Friday: Hili dialogue

60 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

1. Babies of all sexes? Bah, humbug!

   1. Yeah. Guess that chart was done pre trump edict era.

2. Introducing our class, many years ago, to differentiate between causation and correlation, my econ professor said that there was a marvelous correlation between the heat of the sidewalks in new york and the birthrate in India….marvelous (or in his rich southern U.S. accent: mahvelous) but meaningless.

3. Well, I unplugged (cancelled my long-held hard-copy subscription) from wapo last week and now, if they keep running stuff like William A, a 3.4 Gpa illiterate features, added to continuing the “it leaked from a lab” and failed Dept of Ed Sec deVos’ hit job, I may need to cancel my paid subscription to TFP. Really TFP, so William is illiterate but he can fully and competently operate ChatGPT and Scholarly at home? I totally understand that we graduate functional illiterates in the U.S….I had them in ninth grade general math in high school in the early 1970’s, but this particular article really begs common sense. And the parents can sue now, but never noticed nor asked for help all those earlier years? There are methods for nipping illiteracy in pk-1 where it can make a difference for the child’s entire life…maybe TFP might write about and thus publicize for duplication some of those best practices.

   And, now, with a nod to da roolz, I am done for the morning.

   1. I demur, modestly, Jim. Why should anyone have discovered there was a marvellous robust correlation between heat of New York’s sidewalks and birthrate in India? Sounds like a lot of work. Assuming he didn’t just invent this tale out of thin air, the existence of a correlation should stimulate the curious to come up with hypotheses that might explain it. This is more intellectually rewarding than simply training the students through operant conditioning to sneer, “Correlation is not causation,” whenever someone reports a thought-provoking correlation. Worse, it can create the presumption that causation is to be found among events that aren’t correlated, which of course is wrong

      Did anyone ask your professor what prompted the data scientist to look at these two variables in the first place to test if there was a correlation? Was it just something that popped into his head? Or did he have a possible explanatory hypothesis in his mind? Remember in the days when you and I were learning statistics, correlations were done with pencil and paper, adding machines, and tables of squares and square roots. You couldn’t frivolously command, “For all a and b, regress a on b and print only correlations with r^2 > 0.8 and p < 0.05.” Even with mainframe computers, there were dollars to get time on them and many punch cards to type.

      If he had first said to himself, “Here’s why I think there might be some causal connection between NYC sidewalk heat and birthrate in India,” and then did the regression to check and sure enough found a robust correlation, wouldn’t that tell him he was onto something? The right message is that correlation doesn’t mean causation in the direction you think it does but robust correlation almost certainly means there is some causal connection. A -> B, B -> A, or C (which can be a web of interacting causes) – > A & B. When you reflect on the number of statistical analyses that show bupkis, a “positive” result can start your career.

      This assumes no cherry-picking or p-hacking. If the researchers had run regressions on numbers of many different occupations and many different first names and found a robust correlation only between “lab tech” and “Coral”, then I’d be less impressed. But let’s say Missouri imports temporary foreign female workers as lab techs exclusively from a country where Coral is a much more common first name than it is among native Missourians. (The Philippines comes to mind.). Then in years where lab tech employment was high, you’d expect more anchor babies named Coral. The point here is that both “lab techs” and “things named Carol” share a commonality in that both are “people”. This provides a mechanism for causality to act.

      1. Nah Leslie. This was in the time of Frieden calculators and larger ideas of modeling and simulation at a small liberal arts college were years in the future. I agree with your comments and surely today, such a correlation might be a good stepping off point for an excellent case study.
         (With this reply, now I’m done per da roolz)

         1. For fun, go to https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations and check out all of the different correlations.
            Asking students to come up with reasons would be an interesting exercise to start with, but I’d ask them how they would disprove the causality between the two items.

            1. One well-known example of the correlation/causation fallacy: because menstrual cycles and the lunar cycle are both about 28 days, some people believe that the moon influences the menstrual cycle just as it causes tides. If this were true, one would expect all women to ovulate at the same phase of the moon, which doesn’t happen.

