Lk
Two tweets from Matthew, whose biography of Francis Crick is in the works. Of this one (in Chicago!) he says, “Kindra is Francis’s granddaughter and an artist.”
Vibrant microscopy-inspired #sciart showing now in Chicago every night after sundown. ‘Veritas Magnus Vis Microscopia’Curated by Shae Nadine#microscopy
If you listen to this BBC show from 08:15 on, you’ll hear a discussion about the new sabre-tooth kitten I wrote about the other day:
My ode to the Badyarikha sabre-tooth kitten, and its very special paw prints🧪🏺🦣😸🐾Thanks to @ellahubber.bsky.social for letting me loose on the airwaveswww.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/…
Can’t blame Israel so nobody cares…. Coleman Hughes points out things are worse in Syria and Yemen, but “nobody cares”. Please see excellent interview at
The far left won’t change. They just loss the presidency and the Congress and it makes no difference to them. I didn’t vote for Trump but on the other hand a vote for the Dems will just keep whoever runs against them in office. (Like Nellie said, I hope Don Jr. will be a kind emperor.) To vote for the present Dems would be like throwing my vote away. I did not vote and given the circumstances it was the best decision I could make.
Allison Pearson, a writer for The Telegraph seems a little . . . as I understood it, the people in the tweet were mis-identified and were not in the place stated.
.
She realized her mistake and deleted the tweet. The cops still came for her anyway – a year later. Meanwhile, Imams are recorded in their mosques spewing Antisemitic bile, a convoy of cars drives through a London Jewish neighbourhood with the occupants waving Palestinian flags and calling for Jewish girls to be raped, and the authorities turn a blind eye. Two-tier policing? You bet.
+1
I’m not on the radio programme about the sabre-tooth! Tori Horridge is!
MY MISTAKE! I’LL FIX
I just read Michael Shermer’s piece. He is fully justified in taking a victory lap to reprise Ms. Helmuth’s greatest hits at Scientific American. One can only hope that the once great magazine—which inspired me and countless others to pursue careers in science and to maintain a life-long interest in its wonders—will be put back onto the right track.
”Very few people responded and those who did not only offered no comment but asked me to not even mention the fact that I had contacted them. What is going on here?”
As usual, Pinker’s explanation is correct. I add that that is why sometimes the response from the secretary or whomever is “so and so could not be reached for comment” (that might be a white lie, but hard to check). Suppose that you plan to apply for a job but don’t want that known publicly yet. Someone tries to find out. If you confirm, that’s what you don’t want to do. If you deny, that will later be found out to be a lie. If you say “no comment” then that is confirmation, because if you aren’t planning to apply there is no reason not to say no.
The only situation I can think of when it might not be OK to say no if you are not thinking of applying is to avoid a sitation where several people are asked and a process of elimination is used to determine who might have applied (i.e. those that didn’t say no).
Can’t blame Israel so nobody cares…. Coleman Hughes points out things are worse in Syria and Yemen, but “nobody cares”. Please see excellent interview at
The far left won’t change. They just loss the presidency and the Congress and it makes no difference to them. I didn’t vote for Trump but on the other hand a vote for the Dems will just keep whoever runs against them in office. (Like Nellie said, I hope Don Jr. will be a kind emperor.) To vote for the present Dems would be like throwing my vote away. I did not vote and given the circumstances it was the best decision I could make.
Allison Pearson, a writer for The Telegraph seems a little . . . as I understood it, the people in the tweet were mis-identified and were not in the place stated.
.
She realized her mistake and deleted the tweet. The cops still came for her anyway – a year later. Meanwhile, Imams are recorded in their mosques spewing Antisemitic bile, a convoy of cars drives through a London Jewish neighbourhood with the occupants waving Palestinian flags and calling for Jewish girls to be raped, and the authorities turn a blind eye. Two-tier policing? You bet.
+1
I’m not on the radio programme about the sabre-tooth! Tori Horridge is!
MY MISTAKE! I’LL FIX
I just read Michael Shermer’s piece. He is fully justified in taking a victory lap to reprise Ms. Helmuth’s greatest hits at Scientific American. One can only hope that the once great magazine—which inspired me and countless others to pursue careers in science and to maintain a life-long interest in its wonders—will be put back onto the right track.
”Very few people responded and those who did not only offered no comment but asked me to not even mention the fact that I had contacted them. What is going on here?”
As usual, Pinker’s explanation is correct. I add that that is why sometimes the response from the secretary or whomever is “so and so could not be reached for comment” (that might be a white lie, but hard to check). Suppose that you plan to apply for a job but don’t want that known publicly yet. Someone tries to find out. If you confirm, that’s what you don’t want to do. If you deny, that will later be found out to be a lie. If you say “no comment” then that is confirmation, because if you aren’t planning to apply there is no reason not to say no.
The only situation I can think of when it might not be OK to say no if you are not thinking of applying is to avoid a sitation where several people are asked and a process of elimination is used to determine who might have applied (i.e. those that didn’t say no).