Friday: Hili dialogue

February 28, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, February 28, 2025: the last day of the month and National Chocolate Soufflé Day.  Here’s an easy one for two, using only four ingredients:

It’s also National Science Day, Global Scouse Day, celebrating Liverpudlinas (including the Beatles), and National Tooth Fairy Day.  Here’s a lesson in speaking Scouse:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Actor Gene Hackman, his wife, and his dog were all found dead in their home in New Mexico.

Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead in their home in New Mexico along with their dog, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office told CNN. He was 95.

Their causes of death have not been confirmed, but foul play is not suspected, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Denise Womack-Avila told CNN on Thursday morning.

Deputies responded to a welfare check request at the home around 1:45 p.m. Wednesday and found Hackman, Arakawa and a dog deceased, Womack-Avila said. An investigation is ongoing, the sheriff’s office said. The gas company is assisting in the investigation, The Associated Press reported.

The welfare check was conducted after a neighbor called authorities, concerned about the couple’s well-being, CNN affiliate KOAT reported.

Related articleGene Hackman, the Oscar-winning Everyman actor with an edge, dies at 95

A search warrant shows that Hackman, his wife and their dog had been dead for some time, and the couple’s bodies were in different rooms when deputies found them during the wellness check, the AP reported.

Hackman was found dead Wednesday in a mudroom, and Arakawa was found dead in a bathroom next to a space heater. There was an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on the countertop near Arakawa, the AP reported.

Medical examiner’s reports with the final cause of death “generally take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to generate,” said Chris Ramirez, spokesperson for the New Mexico medical investigator’s office.

Okay, no foul play, but the coincidence implies that it was a mass suicide. But why take the dog with you? There are ways to leave it alive—unless the dog was terminally ill or very old.  At any rate, I remember him well in The French Connectin, Scarecrow, and The Conversation. 

*Well, Trump decided to go ahead and raise tariffs on products from China, Mexico and Canada (the latter two were under a reprieve until now).

Tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico would go into effect on March 4 “as scheduled,” President Trump said on Thursday morning, claiming that those countries were still not doing enough to stop the flow of drugs into the United States.

China will also face an additional 10 percent tariff next week, on top of the 10 percent he imposed earlier this month, the president wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels,” he said. “A large percentage of these Drugs, much of them in the form of Fentanyl, are made in, and supplied by, China.” He added that the levies were necessary until the flow of drugs “stops, or is seriously limited.”

In an effort to stem the flow of migrants and drugs, Mr. Trump threatened to impose tariffs on all products from Canada, Mexico and China in early February. But after Mexico and Canada promised measures like sending more troops to the border and, in the case of Canada, appointing a “fentanyl czar,” Mr. Trump paused their tariffs for one month.

He moved ahead with imposing a 10 percent tariff on all products from China, on top of those already in place, which prompted China to retaliate with its own tariffs on American goods.

Trump Says Canada and Mexico Tariffs Will Start March 4, Plus an Increase on China – The New York Times

Additional tariffs on the country’s three biggest trading partners would only add to the economic strain that has begun to emerge from Mr. Trump’s flurry of actions. And his threats have posed a particular quandary for Canadian officials, who argue that fentanyl made in Canada has not posed an increasing threat to the United States.

This is not good for anyone; it’s merely Trump’s form of retaliation. It might work as a threat, but not as a practice, for it raises the price of good for consumers in all these countries and angers our northern and southern allies.

*The NYT is so happy that Christianity’s disappearance in America is slowing: “One Nation Under God.” (The subtitle is “Americans have stopped leaving Christianity.  And the country is overwhelmingly spiritual, a new report found,”

As religion in America declined, experts administered last rites.

Churches were approaching “their twilight hour” as attendance fell, The Brookings Institution wrote in 2011. In his 2023 book, “Losing Our Religion,” the evangelical preacher Russell Moore asked: “Can American Christianity survive?”

The answer appears to be yes. People have stopped leaving churches en masse, according to a new study released this morning by Pew Research. America’s secularization is on pause for now, likely because of the pandemic and the country’s sustained spirituality. Most Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they hold one or more spiritual beliefs that Pew asked about:

The United States is an outlier compared with most other Western countries, which are far less religious. America’s persistent religious and spiritual curiosity is visible in its centers of power. In Washington, President Trump and JD Vance talk a lot about God in their quest to remake America. In Silicon Valley, tech billionaires — long obsessed with religion-adjacent projects like artificial intelligence, transhumanism and immortality — are warming to Christianity. In Hollywood, films and shows about faith, such as “Conclave,” the latest season of “The White Lotus” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” have dominated streaming charts.

Below, I’ll explain why religion still has such a strong hold in America.

And a few years’ worth of statistics show that the rise of the “nones” (those who don’t identify with a particular denomination) has slowed:

Over the last 25 years, tens of millions of people left American religion. It was a major shift that affected how people voted, when they married and where they lived. Christianity took the hardest hit: Around 15 percent of American adults who once went to church stopped going. While some people switched to new faiths, many left religion altogether.