         2. Poor Jim. You started out mad and ready to cancel another subscription and how do your fellow readers support you? They pick on you! Sticklers, all of them!

   2. It does seem odd that parents of the illiterate kid didn’t notice anything!

      1. Don’t ask, don’t spell.

      2. I suppose that they did notice, helped with ChatGPT, were happy that he was passed from year to year and finally graduated, and now are happy that they can sue and get big money.

   3. It’s an old canard among right-wingers that certain (“inner city”) schools are failing children. While it is true that some of these schools have skeletons in their closet (like the cheating scandals), it is also convenient for Republicans because they will never have to run any of these schools. I suspect the Free Press was happy to print an article that fit into this narrative.

4. [ looks at Odile’s Valentine’s card ]

   ….[ thoughts ]…

   Ummmm… Francis Crick was a lucky man – a lucky man.

   BTW PCC(E), I saw some of those eXtweets too and thought “these would be good fun to mail for PCC(E)” – fun to see them again!

   One clue to the magic illusion is the mirror symmetry in the blanket, the paper – very clever!

5. Why are humans the only primates with chins?

   Because God has a chin, and we are made in the image of God. Q.E.D.

   (I’m kidding.)

6. The story around the boxer Imane Khelif isn’t black and white. She grew up as a girl in a very conservative country so she isn’t one of these guys that callously “changed sex” just to win a few medals after living as an obvious male their whole life. A true edge case. No idea how to be fair in this case.

   1. The simple thing would be to subject Khelif to the same eligibility tests that all other female competitors need to pass in order to compete. These would include testosterone levels, cheek swab, etc., or whatever other testing is required.
      If passed, then it’s ok to compete. If not then no.
      If it causes controversy due to Olympic standards being different from the IBA, then it would seem to me that the Khelif would be eligible to compete in the Olympics but not in any IBA-sanctioned events.
      Whether or not a person is raised as a male or female has no bearing on this. If I put my son in a dress all his life and call him Sheila, that does not remove male body physical advantages from him.

   2. World Athletics, which governs track and field, says that if a competitor is found to have a Y chromosome, he must prove that he has not masculinized in order to compete in women’s events. Most competitors satisfying this criterion will have complete androgen insensitivity due to a mutation of the gene for the androgen receptor (which happens to be located on the X chromosome.) Affected individuals have competed in the Olympics as women. If confidentiality works the way it’s supposed to, no one need ever know unless the athlete wants to tell her story.

      A competitor who has a Y chromosome and who is found to have not CAIS but 5-alpha reductase deficiency will be disqualified because he will have masculinized at puberty, notwithstanding that his external genitalia did not form properly in utero. Ironically, this is a case of “assigned female at birth” being wrong. There is no edge case at all here, says WA. It is not the role of the adjudicators of fairness to female competitors in track and field to validate someone’s own internal perception of himself. The mandate, as with anti-doping measures, is to be fair to the athletes he wants to compete against. In boxing, the women’s lives may depend on it. It’s not about you, Mr. Khelif.

      1. Thanks Leslie. I was going to describe the World Athletics guidelines but when I started to do so my post became very long. You did a great job of summarizing.
         To whit: not an edge case.

   3. she isn’t one of these guys that callously “changed sex” just to win a few medals after living as an obvious male their whole life.

      Actually, Khelif could be somebody who has cynically chosen NOT to ‘change sex’ just in order to win a few medals.

      Although she was unquestionably raised as a female, she learned that she is a biological male when she was diagnosed with 5a-reductase deficiency. She learned at the same time that she would need treatment if she ever wanted a feminine body. In this context, the relevant treatments would be hormonal – testosterone suppression (or surgical removal of her testes) and estrogen replacement.

