Friday: Hili dialogue

April 18, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the end o’ the work week: Friday, April 18, 2025 and National Animal Crackers Day, a childhood favorite. Below: the shapes of “Barnum’s Animals” (the best) and a factory in Pennsylvania that makes 15 million crackers per day:

(From Wikipedia) Uploaded by Baseball Bugs at en.wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

It’s also Good Friday, Piñata Day, and National Velociraptor Awareness Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 18 Wikipedia page.

Posting will be light until Monday as I have a writing assignment, and my insomnia has returned big time. I’m considering someone hitting me over the head with a rubber mallet at bedtime.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT reports that the U.S. has turned down a request to join Israel in an attack on Iran (article archived here). The Times of Israel gives a similar report:

Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically.

The debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.

Israeli officials had recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites in May. They were prepared to carry them out, and at times were optimistic that the United States would sign off. The goal of the proposals, according to officials briefed on them, was to set back Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more.

Almost all of the plans would have required U.S. help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself.

For now, Mr. Trump has chosen diplomacy over military action. In his first term, he tore up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But in his second term, eager to avoid being sucked into another war in the Middle East, he has opened negotiations with Tehran, giving it a deadline of just a few months to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program.

And the JP adds how the plans were made, which can only be helpful to Iran:

Initial plans for the strike would have combined a joint Israeli-American bombing campaign with Israeli commando raids on underground nuclear sites, and included US airstrikes to protect the teams on the ground.

But such an operation would have required months of planning. Israeli and American officials, particularly Netanyahu, wanted to expedite the process. So the commando idea was shelved, and “Israeli and American officials began discussing a plan for an extensive bombing campaign.”

I’m not a fan of Trump, but he’s being extraordinarily obtuse here. The man who wrote The Art of the Deal doesn’t seem to realize that Iran won’t stop forging ahead with its weapons program, no matter what kind of deal Trump helps make. Let’s hope that if there is one, there would be strict and unannounced inspections.

*The Harvard v. Trump saga continues after Harvard refused to accede to the Administration’s demands. Now, according to the BBC, Trump & Co. is threatening to prevent foreign students from enrolling at Harvard.

The US government has threatened to ban Harvard University from enrolling foreign students – after the institution said it would not bow to demands from President Donald Trump’s administration and was hit with a funding freeze.

The White House has demanded the oldest university in the US make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices – to help fight antisemitism on campus.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has asked for records on what she called the “illegal and violent” activities of its foreign student visa-holders.

Harvard earlier said it had taken many steps to address antisemitism, and that demands were an effort to regulate the university’s “intellectual conditions”.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message on Monday to the Harvard community.

The new request from Noem said the institution would lose the “privilege of enrolling foreign students” if it did not comply with the demand for records.

Harvard said it was aware of the new request from Noem, which was made in a letter, the Reuters news agency reported.

International students make up more than 27% of Harvard’s enrolment this year. Even before Noem’s statement, billions of dollars hung in the balance for the university, after the freeze of some $2.2 bn (£1.7bn) in federal funding.

Trump has also threatened to also remove Harvard’s valuable tax exemption, the loss of which could cost Harvard millions of dollars each year. US media reports suggest the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has started drawing up plans to enact this.

Harvard has said there is “no legal basis” to remove its tax exemption, and that “such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission”.

Man, Trump really wants to go after Harvard hard. And though I know some readers thinks the school deserves it, I’m not sure that, for example, the University of Chicago hasn’t behaved even worse, at least with respect to the climate of anti-Semitism. Perhaps this is some kind of Trumpian crusade against elitism.

*Re the Supreme Court victory for the biological sex people: an op-ed by Alex Massie in the Times of London, “The hateful and bigoted bag ladies have been proved right on sex.”

Single-sex spaces, many of which exist for very good and very obvious reasons, were threatened by this gender woo-woo and public bodies, such as the NHS and the prison service, were captured by magical thinking of the most absurd kind. Far from “being kind” this was simply “being stupid”.