Experts called this phenomenon the “rise of the nones,” a group that includes atheists, agnostics and people who said in surveys that they identified with “nothing in particular.” The nones grew to include about 30 percent of the country.

But the rise of the nones has stopped, Pew found. People are no longer leaving churches en masse, and other major religions are growing, largely because of immigration.

And the proposed explanations:

Experts point to a few possible explanations.

First is the pandemic. Pew found that people turned to faith for support during those years, as the number of people going to religious services — either in person or virtually — remained consistent at about 40 percent. About a quarter of Americans even told Pew that the pandemic had strengthened their faith. “Religion was in their psychological tool kit for dealing with the hard times,” said Alan Cooperman, an author of the report.

The second explanation is that secularization has a limit in the United States.

Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and value faith in their lives more than adults in other wealthy democracies like Canada, Australia and most European countries, Pew found in a separate study. Americans — both religious and not — also report high levels of spirituality: Eighty-three percent say they believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew found.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist, argues that most people who disagree with their religion on political or social issues — on Trumpism, abortion or gay marriage, for instance — have already left or switched faiths. “What’s left is like the bedrock of American religion, which is exceptionally large,” he said. The report reveals how many people remain committed to their religious traditions even after those defections.

The pandemic is a possible explanation, for religion tends to rise during bad times. But it’s bad times all over for the U.S.: consumer prices and house prices high, wages, low, etc. Americans are unhappy, and unhappiness is positively correlated with religious belief. I’m not sure that secularization has a limit in the U.S., and, in fact, I don’t believe it.  Why would there be a high lower threshhold of religious belief in the U.S. but not in Europe or other Western countries. Must 80% of Americans always have a “god-shaped hole” in their being.  Well, we’ll see over the next decade. Even if disbelief stops, that doesn’t mean that I won’t keep promoting it.

*I mentioned a few days ago that Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), had advertised for a “Palestinian scholar,” using antisemitic terms for the job requirement. Now the position has been removed per order of governor Kathy Hochul. (The job ad was here, but is gone.)

New York governor Kathy Hochul took an unusual interest in the hiring practices of the City University of New York on Tuesday when she ordered the public system to take down a job posting for a professorship in Palestinian studies at Hunter College.

CUNY quickly complied, and faculty at Hunter are up in arms over what they call a brazen intrusion into academic affairs from a powerful state lawmaker.

The job posting was for “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality.”

“We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches,” the posting continued.

In a statement Tuesday night, Hochul said the posting’s use of the words “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid” amounted to antisemitic attacks and ordered CUNY to “immediately remove” the posting.

A few hours later, CUNY complied, and system chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez echoed Hochul’s criticisms of the posting.

“We find this language divisive, polarizing and inappropriate and strongly agree with Governor Hochul’s direction to remove this posting, which we have ensured Hunter College has since done,” he wrote in a statement.

Hochul also directed the university system to launch an investigation at Hunter “to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom.” Matos Rodríguez appeared to imply the system would follow that order as well, saying, “CUNY will continue working with the Governor and other stakeholders to tackle antisemitism on our campuses.”

A CUNY spokesperson declined to say whether the system would launch a probe into the posting at Hunter but wrote in an email that “each college is responsible for its own faculty job posting.”

And of course faculty are pissed off:

Faculty at Hunter are livid about the decision, according to multiple professors who spoke with Inside Higher Ed both on the record and on background. They say it’s a concerning capitulation to political pressure from an institution they long believed to be staunchly independent.

Is this academic freedom, and Hochul’s order violates it? Well, it’s advertising for a professor who will propagandize his/her students against Jews, so it’s not a clear-cut violation. Teaching anti-Semitism, which is clearly what CUNY wants, is probably against the law.

*Speaking of bad behavior in Colleges, last night there was a big pro-Palestinian protest at Barnard College (infamous for this kind of stuff)

A small group of pro-Palestinian student demonstrators occupied a building at Barnard College’s Manhattan campus Wednesday, clashing with staff and sending one employee to the hospital.

The demonstration, organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was part of a week of action demanding the reinstatement of two students expelled for disrupting an Israeli history course last month.

Nearly 100 students from Barnard and Columbia University – which is affiliated with Barnard and was a focal point of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year – staged a sit-in at Barnard’s Milbank Hall, Columbia University Apartheid Divest said on social media.

Masked students, many of them wearing keffiyehs, a traditional Middle Eastern scarf often symbolizing Palestinian identity, sitting inside a hallway chanting, clapping and beating drums, videos posted to social media by Columbia University Apartheid Divest Wednesday showed.

The students “physically assaulted a Barnard employee, sending them to hospital,” a Barnard spokesperson told CNN.

Barnard security staff “harassed and shoved several students, knocking at least one to the ground,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest said on social media. CNN has reached out to the group for comment.

Vandalism, as usual. . .

Here are the students acting out and also deciding whether the Dean can go to the bathroom. Oy!