      But if you look at Khelif, she has a fully masculine body shape in terms of fat distribution and muscles. In addition, there is no sign of any breast development under her jersey. This makes me think that she has foregone hormonal treatments. And if so, one motive would obviously be in order to ensure she retained all the athletic advantages that going through male puberty have given her, in terms of strength and muscles – and to ensure she’d keep dominating the sport, right up to the Olympics.

      Another motive Khelif could have for foregoing feminizing hormones is that she might be lying when she claims to have a female gender identity, in the first place. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. There is an extremely high rate of gender dysphoria in patients with 5a-reductase deficiency who are raised as females:

      Studies show that individuals with 5α-reductase deficiency who are raised female have a significantly high rate of gender dysphoria, with some studies reporting up to 63% of cases experiencing this.

      Despite the fact that most of these patients lack normal male genitalia, more than half of them feel so unhappy living as females that they elect to live as males when they reach adulthood. (This is fascinating evidence that gender identity is biologically rooted).

      So, Khelif could plausibly be one of the patients who realized at some point that he had a male, not female, gender identity. If so, he wouldn’t want to take female hormones even if the treatments wouldn’t disadvantage him athletically if he did.

      But at the same time, he’d have an incentive to continue claiming to identify as a female, as he had from the beginning, in order to be able to continue participating in – and winning at – women’s boxing.

      In sum, I’m not as convinced of the purity of Khelif’s motives as I could be.

      1. Imane Khelif has undergone Testosterone reduction treatment. Let me quote from George Cazorla (IK’s trainer) “We then worked with an Algeria-based doctor to control and regulate Imane’s testosterone levels, which are currently in the female range.”. What sort of persons needs to have Testosterone reduced to the female range? Male persons.

         How were IK’s testosterone levels regulated? I have no idea.

   4. I’ve read that males with male-specific DSDs are knowingly recruited for the Olympics.

      Males with DSDs are a much bigger problem in elite sports than people realize. They’re a bigger problem than trans-identified males. (In non-elite sports, it’s the other way round: “trans” players are taking girls’ and women’s places, scholarships, and medals.)

      As for Khelif, it’s possible he didn’t know he was male before he saw the results of the tests the IBA insisted he take. But he’s known since then that he’s at least…different.

      1. Indeed! All three medals in the women’s 800m at the Rio Olympics in 2016 went to men. (Caster Semenya, who we know is a 46,XY 5-ARD athlete thanks to the findings of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, won gold in this race.)

         I seem to recall that some of the scouts looking for athletes with the condition were East Germans who had previously worked with female athletes given steroids as part of their country’s systematic doping programme.

      2. Khelif has known that he is “different” since he didn’t get his period, years ago. The IBA results (apparently) did not convince him, he was male. Apparently, the matching results from the French Bicetre hospital did convince him (at least according to his trainer, George Cazorla), that he was male.

   5. A Bulgarian female boxer who trained together with Khelif said that Khelif is fully aware of his male body. He intimidates female boxers, saying, “I’m a man, and I’ll smash you”.

      1. The lady’s name is Joana Nweamerwe

   6. Khelif does not have a Uterus, Fallopian tubes, or Ovaries. He does have Testis (undescended) and male-normal levels of Testosterone. He also has XY chromosomes. He is a male with 5-ARD (which is why a Penis did not develop). His medical records leaked from the French Bicetre hospital confirming all of this.

7. To spare PCC(E) the trouble, herein The Hill’s report on:

   PBS AXES DEI Office After Allegedly Trying To Sneak Around Trump’s Executive Order:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiJvdj5Pvk&ab_channel=TheHill (8 min)

   We’re going to see a lot of this sneaky stuff as institutions use their “immune system” to fight off the current assault of reason and fairness. The parasite clings ever closer to the host. I doubt it’ll effect PBS’s hideous and racist editorial positions though.

   I didn’t know before 2014-ish but PBS taught me that no white man has ever done anything (good) of consequence. I hang my head in shame whenever I watch it and check muh priv!