Now the women — for it was almost always women — who insisted that facts are indeed stubborn chiels that winna ding have prevailed. There are plenty of politicians at Holyrood, and Westminster, who owe them an apology. Of course I don’t actually expect Nicola Sturgeon or Humza Yousaf or John Swinney or Patrick Harvie or Alex Cole-Hamilton or Anas Sarwar to apologise for their part in this ludicrous saga but if they were bigger people they actually might.

All of these politicians insisted that words should be stripped of their customary meaning. All of them lied to the public when asserting that the Scottish government’s gender recognition reform bill was a merely administrative matter. All of them were mistaken when they argued that people can literally change sex. All of them are guilty.

Still, we should also acknowledge that the list of the culpable is by no means confined to Scotland. Ostensibly sensible and serious people all across the realm made fools of themselves on this issue. Figures such as Sir Keir Starmer and Harriet Harman and Penny Mordaunt and Maria Miller might now do well to spend some time with their consciences, examining their own past statements and their previous adherence to the metaphysical notion of “gender identity”.

Although a number of parliamentarians, most of them women of course, can look back on this episode and claim vindication, the chief mobilisation of opposition came from outside parliament. So a word, too, for the women of For Women Scotland, Sex Matters, Scottish Lesbians, the LGB Alliance and the policy collective Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, who have done the vast majority of the heavy lifting on this matter.

And a related piece by Richard Dawkins in The Spectator, “Will the Supreme Court gender case victors get the apologies they deserve?” (archived here)

So let us not name and shame. I shall call out no specific names in accusation. But I think apologies are called for, and there may be some out there who are big enough, gracious enough, to come forward.

Were you one of those students who mercilessly hounded Kathleen Stock out of the University of Sussex? Now would be a good time to say sorry. Were you one of those who threatened the life of JK Rowling? Or who threatened someone less able to look after herself than that redoubtable hero of our times? Were you one of those actors who owe your moment of fame entirely to her writing, who turned on her in your sheep-like devotion to a passing fad? Or were you one of those Hollywood airheads who bent to the prevailing political wind? Well, it isn’t prevailing any more, but mightn’t it have been a good idea to think the matter through in the first place, before joining the Gadarene stampede? In any case, a gracious apology wouldn’t come amiss.

Newspaper editors who printed reports of a “woman” committing rape “with her penis” should now apologise for their cowardly debauching of language. So should senior publishers who bowed to pressure to suppress books deemed “transphobic” by callow junior colleagues. By the way, if ever you are puzzled when an otherwise sensible friend starts spouting uncharacteristic nonsense on the subject of “gender”, your first recourse should be, “Cherchez les enfants”.

Those men of mediocre athletic ability who have waltzed into women’s events and effortlessly carried off their medals and plaudits, can be absolved of cheating only if they plead inability to understand the unfairness of their advantage. Those sports-body officials who enabled them should apologise to the women deprived of rightful medals, medals which should now be stripped from the men who unfairly gained them. Rather than respecting the subjective “gender” of the usurper, we should instead sympathise with the women overpowered by “her” objective sex, “her” upper body strength, long boxing reach, or sheer domineering height.

Are you one of those doctors who abetted angst-beset children, prescribing hormones whose unnatural and irreversible effects warrant the label “poison”? Or worse, are you a surgeon who violated the first Hippocratic principle by cutting off the breasts of a girl (or the testes of a boy) too young to be entrusted with drastic, irrevocably life-changing decisions? Admittedly, a public apology from you could lay you open to a well-deserved malpractice suit, but may you in any case be long pursued by remorse.

An especially magnanimous feat of forgiveness is required for those on the political left who betrayed their enlightenment heritage. . . .

Well, I expect no apologies. The gender ideologues (now including the Freedom from Religion Foundation) will never apologize for saying things like “a transwoman is a woman”, for they will not surrender their faux-biological views simply because a court opposed them.  Richard and Alex Massie have their sympathies in the right place, but they are calling for something that will simply never happen.

*Yet another pro-Palestinian college student at Columbia has been snatched up by the administration, but a judge intervened to block the student from being transferred to Louisiana.