As far as I know, Barnard pretty much capitulated to the protestors. As I write this on Thursday afternoon, nobody seems to have been arrested or expelled.

*Finally, over on his Substack site, The Philosophy Garden, Massimo Pigliucci has part II of his defense of the sex binary and an attack on philosophical eliminativism (the idea that we should deep-six definitions of sex), “Let’s talk about (biological) sex—Part II.”

Watkins & DiMarco then go on to discuss more sophisticated philosophical accounts of sex, such as the “homeostatic property cluster” one. These are interesting, but get rather technical, and they don’t change the basic goal of their paper: the standard (i.e., gametic) definition of sex in evolutionary biology ought to be eliminated from scientific parlance because it is, in the authors’ view, “problematic” on multiple fronts.

Notwithstanding Watkins & DiMarco’s frequent “worries” (a standard locution in technical philosophy papers), biologists find the gametic definition of sex useful because it is causally and historically connected to other relevant biological properties, such as different morphologies, mating strategies, parenting behavior, and so on. As another philosopher, Paul Griffiths (quoted by the authors), puts it:

“The payoff for this way of thinking about sexes is that it helps to explain the evolution of reproductive systems and how they differ across the diversity of life.” (p. 8)

Addressing the issue of exceptions, Griffiths continues: “There are some species at the boundary between unicellular and multicellular life, such as some volvocine algae, which can be seen as representing transitional states in the evolution of distinct biological sexes and might be described as having more than two sexes. They produce slightly anisogamous gametes and in a range of sizes rather than two discrete types. But in complex multi-cellular organisms like plants and animals we find two very different kinds of gamete, each associated with a fundamentally different reproductive strategy, and so two biological sexes.” (p. 9)

This is an observation in search of an explanation, which is how biology (and science more broadly) works. Accordingly, evolutionary biologists have produced a large literature on the evolution of mating systems, a literature that includes theoretical models that are informed by, and attempt to explain, the available empirical evidence.

. . . . But this pluralism of concepts [about biological sex] and corresponding usages is not really a problem: the fundamental notion is the one used in evolutionary biology, because, as the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky put it, nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution. The other concepts of sex are pragmatically useful, but are, in an important sense, derivative with respect to the gametic one. The reason certain organisms have one type of chromosome rather than another, one hormonal profiles rather than another, or one external anatomy rather than another is that the evolutionary lineages to which those organisms belong have developed anisogamy, that is, gametes of different sizes and function.

Watkins & DiMarco recognize this when they write: “While promising and worthy of further inquiry, [the gametic] account prioritizes a subset of biologists’ interests in anisogamy; namely, evolutionary biologists.” (p. 13). As it should, because evolutionary biology is the biological discipline that unifies all the rest, just like Dobzhansky said. Once again, Griffiths is on the mark:

“The operational definitions of sexes used in biomedical fields all rely on the more fundamental definition that comes from evolutionary biology. … As with so much of biology, sex makes better sense when viewed in the light of evolution.” (p. 14)

political projects should have absolutely nothing to do with scientific ones, because to do so is to pervert science and bend it to political and ideological aims. If scientists claim that concept X does important work within the context of their theories, then this is prima facie evidence that X does do such work. Philosophers are most certainly entitled to level criticisms to whatever scientists say or do, but the burden of proof is high and on the side of the philosophers. So there is no contradiction between preserving a critical role for philosophy of science and being very careful before taking a strong prescriptive role toward the activities of scientists. As for the people affected—in this case transgender and non-binary persons—they most certainly ought to have a saying, but in the court of public opinion, during legislative debates, and in courts of law. Most definitely not in scientific laboratories.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is worried about the grocery shopping:

Hili: Are you going to the shop?
A: Yes.
Hili: Have you checked what I’m lacking?
In Polish:
Hili: Idziesz do sklepu?
Ja: Tak.
Hili: Sprawdziłeś czego mi brakuje?

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

From Emma Hilton, a lesson for those who willfully tout the claim that sex is a spectrum. This, for example, could be a post-menopausal woman:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

No Masih today, but here’s an Iranian-German entrepreneur celebrating (or rather dissing) No Hijab Day on Feb. 1:

From Bryan; the incomparable Fred Astaire dancing and playing the drums at the same time:

And a tweet from Emma demonstrating that sports bans on transgender athletes goes both ways:

From Simon, but I think the last panel is misleading:

RNA xkcd.com/3056

— Randall Munroe (@xkcd.com) 2025-02-26T14:58:54.736Z

From my feed on Twitter:

Kitty train!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:

This Polish tailor lived but five days after arriving at Auschwitz. He died at 49.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-28T10:31:06.654Z

And from Malcolm, a clever cat elevator:

Matthew will return in a few days.

62 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Emma Hilton is brilliantly illustrating almost precisely how Hegel developed his thought about categories – he presented an example with apples but I haven’t gotten the excerpt – and what dialectic can do with them for the simultaneous cancellation and concomitant uplifting of understanding of the whole – Aufheben.