   D.A.
   NYC

   1. “The parasite clings ever closer to the host”
      Did you come up with that on the fly? It’s quite clever.

      1. heheh. Yes. And thank you Debi.
         D.A.
         NYC

8. Agreed. Kennedy is the worst of the new cabinet members. With measles appearing here and there, I’ve been wondering how well tested is the belief that having measles as a child confers life-long immunity. I wonder if I need a measles booster.

   President Trump is as interested in plastic straws as he is in giving Russia parts of Ukraine to end the war. (Until Putin decides that he needs more of Ukraine, which he will.) To Trump, it sometimes appears that his range of operation extends from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Every matter that gets his attention is of equal value. His first few weeks have been manic. One wonders if he will ever run out of steam.

   Finally, DEI is a social disease. At some point—at a time of existential crisis—we will again need merit, and the folly of identitarianism will have to end. I am hopeful that we are seeing signs of this nonsense coming to an end before it’s too late.

   And, of course, I am hopeful that the hostages being released on Saturday are healthy.

   1. IMO, the first returnee in a coffin will spell the immediate end of this “peace plan”. And Hamas likely believes this too, so you betcha all the returned hostages will be alive (if not healthy).

9. I have observed American adults who are literate, but who when reading aloud often confuse words with other words that look alike. My guess is that they were taught to read by the “whole language” trick, which depends on this error.
   Reading by phonics, of course, avoids it, and also facilitates reading words in foreign languages. Could the past influence of “whole language” reading instruction in US education be related to the difficulty US citizens have in learning other languages?

   1. I think you might be on to something. I am a retired middle school English teacher who took far too long to try and figure out why so many of my students struggled to read or just out-right hated it.

      So many of my Language Arts teaching colleagues, including so-called reading specialists, repeated the canard that the American spelling system didn’t make sense. When I finally came across the insight that the American spelling system actually incorporated the speech-to-print “rules” (more appropriately deemed patterns) of multiple spelling systems – e.g., French, Latin, Greek, Germanic – American spellings suddenly made so much more sense to me.

      To be clear, it’s not that my own teachers didn’t point out how certain English spellings were derived from, say, Latin or Greek. But never was it explicitly stated that the apparent lack of logic American orthography was actually a combination of various orthographic logics.

      So, to get back to your point, I do have to wonder if American students were explicitly taught from a fairly young about the mixture of orthographic logics contained in the American spelling system if learning a foreign language might seem much less daunting to American students.

      As to the case of William A, I can’t help but notice that he didn’t start public school until 5th grade. Did his parents know how to teach the foundational skill of decoding? I’d bet more than a few bucks they didn’t.

   2. You are using ‘species assigned at birth’ as a joke. However, some people take this very seriously. The following is from R. Dawkins.

      “In 2020, Humberside police descended on the workplace of Harry Miller to warn him that one of his tweets “was being recorded as a hate incident.” What did the offending tweet say? “I was assigned Mammal at Birth, but my orientation is Fish. Don’t mis-species me.””

10. A handy summary of RFK Jr’s strange beliefs, from the NYT:

    https://archive.ph/k2bho

    1. And yet, the Republican kakistocracy marches on. His confirmation upset me enough to start writing letters, which is about all that a single individual can do. Here is my first letter, to our Governor:

       Governor Polis:

       While I support many of your political actions, your endorsement of RFK Jr. to head the nation’s health services is ethically and scientifically reprehensible. Our chief health officer is an antivaxxer, science-denier, and lying conspiracy advocate who is yet another example of the emergent kakistocracy of school boards, State Houses, Congress, and the President and his sycophant administration members.

       Over 2000 years ago, the Chinese understood how to protect their children from the ravages of smallpox. Over 200 years ago, Jenner described the fundamental efficacy of immunization against the virus. Because of immunization initiatives, this deadly disease has been eradicated globally. Many other debilitating and deadly diseases have also been controlled by immunization programs, but we now have health care leaders who have actively promoted the false and dangerous claims that vaccines are unsafe and worse than the diseases.