Mohsen Mahdawi, an organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year at Columbia University, was detained by immigration officials on Monday after arriving for an appointment in Vermont that he thought was a step toward becoming a U.S. citizen, his lawyers said.

Hours later, Mr. Mahdawi’s mother, older sister and lawyers were scrambling to find him after his abrupt detention at an immigration center in Colchester, Vt. His lawyers requested a temporary restraining order to prevent federal officials from transferring him to a more conservative jurisdiction — a tactic used in the detention and attempted deportation of at least four other college demonstrators.

A Vermont federal judge, William K. Sessions III, swiftly granted that request, ordering that Mr. Mahdawi, an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, not be removed from the United States or transferred out of Vermont until he orders otherwise. His lawyers said that as of Monday afternoon, they had confirmed that he was still in Vermont.

“This is their M.O.,” Mr. Mahdawi’s lawyer, Luna Droubi, said. “They just continue to hide the individual to the point where their attorneys can’t quite understand or identify where to file. And so, you know, we’re operating blind, and they have all the information, and yet we’re tasked with attempting to file in the right jurisdiction.”

A green card holder for the past 10 years, Mr. Mahdawi is the latest Palestinian student to be caught in the Trump administration dragnet that has been targeting foreign students involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on U.S. college campuses.

Mr. Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 2014, according to a petition filed by his lawyers on Monday demanding his immediate release. His arrest was first reported by The Intercept.

I think it’s probably too late for the government to send him south, but since when has Trump obeyed judge’s orders that he didn’t like. At some point this will reach the Supreme Court, and then we’ll see. As always, I think there has to be a judicial hearing–or a decision of the Supreme Court–before the government can do things like this. Perhaps I don’t know the law, but my feelings are based on what I see as American values as well as ethics.

*And there’s good news tonight! Hamas is running out of money to pay its terrorists.

Hamas is facing a new problem in Gaza: coming up with the cash it needs to pay its rank and file.

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

In recent weeks, the Israeli military has said it killed a money changer who was key to what it called terrorist financing for Hamas as well as a number of top political officials in rapid succession.

The result for Hamas has been a debilitating squeeze.

Salary payments to many Gaza government employees have ceased, while many senior Hamas fighters and political staff began receiving only about half of their pay midway through last month’s Ramadan holy period, the intelligence officials said. Rank-and-file Hamas fighters’ pay had been averaging around $200 to $300 a month, they said.

. . .The shortfalls are creating hardship across Hamas’s ranks in Gaza’s cash economy and signal a deepening organizational dysfunction in the militant group as it also contends with a more aggressive Israeli military strategy.

“Even if they sit on large amounts of cash, their ability to distribute it would be very limited right now,” said Eyal Ofer, an open-source researcher on Gaza’s economy. Ofer said Hamas’s typical payment methods were to have a courier carry cash or to set up a disbursement point, either of which could create targets for Israeli troops. “Those two things would grab attention,” he said.

Hamas didn’t respond to a request for comment on its financial position or its methods for sourcing cash.

I’m happy to hear this, even though the WSJ reports that Hamas has a cool $500 million stashed away, contributed by, among others, the UK and Qatat. Apparently most of the money is languishing somewhere in Egypt.  There will never be peace in the Middle East until the organization is gone: defunct, singing in the choir invisible, and an ex-Hamas.

*Oh, and Real Clear Science has featured my post on this site about three scientists who were afraid to submit a paper on evolution to a journal out of fear of deportation, and an unreasonable fear that evolution was denigrated by the present administration. So there! (CAUTION: do not say a word in denigration; I’ve heard enough about that post.)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili proclaims a self-aggrandizing law (i’ve made the photo my new Twitter/X picture):

Hili: I discovered a new law.
A: What law?
Hili: When I stare at you for a long time you start to understand that I want something from you.
In Polish:
Hili: Odkryłam nowe prawo.
Ja: Jakie?
Hili: Kiedy długo na ciebie patrzę zaczynasz się domyślać, że czegoś od ciebie chcę.