    1. Though she’s wrong about the fruit. That’s a rangpur lime, not an orange. Though it is a mandarin/citron hybrid…and still not an apple.

        1. I just buy them sometimes from the grocer, and that’s what they call them. When I googled “green skinned/orange flesh” citrus and clicked on “images”, I found all sorts of green skinned/orange flesh citrus with many different names, including orange and mandarin and rangpur…

          With all the hybrids being produced, and every fruit having multiple names, it’s no wonder there is confusion.

  2. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    It is good to rub and polish your mind against that of others. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (28 Feb 1533-1592)

  3. Do folks remember that restricted bathroom use by administrators was also a feature of the Evergreen State campus takeover? History really does rhyme.

    1. Evergreen used to be a bastion of critical thinking, back in the mid – late 70s and in the 80s. Question authority — and consider the evidence before making a conclusion. Then the evidence portion was dropped and the coddling began. It’s a travesty of what it was supposed to be.

  4. Additional on the Hackmans. Their door was open and their two other dogs were loose in the yard.

    2. [ begin badly cobbled-together excerpt ]

      “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

      “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

      “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

      “That was the curious incident,” said Sherlock Holmes.

      [ end badly cobbled excerpt ]

      1. I found it surprising that a rich couple, one of them 95, living in a mansion evidently had no servants. They took care of that big place on their own?

  5. Maybe we should give Randall a break: his degree is in physics from the 2000’s. I have found that it is not a simple climb up the 21st century biology/biochem hill.

  6. The XKCD toon sums up molecular biologists’ views of proteins.

    Never occurred to me that an elephant’s trunk could be an adaptation to underwater travel. Or that a lion’s tail could serve to help keep the kids together.

  7. Meanwhile, first Junior Kennedy (JrK) postponed the Vaccine Advisory Board’s meeting. Now he has cancelled it. This is the group that meets to approve or deny new vaccines, and to recommend what future vaccines should be based on. In this case, the meeting was to decide what strains/variants next year’s flu vaccine should be based on, from evidence from what is currently going around in Asia. It’s an imperfect system, but given the production lag it’s the best we have.

    This is asking for disaster.

    Meanwhile, it’s probably well known by now that when two kids died in Samoa some years back due to a measles vaccine that had tragically been diluted with something lethal, JrK flew off to Samoa and convinced the folks there to cease vaccinating. As a result 83 kids died from complications from severe measles. JrK blamed the vaccine.

    But when an unvaccinated kid in TX died of measles, he waved it off yesterday as business as usual.

    1. He went so far as to say the “We have measles outbreaks every year.”

      Every year since the antivax nonsense started up, not before (excluding the pre-vaccine days).

      He’s either stupid or lying. I can’t believe he’s actually the head of health for the United States.

      https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna193812

    2. “it’s probably well known by now that when two kids died in Samoa some years back due to a measles vaccine that had tragically been diluted with something lethal, JrK flew off to Samoa and convinced the folks there to cease vaccinating. As a result, 83 kids died . . .”

      Hempenstein, could you provide details about Kennedy’s suggested culpability? Below is my understanding of the story (assisted by AI).

      In July 2018, two infants in Samoa died from improperly prepared measles vaccines. (They were mixed with muscle relaxant instead of water.) The somewhat low infant vaccination rate of 74% immediately dropped to between 31-34% in the aftermath of the error. This was due to both understandable hesitancy and, more directly, to the country subsequently halting the vaccination program for the next seven months. When vaccinations resumed in February of 2019, the vaccination rates never recovered. They remained in the low 30s until after the measles outbreak later that year.

      Kennedy visited in June of 2019, a year after the two children died and long after the vaccination program halt and the precipitous decline in vaccinations. While it is possible—perhaps likely—that his meeting with antivaccine advocates might have further hindered government attempts to boost vaccine rates back to earlier levels, his visit did not cause the decline.

      Measles was introduced by a traveler in August, three months after the Kennedy visit. The government of Samoa declared an outbreak in October. As the situation worsened in November, Kennedy did send a letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa, suggesting that a faulty vaccine could be contributing. Nevertheless, the scare of the outbreak coupled with renewed government efforts succeeded in boosting vaccination rates to 94% of the eligible population by the end of 2019. His letter apparently had no effect.

      Reports that were resurrected after Kennedy announced his presidential run put a far different gloss on the story than contemporaneous news reporting that I have found, a few of which did mention his work as part of a broader backdrop of vaccine hesitancy, but they correctly noted it as one of many factors at play. More importantly, they correctly attributed the steep decline in vaccinations and subsequent outbreak to the medical error, deaths of two children the previous year, and the official government halt on vaccinations.

      Forgive me for suspecting an ulterior motive in current reporting. My own speculation is that after the vaccination errors and consequent deaths of two children, the environment was ripe for any antivaccine message to take hold and exacerbate the problem of restoring confidence in the country’s vaccination program. It might be impossible to quantify the degree of any such effect. But Samoa would have had a serious vaccination problem with or without RFK and his fellow travelers, and it would have been difficult in the best of circumstances to boost confidence after a government-directed seven-month halt in vaccinations.