       I invite you to walk with me through the small rural graveyard in my home township to ponder the large number of headstones of young people, many of whom died of now-preventable communicable diseases. Give some thought regarding how Salk and Sabin impacted the epidemiology of the polio virus. Also please read about the devastation of communities that were not immunized against such diseases, including the Samoans who listened to Kennedy’s anti-MMR vaccine crusade, and subsequently lost 83 members of their small population.

       Unfortunately, you poured gasoline on the anti-vaxx fire, and many will be consumed.

       Sadly,

       Douglas E. Swartzendruber
       Professor of Biology, Emeritus
       University of Colorado – Colorado Springs

       Denver, Colorado

       1. That’s an excellent letter.

          1. Thank you – I made a couple of minor edits, but added this sentence provided by a colleague:

             These misguided actions by Kennedy and like-minded, ill-informed charlatans have enabled the re-emergence of once well-controlled infectious diseases and have made our response to new diseases more difficult.

             1. I know RFK Jr. expressed opinions, but what actions did he take that “enabled the re-emergence of once well-controlled infectious diseases?”

                We are not heading towards “speech equals violence,” are we?

             2. Lysander – possibly should say will enable. However, he has traveled the world to spread misinformation, persuaded countless parents to eschew vaccinations leading to illness and death, and has filed lawsuits to halt certain vaccines – to name a few things. I take it you have no problem with his “opinions” or that they will guide the health care system in this country? His influence threatens the well-being of our grand-daughter.

             3. I am a strong proponent of vaccines myself, but I understand that millions of my fellow citizens do not trust the pharmaceutical companies and public health bureaucracy to tell them the truth.

                I think right now the most important task of public health leaders is to regain the trust of the public.

                I am hoping that once RFK Jr. is allowed to “look behind the curtain,” he will develop more confidence in vaccines and bring millions of people along with him. I think we need someone like that to rebuild trust.

                In general, I am against equating speech and violence. Even saying that someone who holds the wrong opinion is guilty of “enabling” is going too far for me, at least as far as a private person speaking only for himself is concerned.

                For example, I think millions of people are mistaken about the frequency of deadly police violence against blacks, but I would not say that an individual person with this view “enabled” the George Floyd riots.

             4. Douglas, speaking only to reassure you about your granddaughter.
                As long she is completely vaccinated herself she is protected no matter what other parents do, whether Mr. Kennedy is a Cabinet Secretary or not. If she cannot be given live-attenuated virus vaccines (MMR, varicella, and rotavirus) because of immune deficiency, only then is she relying on herd immunity, which Mr. Kennedy seems reckless about. Her parents will need to be especially vigilant against outbreaks of measles, but they will surely know all about this anyway if they have such an affected child. Otherwise she’ll be fine.

                As for other people’s grand-children, well, you can do only so much to protect them from fools.

             5. Leslie – thanks for your thoughts, and they would be correct; however – her mother is an anti-vaxxer and has gone to court to keep the 7 year old unvaccinated for anything. Our son is in the process of challenging this, but sadly the anti-vaxxers will now have another voice in their corner, even though it is a lying one.

             6. Douglas, I am truly sorry to hear that. I have grandchildren, too. It must have pained you to have to write it. Here’s hoping for your granddaughter’s continued good health.

             7. I appreciate your words Leslie. We are hopeful that our son will prevail.

             8. You need to read “Measles for the 1%”. It turns out that Waldorf schools in California have been hotbeds of anti-vax sentiments.

             9. Thanks Frank. Very interesting article

11. Re Simon’s Cat, I would have expected that once the butterflies had left, one or both of the cats would have jumped into the box.