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

From the Grammar Police:

From Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day:

Masih is stil quiet, so here’s some celebration of yesterday’s decision in the Scottish Supreme Court:

JKR is wickedly funny:

From Cate; a ducks-in-the-snow video:

From Luana. All it takes is some Googling:

From Malcolm; a “flying kitten.” Note how it twists its body around just like a big cat so it can land on its feet:

From the Auschwitz Memorial; one that I reposted:

A Romanian Jewish boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was five.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-18T10:24:28.124Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Find the spider! I won’t give you the obvious hint, but isn’t the mimicry great? I reposted a link I got from Matthew:

Isn't this mimicry great? It's likely that the ants evolved this pattern to avoid being eaten by predators that find ants distasteful: since ants have terrible vision and do recognition based largely on "smell."

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T18:10:47.479Z

Ducklings at Cambridge University!  Matthew is sending a daughter to go see them:

Special delivery in the North Courtyard! 🦆#Cambridge #CambridgeUniversity #Ducklings #CambridgeUniversityLibrary

— Cambridge University Library (@theul.bsky.social) 2025-04-17T12:29:34.495Z

53 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (18 Apr 1857-1938)

  3. Re. “Rape did not exist prior to …”
    I wonder,
    (1) where does one get such a loony idea from?
    (2) how widespread might this belief be?
    So many questions …

    1. When you start with the “Noble Savage” there is no telling where you may end up.

      1. Yes, I suppose so. Start with that and never read anything about any anything, ever …

    2. If it is serious I’ll bet it was written by a Gen Z, a youngster.
      I’ve been amazed by two things about this new human breed:

      They’re more respectful of their elders than we (Gen X and Boomers) were to ours.
      They have some REALLY messed up ignorant ideas about history. A near majority believe slavery was invented by white men! Other examples close to my heart are strongest sympathy for Palestine and terrorism, ignorance of any 3rd world sins, and love of the ol’ Noble Savage belief – all more intense with today’s youth.

      Now if they’d only get off my damn lawn!

      D.A.
      NYC (55 years old)

      1. I first heard this decades ago when “Donahue” or one of those shows did an episode on porn. Someone asked about the effect of children watching porn. One actress, Hyapatia Lee, who claims Cherokee heritage, said that Native children watched their parents having sex and turned out fine. “Do you think there was one big tipi for the parents and a separate one for each child? And rape was unknown before the arrival of whites.” Of course, no one questioned her, even to ask “How could you possibly know that?”

  5. From Richard Hanania-right winger turned centrist by Trump’s insanity:

    “Kevin Hall, the NIH scientist who just left, says that he was going to talk to the NYT about a study showing that highly processed foods weren’t addictive in the same way as drugs, but HHS was hesitant to allow it because the finding contradicted RFK’s views. HHS then rewrote his answers to the NYT questions to downplay his results, inserting fake information about the study. Science now has to be consistent with the views of the nation’s most prominent crank”

    Also from Hanania (via Eric Reinhart):

    https://x.com/_Eric_Reinhart/status/1912958244768690407/photo/1

    The Trump administration is a huge danger to science.

  6. Good news about Hamas’ financial problems. I recall that the demise of the elaborate $MM greenhouse that Israel left behind for Palestinians (that I first became aware of h/t to Malgorzata) was because they stopped paying the guards, so maybe history will repeat.

    Semi-relatedly, the economic chaos that has resulted in falling crude oil prices is apparently causing similar problems for P*tin.

    And when did WordPress change (at least the color of) our avitars or whatever they’re called?

    1. Ah! I was wondering about that, too!
      Was concerned that I missed the memo that “all the Kool Kids” were changing their logos/look on Friday. Or something like that.

    2. Firstly, Bibi sent Mossad into Gaza with suitcases of cash when funds dried up– all in order to subvert more moderate factions, such as the PLO. No sugar, chocolate, cookies or potatoes, however Qatari funds are acceptable.

      They left them a greenhouse? Too bad they have been illegally blockaded and deprived of civil rights for 17 years.