      Is there any evidence that Kennedy had a role in the prolonged halt directed by the government? I would very much like to see it if there is. I have said repeatedly that Kennedy has enough baggage that one can credibly attack his views without having to invent or exaggerate problems—let alone having politicians screeching that “Kennedy has the blood of 83 children on his hands.” This Samoa story strikes me as one of those politically-motivated inventions or exaggerations, but I would greatly welcome corrections to any misunderstandings I may have.

      1. Kennedy visited Samoa in June 2019.

        Quote: Kennedy, then chairman of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit, later recounted online that Samoan “government officials, including the Prime Minister were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the respite from vaccines.” Wherever the idea originated, Kennedy was quick to offer them a way to do it.

        https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-vaccine-crisis-rcna187787

        1. RFK is a grifter’s grifter: the king.
          He is a scoundrel and a rat and The Very Worst cabinet appointment in any democracy I’m aware of. There are many I’m unaware of naturally – but of all I’ve seen living 55 years in four countries – he takes the cake. And candles. Probably decapitated the baker and ate his head and MAGA loves him for it.

          An unmitigated a-hole.

          D.A.
          NYC

      2. Doug – What I wrote was from memory of Paul Offit’s comments in a podcast, but digging now I see the timeline you note in his Substack post.

        But he did nothing to encourage vaccination in his visit in June, instead seeing it as an opportunity to evaluate vaccine efficacy – the drum he continually bangs on, seemingly oblivious to all the testing that is done. Seems to me that he wanted a sort of Tuskegee experiment.

        Then, after he left and after the measles epidemic there, in a letter to the Samoan PM of Nov 19 ’19, linked in the Substack, he tries to cover his tracks, pointing fingers at the 1963 vaccine which had already been replaced in 1967 and again in ’68, and then was coupled with mumps and rubella vaccines into the MMR vaccine. It also seems that while the epidemic was raging, his group was advocating Vitamin A and C as treatments.

        Since then he’s been trying to deny that most of those 83 actually had measles and downplaying his role, which medical people in Samoa are not buying.

        1. Appreciate the response. One piece that I find particularly troubling is the lack of nuance from the Kennedy crowd. They rightly point out that 95% of the decrease in measles deaths in the United States happened before the vaccine came online. (I’m willing to wager that the few hundred deaths per year in the late 1950s were disproportionately in Appalachia and The Delta.) The fatality rate in unvaccinated but healthy, well-nourished children with access to quality medical care is very low, but one can still see complications. They then take those facts and jet into countries without the health care systems, without the healthy populations, where the fatality rate from any measles outbreak would be far higher than in the US circa 1960, and they push irresponsible narratives. And with their focus on chronic disease in the young, I am waiting for it to dawn on them that, perhaps, measles would be a more deadly disease in the US today than it was when many of us were children.

  8. “Faculty at Hunter are livid about the decision…”

    I would have thought that faculty at any institution of higher education would be livid that an overtly bigoted faculty position was offered, not that reasonable people stepped in and cried foul when the “we-need-a-bigot-professor” advertisement appeared.

    1. Hunter College professor Louis Renault: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that politics is going on in here!”

    2. I am somewhat troubled by the implication that the theory of settler colonialism is only objectionable on the grounds of anti-Semitism, and even then, only in the context of Palestinian studies.

      I think there are reasons to object to the theory being taught in universities at all, no matter what the subject or topic. One reason is because the theory is not only used to condemn Jews / Israelis, it’s also used to inculcate students with contempt and prejudice against white people and the ‘West,’ as well as everything that is claimed to be remotely white- or West-adjacent, such as empiricism, science, merit, etc. ad nauseum. Of course, these additional condemnations are often couched as being based on theories of their own – such as the theory of white supremacy or critical race theory or epistemic justice, etc.

      But, as the ad says, “We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches” – by which they mean any of the theories in the same family as settler-colonialism, all of which are characterized by their ability to interpret everything and explain nothing.

      And the above is the ultimate reason to object to the teaching of settler-colonialism – as well as every related theory: they don’t actually teach students anything. Indeed, they do the opposite: they put student’s minds into strait jackets, by interposing simplistic fictional constructs over complex reality. The result is that students are rendered incapable of seeing reality for the theory.

      Indeed, these unfalsifiable post-modern-type theories are on exactly the same intellectual plane as the theory there are witches – once you learn about witches, it’s impossible to see a person who is accused of being a witch as anything other than a witch. And yet, the reality is that they aren’t.

      I’ve written too much, but this is a topic I’m passionate about. Everyone should read Popper’s essay on the unscientific (i.e., un-reality-based) nature of unfalsifiable theories. This essay opened my eyes: https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/popper.htm

      3. Yes absolutely. The Pro-Pal contingent in the west can be viewed better psychologically – in terms of personality – than politically.
        ARAB pro-Pals can be viewed theologically – right from the Koran.