12. DID the single use paper straw work and you consumed all the liquid in the cup? or perhaps the cocaine line on the coffee table? No, I don’t do cocaine but I know my single use paper straw did it’s job when I needed it too.
    Then if it was the same for all out there, why are we talking about it. Is it because plastic straws are more sexy, they float better when being washed down a curbside drain? When chewing the lip end of the paper straw did it turns to mush and contaminate the drink…. WHAT? are you a child? Nevermind, that’s my bleat all because of some dumb arse kid fudged some numbers in a colossal deception, like eh…DEI.

    1. While I am ready to sacrifice much more for the planet, I must say that paper straws are inferior. I like drinking slowly, and in the second half of my drink, the paper straw is all wet and soft and good for nothing.

       1. I see your problem and have experienced this myself 😊 I don’t use straws much these days or (after those demanding kids had grown) frequent fast food restaurants where they seem to be widely used.
          But I must confess I went to a Burger King for time and convenience (long story) and a drink came with the order, no straw but a protruding funnel moulded into the lid to wrap your lips around.
          It worked fine and it flashed through my mind at the time, ok that’s a good thing.

       2. Try reusable straws. They’re made of plastic but since you’re not throwing them out it’s not so bad for the environment.

          Of course that might mean bringing your own if you’re eating out.

       3. Things the plastic straw could never do that a (wrapped) paper one can: open one end from the paper straw, and squish all the paper down to one end. Remove the straw. Place a drop or two on the paper and it “animates” almost as if it were a caterpillar.

          Used ot do that in restaurants as kids, momements of fun.

13. That is an exceptionally beautiful photo of Hili, who is of course a very photogenic cat.

14. When teaching the importance of vaccinations to my biology pupils I would show photos of the iron lungs a person suffering from effects of polio could spend a life inside; very effective. A living death.
    I think the critter that stung the kitty was a wasp. Notice how quickly it was up and ready to strike again; not something a bee would do.
    and to finish, re chins:
    When chewing on one side of the mouth, muscles on both sides of the jaw come into play. Our ape ancestors, with prognathic jaws, could accomodate an internal buttress, the simian shelf, to prevent the two sides of the jaw from snapping apart whilst chewing. As the human skull evolved, its prognathism was reduced; the jaw retreating, while the need for reinforcement remained; hence the chin, an external buttress, making room for the tongue and its muscles.

15. This will interest you –
    https://www.science.org/content/article/silk-road-merchants-may-have-introduced-cats-china-1400-years-ago?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_content=alert&utm_campaign=DailyLatestNews&et_rid=703227625&et_cid=5529013

16. Is it just me? Everything I’ve read and learned about Vladimir Putin is that he WILL take back Ukraine under Russian control at all costs. In my understanding of him he will never give up on this aim.
    He is never going to accept any deal that permits Zelensky to remain in power except as a ploy, and a step towards his ultimate ambition. He will renege on any deal with Trump at the first opportunity if it suits him, and will revel in playing Trump for the fool he is.
    Where this becomes extremely dangerous is that there is a suggestion that Western “peacekeeping” forces would be employed to defend Ukraine as part of the deal. This is unlikely to be any deterrent to Putin. I suspect that he will happily roll his troops over them, unless they have protection under NATO article 5 which would require all NATO member nations to retaliate – something Putin knows he cannot risk. However, it is unlikely that Western nations would permit their forces to be attacked, even in a peacekeeping role, without a full response. If I’m right, and Putin underestimates Western resolve in the way he underestimated the Ukrainian response to his invasion, this could easily lead to World War Three, and Trump’s clumsy, ignorant and infantile fantasies about providing peace will backfire spectacularly.

    1. Looks more like Trump giving much of Ukraine to Putin with no guarantees to protect what remains. Putin needn’t start a world war—just pause a bit before going back for the rest of Ukraine.

       Meanwhile, the signal has reached Xi—it’s OK to take Taiwan.

       Countries like Canada have let their military deteriorate considerably. It was low priority in the fun woke years of Trudeau. I don’t know about Europe. But I think even the US military has deteriorated.

       Putin and Xi have nothing to fear.

       1. +1

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