      No control over exports/imports,
      No access to offshore fisheries or gaza marine,
      No control over potable water sources/electrcity,
      No freedom of movement,
      No military
      No control over airspace,
      No sovereignty.

      They are bombed regularly (see Operation Cast Lead in 2008). The current campaign in Gaza will likely result in over 100k civilian casualties (estimates provided by Doctors on the ground like Mark Perlmutter)

      1. Every single one of your assertions is grossly misleading. For example, Gaza was made sovereign in 2005 but lost a lot of its privileges because it started firing rockets into Israel. Of the estimated 50,000 casualties (how does Mark Perlmutter know what they will be), the IDF estimates that half are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (a lot higher percentage than, say, German soldiers killed compared to German civilian killed). Even according to Hamas, 72% of the casualties are men of fighting age, who comprise only a third of Gaza’s inhabitants. No military? What is Hamas? Palestine has been offered its own state five times at least, and that is sovereignty, but they have rejected it every time. If they accepted it and didn’t have the real aim of destroying Israel, fomenting terrorism, and firing rockets into Israel, all the things you say don’t exist WOULD exist.

        I don’t know if your arrant ignorance is deliberate or you simply don’t know the history of this area, but you are not allowed to spread historical distortions on this site that comport with your ideology. I could go on and on, but I’ll just say this and tell you that you’re an ignorant and purveying distortions. Obtuseness is againt the Roolz.

        1. Thing is, even if what Neal Lynx said was literally true, Israel would still be justified in doing what it does now. When one’s neighbour is trying every day to kill you and can’t be talked out of it, there is no obligation to observe all the niceties of neighbourliness like respecting his airspace and letting him import the means to kill you while he wanders freely through your house helping himself to your electricity and drinking water when he is too dysfunctional to supply his own. This is especially true when there is no police force that will lift a finger to make him stop. Israel is on its own.

          The people and countries who criticize Israel for doing what they think it is doing don’t care if what they say is true or not. I can’t see them changing their minds on facts. Which of course matter. But only partly.

      2. The problem of the Palestinians is that they can’t make up their mind whether they want to live peacefully in their own state bordering the state of Israel or whether they want to destroy Israel and expel all the Jews from the area. Everything follows from that inability to make up their collective mind (in a manner of speaking; I know there is no collective mind).

        Palestinians insist that they have a right of return to the area in which their ancestors lived in 1945. This is nonsense. You start a war, and you lose it, as a consequence you often lose territory. (Arabs have started several wars against Israel since 1948.) There is no right of return.

        Take Germany. It lost both world wars. After World War I, Germany lost 10% of its territory. Wanting to get this territory back, Germany started another war (even without Hitler, there would have been another war). As a result of losing this war as well, Germany lost another 20% of its territory. Since 1945, Germans simply accepted that they could not get the lost territories back (while they had waged three wars against their neighbors in the period 1870 and 1945, the first war being against France in 1870/71). Instead of preparing for another war, Germans focused on rebuilding their economy and society. And lo and behold, Germany, not having waged a war for 80 years, is today one of the top 30 countries in the world with respect to the quality of life of its citizens (consult the World Happiness Report).

        If Palestinians were smart they would do like the Germans did after WWII. But they are simply not that intelligent. And why is that? Religious fundamentalism is the answer.

        There’s a book by the Dutch sociologist Ruud Koopmans (Director of the Research Department Migration, Integration, Transnationalization at the Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, German), entitled, in German:
        Das verfallene Haus des Islam: Die religiösen Ursachen von Unfreiheit, Stagnation und Gewalt. 2020
        In English: The Dilapidated House of Islam: The Religious Causes of Unfreedom, Stagnation, and Violence
        https://www.amazon.com/Das-verfallene-Haus-des-Islam/dp/3406749240/

        Unfortunately, this book is only available in Dutch (2019), Danish (2020) and German (2020). (I really wonder why it has not been translated into English.)