        D.A.
        NYC

    3. “(I)ssues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to:…human rights, apartheid…race, gender, and sexuality”.

      An impartial study of the policies of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority on those issues would be well worth carrying out. Somehow one suspects that that is not what Hunter College had in mind.

      2. Quite so; “…open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches”, so long as those diverse approaches don’t include evidence which undermines their conclusions.

        We have the same in NZ, where there appears to be an endless supply of highly theorised ‘research’, short on evidence but long on big words explaining current negative outcomes for Maoris (itself, a contested concept) on racism and the inter-generational trauma of settler colonialism.

        1. Yes.. Midwit intellectuals and today’s unschooled generation of non-critical thinkers love the kind of big words bs you describe. They’re impressed, they buy it.

          Some also is the fault of the feminization of our universities and the Gabor Mate trauma cult.

          D.A.
          NYC

  9. PZ “Zoom” Meyers is crying about Jerry again in his comment section, under an article about trans athletes in Minnesota.

    Thing is, Jerry doesn’t write on trans issues as much as say, Ophelia Benson, but he rarely mentions her.

    It is as though Jerry has got into his head!

    Anyway, you’ll all be glad to know that PZ is VERY busy NOT resisting Nazis. As per usual.

    1. I reckon it’s partly due to envy and resentment. Jerry is a very accomplished biologist, Myers is not. It’s clear that grinds his gears. He gets similarly animated over Richard Dawkins.

  10. The answer to the 1% question is ‘RECTANGLE’. The fact that all four words are the names of Geometric figures is irrelevant, and meant to mislead.

    1. Yes, and that’s the style of tricky question that this show goes in for. Frustrating and disappointing when you see that “Oh it was one of those “.

  11. Free trade allows countries to specialize in production of goods and services that they’re the most efficient at, which leads to greater wealth. Tariffs limit these benefits and result in decreased wealth. They benefit domestic producers at the expense of the consumer.
    Businesses are consumers as well, so higher steel prices due to tariffs lead to higher prices on goods made from steel, which can result in fewer goods made with steel. Marginal Revolution had an interesting illustration two weeks ago https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/02/steel-tariffs-in-two-pictures.html . The analysis of the effect of Trump’s 2018 steel tariffs on US manufacturing employment showed 1000 jobs gained by steel producers but 75,000 jobs lost by steel users.
    Regarding Trump’s concern about trade deficits: every time I buy groceries at my local store, I’m increasing my trade deficit with my grocer. He’s selling me physical goods, and I’m giving him dollars, and we’re both happy. Plus by his gain of dollars from me, now he’s able to buy other goods, including (indirectly) my services when he buys certain goods that my firm makes. This is how trade works at all levels; I’ll grant that some national security issues may affect this, but if that’s the case I’d also argue there are better solutions than tariffs. Why Trump and his team can’t seem to grasp this concept is beyond me.

    I hope the Washington Post takes square aim at this foolishness in their editorial section under their new “Personal Liberties & Free Markets” guidelines.

    1. “Why Trump and his team can’t seem to grasp this concept is beyond me.”
      If I was cynical I would say it may be because it would put more money in certain pockets and so what if affects others badly.

      1. Trump’s been a long-time mercantilist. I’m sure he sees it as putting money in the pockets of certain businesses in the US, and he seems to really view it as a tax that is imposed on foreign businesses. But a cynical take is never to be discounted, especially in politics. After all, Democratic Party policy on tariffs has been to strongly support them for businesses that have a large union workforce, as it preserves union jobs and thus keeps a steady flow of union money to Democratic candidate coffers. I’ll also note the fact that Trump has gained much union support – not as much as Democratic candidates, but more than previous Republican ones.

    2. Darryl, when you buy domestically produced food from the grocery store, with whom you obviously run a “trade deficit” because you buy much more from the grocer than he buys from you, the American dollars you spend eventually come back to you via your employer (or customer if you are a business, or a debtor if you are a creditor, or the government if you don’t work) in the cycle you describe. Your “trade deficit” with the grocery store is therefore irrelevant to you and all other Americans domestically.

      But if you import goods from a foreign country (or travel to it), U.S. dollars have to leave the United States to pay the foreign supplier. If the U.S. imports more than it exports, which it does, this now real trade deficit contributes to (but only a part of) a balance of payments deficit: a net outflow of U.S. dollars. To bring those dollars home — in the old days it was actual coins and bullion of silver and gold — those foreigners have to be induced somehow to buy U.S. goods, invest those U.S. dollars in American businesses, or lend the dollars to the federal government. In the 19th century the first provided the rationale for Britain’s Opium Wars with China.

      This is a separate stream of thought from the theory of competitive advantage, which seems incontrovertible. I don’t know if trade deficits mean anything anymore in this era of fiat currency and floating exchange rates. I can quote authorities that say they don’t but I can’t evaluate the claims. (Canada used to worry many years ago, before free trade, about its trade deficit.) I just wanted to suggest that the situation between countries using different currencies where trade tends to be one-way is different from a purely domestic cyclic economy using the same currency, whether fiat or metal. This could be a rationale for tariffs on imports, particularly on expensive finished goods, less so on raw materials and partly processed products like smelted aluminum, which American domestic industry needs to produce finished goods to be purchased by Americans.

      (Obviously I have a dog in this fight: Canada exports those very raw materials and partly processed products like aluminum!)

      1. I personally take the view that what’s good for me as an individual is good for the broader consumer base. I want the best product at the best price so that I can manage my money outlays as I see best. I simply extend that idea to the wider market.

        Trade is never one way. There’s a huge web of trade that occurs, but even if you consider one particular good, trade is still two ways: one party gets the good, the other party gets a stack of paper with $ stamped on it. The party that gets the good can use that good in some manner (if it’s steel it can be formed into other goods; if it’s software it can be used to process data; if it’s Molson, it can be used for washing down pizza), whereas the only way that stack of dollars can be utilized is if they are traded for something else or invested, or burned for heat. Therefore, that initial trade must result in additional trading activity, unless you’re Scrooge McDuck.

        Then there’s the personal aspect: I don’t want to pay my government an extra 20% tax on something just because it was made somewhere else.

  12. Also re. DNA/RNA/proteins/evolution, the coolest thing I’ve come across in years. Ever wonder why there are three stop codons, while there is just one for the initiator Methionine?
    Viruses, especially including bacteriophage need to time the expression of various of their proteins. How to do that? One way, in certain bacteriophage, is that they break up the genes for the late-expressed proteins with one or more of one of those stop codons, and they also carry a gene for a tRNA that templates to that stop codon, which is charged with an amino acid, so once the tRNA gene is transcribed, that stop codon becomes one that encodes an amino acid and the mRNA reads thru! And further slick – such tRNAs are charged with either Glutamine or Tryptophan, neither of which – especially Gln – have much force one way or another on secondary structure, so it doesn’t much matter where in the gene they are placed as far as the functionality of the protein. So three stop codons is an evolutionary remnant of bacteriophages! One ref re. this is https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9523058/#MOESM1 here, and the original paper about it all is I think ref. 7.

    Other stuff: At first I thought it might actually be a good thing that per NPR this morning Orange Julius is about to extradite 29 hardcore drug bigwigs from Mexican prisons into the US for charges, but then it occurred to me that these might be the first 29 to pay $5M@ for entry.

    And a short NPR interview with Winston Lord, the last surviving member of the Nixon delegation that achieved detente with China, subsequent Kissinger aide and Ambassador to China, on OJ’s foreign policy. Easily found by a search rather than upset WordPress with two embedded links in the same post. He doesn’t mince words. Soundbite: “his strategy is an oxymoron because he has no strategy.”

    1. In that NPR interview Winston Lord mentioned no less than three times the locution (and his worries about) “America’s position in the world.” (Whatever that means – “Full Spectrum Dominance” of the world? Or as George H.W. Bush put it around the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, “What we say goes.” Is one’s reasonable first impression of that statement that it is uttered by a democrat? Or by an autocrat?) Mr. Lord sounded quite status-conscious. Not one word of concern about whether the U.S. insistence on expanding NATO eastward in the three decades prior to 2022 could possibly increase the chance of a regional war or WW III, nor about the number of Ukrainian deaths. I reasonably(?) trust that he has some upper limit of Ukrainian deaths beyond which he would physically wretch. I wonder if Mr. Lord took umbrage at Austria in 1955 opting for neutrality instead of joining NATO.

  13. Regarding the decline of religion in the U.S., I think that the trend will continue, even though it may have leveled off for now. Why? Because the fundamental shifts that have led people away from religion—the rise of science and reason, the substitution of other forms of belonging in the form of work and family, the spread of secular education—haven’t gone away. Like the rest of the western world, the trend will continue. It may continue slowly in America because of our inherently more religious past (and present) and thanks to immigration. I’m still optimistic for the long term future.

    And regarding Kathy Hochul’s intervention at Hunter College, I’m glad that Hunter will not be able to hire a professor specifically to promote antisemitism and anti-Israelism. (It sickens me that they even thought that this would be a good thing for the college.) To the extent that Hochul’s action is consistent with Title VI, I think that her order will hold up.

    Finally, it will take 16,438 years (6,000,000/365) to remember all of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, one day at a time. Thank you, Jerry, for your daily log.

    1. Yup. I was coming here to make a comment of my own, wondering whether the religious folks touting the recent plateau in religious affiliation have even read the full Pew report. Here’s an excerpt:

      Time will tell whether the recent stability in measures of religious commitment is the beginning of a lasting shift in America’s religious trajectory. But it is inevitable that older generations will decline in size as their members gradually die. We also know that the younger cohorts succeeding them are much less religious.

      This means that, for lasting stability to take hold in the U.S. religious landscape, something would need to change. For example, today’s young adults would have to become more religious as they age, or new generations of adults who are more religious than their parents would have to emerge.

      In other words, the recent plateau appears to be a short term phenomenon, and not necessarily indicative of a long term change in the trend.

    2. Also regarding the decline (or not) of religion in the US, it seems there has been a spike in religious based streaming movies/shows as of late.

      There’s “The Chosen” a mini-series on Netflix all about Jesus of Nazareth.

      Then there’s Scorsese’s “The Saints” another mini-series streaming on Fox.

      And today I just saw this advert which will be streaming on Amazon Prime. Note they call it “Historical”🤣:

      HOUSE OF DAVID tells the story of the ascent of the biblical figure, David, who becomes the most celebrated king of Israel. The series follows the once-mighty King Saul as he falls victim to his own pride. At the direction of God, the prophet Samuel anoints an unlikely, outcast teenager as the new king. As one leader falls, another must rise.
      Historical • Drama 13+

      1. There is a fair amount of archeological evidence supporting the Biblical account of a King David in Judea, including the Tel Dan stele from the 9th century BCE, inscriptions and seals, fortified cities, and stone structures.

        1. Yeah, but you’re being pedantic. Do you think “At the direction of God” or the prophet Samuel anointing a teenage David, are historic? Because that’s obviously what this show will be highlighting. God-heavy, historic-light. Plus the ‘poster’ had David holding a sling in the shadow of a giant Goliath- more historic accuracy!

      2. I initially misread that as “a spike in religions based on streaming movies/shows”, which seemed all too plausible.

      3. I wonder if the movie timeline proceeds long enough that viewers can get an eye-full of Bathsheba. Looking at the long list of David’s wives and children on Wikipedia, perhaps one might reasonably expect several serials. Such a varied and lengthy lineage was not emphasized from the pulpit while I was growing up in the Southern Baptist Church.

  14. The report on “religious/spiritual belief” is disconcerting. It amounts to a survey of dualism. That only 19% of ‘believers’ attend religious services weekly just means people are lazy now … 93% still adhere to the fundamental metaphysics: dualism.

    Nietzsche said God was dead, but it seems his ashes have not yet been scattered on the sea.

    Dualism is rooted in Plato, who might have directly become infected by someone from Asia. Plato passed it on to Augustine, Hume, and Kant. Then the German Romantics, including Marx, drank it for a century until it produced the duty-obsessed populace that obeyed Hitler.

    Julian Jaynes has his finger on it … the bicameral mind with its mystical right brain is difficult to unseat in favor of Apollo. I said recently that dualists fear death. Actually, they fear staring into the face of oblivion.

    I wish Ayn Rand had teamed up with Jaynes and Nietzsche, and they time-traveled back to 1789. They could have secured the root of the Enlightenment.

    1. I’m a big fan of Jaynes’ mid-70s book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. A tour de force, IMO. And let’s not blame Plato for modern attachment to dualism; I’d pick Descartes as a more plausible, Enlightenment-era, target. But really, the near universal experience of us post-Breakdown humans is that there is somebody at home in us who is not some external god, but is I/me. We live dualism, like it or not. The Illusionist view that “I” have exactly the same ontological status as “Apollo” is IMO well-supported by Jaynes’ extensive analysis.

      BTW John, what did happen in 1789?

      1. Kant published A Critique of Pure Reason, a major assassination of The Enlightenment, at the same moment the USA was founded as its triumph. Jaynes, Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand pulling together might have countered Kant.

        BTW, I reaffirm my charge against Plato. He enshrined dualism.

  15. ““There are some species at the boundary between unicellular and multicellular life, such as some volvocine algae, which can be seen as…” Will Progressive thinkers soon reproach us for talking about this boundary in the spectrum of cellularity? It is all very complicated, after all. Besides, making distinctions between the unicellular and the multicellular might permit one (or the other) to be stigmatized. Come to think of it, I wonder if Hunter College has an opening for a scholar who studies colonial algae through “the lens of settler colonialism”, not to mention “gender and sexuality”.

  16. If I were running a team competing against the Minx who cared more about winning than women, I’d be recruiting an all-male team. I’m sure the Minx would stand in support of the womxn on my team for their stunning and brave courage as we pummel them.

  17. I enjoyed the post from Massimo. There are good points in there, one being that yes, there is diversity about sexual biology in terms of chromosomes, anatomy, physiology and behavior. But the job of science is to find explanations. The explanation that has emerged is that all this diversity evolved along different lineages after, and in support of, the primacy of isogametic sex.

  18. “The demonstration, organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was part of a week of action demanding the reinstatement of two students expelled for disrupting an Israeli history course last month.”

    Reinstate the students…or what? What leverage do these overgrown toddlers have?

    Why vandalism, trespassing, physical intimidation and destruction of property doesn’t merit instant expulsion boggles the mind.

    One wonders what the so-called leaders of these institutions are afraid of….are there deep pockets behind a lot of these protests that we are not aware of?

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