        1. There are no Germans living in the lost territories either: those surviving the war were all kicked out.

          1. From Google AI: “While technically part of France, Alsace has a complex history with significant German influence, and many people in the region are of German descent or speak German dialects like Alsatian. There’s a strong cultural connection to Germany, particularly in the region’s history and traditions”.

      3. No disrespect Mr. Lynx but you screwed the pooch on every single one of your statements of fact. Quite the royal flush!
        D.A.
        NYC

    3. Hempenstein:
      I think the greenhouse story is: The ethnically cleansed by their own gvt Jews in 2005 left the greenhouses which the locals immediately destroyed.

      Later… western aid paid for the Pals to build new ones.(That’d be our taxes).

      Amazing they had any money left over to do so what with all the concrete for tunnels and missile money.

      —————————-while on money————–
      What Trump is trying to do to our economy is utterly terrifying. I keep wondering if he is serious. Most of my career I worked on wall st though I’m not an economist for sure….but I can’t believe they’re doing this. The news media seems to downplay a lot of the deep ruin risk.

      D.A.
      NYC

      1. The WSJ has been running endless editorials against Trump’s tariffs and a few other bizarre taxes he’s proposing.

        Yesterday Trump was suggesting he might fire the head of the Federal Reserve because he declined to follow Trump’s order the interest rate. Another editorial.

  8. As usual, the focus on Harvard is a personal grudge. Early in his career, his father connected him with the Pritzker family and he went into business with them in a Hyatt hotel property. There was a dispute, he lost, and he pledged revenge against them.

    Penny Pritzker is the head of Harvard Corporation.

    1. The evidence against this claim is rather strong. The Trump administration has gone after Columbia rather hard. Beyond that, Trump took no action against Harvard when he was first elected in 2016. My guess is that Trump believes (correctly?) that if he can make Harvard capitulate, he can make any university capitulate. This is hardly a new tactic. The SFFA case went after Harvard (and UNC) for basically the same reason(s).

      1. He also has a long running grievance against Columbia University for expanding their campus in a location he didn’t approve of. He wanted them to buy his land near Lincoln Center.

        While some people look for any way to justify his actions, the sad fact is that he’s always motivated by his grievances. Sometimes people happen to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. But he doesn’t care whether it’s right or not as long as it’s gratifies his ego.

        1. Pinker mentions this. I will elaborate. For better or worse (certainly worse), Harvard is a bastion of intolerant, religious, anti-truth thinking these days. Consider two propositions, “sex is a spectrum” and “race has no biological basis”. Neither statement is evenly remotely true. However, 99% of Harvard students and faculty would affirm the “truth” of these statements, at least publicly. Like it or not, universities have become deeply irrational. It is somewhat unclear if the race nonsense or the sex nonsense is more deeply held. This academic insanity is somewhat new (perhaps not, see below). From “Sex is a Spectrum” (https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/sex-is-a-spectrum/) a comment by Spencer

          “Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised.”

          The converse point is that Harvard and other universities were deeply religious and intolerant even years ago. The famous book “The Blank Slate” was written in 2002. The Summers affair (at Harvard) is from 2006. The Pinker/Spleke debate is from 2005. It was clear then (and still is) that Spelke was/is a liar. Was she ever punished for lying? Of course, not.

          Of course, these problems are by no means limited to Harvard. Over at Yale, a talk was given on ‘The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind’. The speaker (Dr. Aruna Khilanani) explicitly fantasized about killing innocent white people and then was offended because Yale would not give her the recording. The following is from her speech.

          “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor. (Time stamp: 7:17)”

          These issues are by no means limited to elite universities. At University of Southern Maine, an instructor (Christy Hammer) dared to say that there are two sexes All but one student (21 of 22) walked out in protest. The one student later caved to the fanatics. Of course, Hammer was entirely correct.

  9. “Mr. Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 2014, according to a petition filed by his lawyers on Monday demanding his immediate release.”

    Blatant sympathy-begging from his lawyers, who are not above leveraging the absurd UNRWA definition of “refugee”, as well as the Jordanian invention of the appellation “the West Bank” to replace Judea. Not to mention using the term “refugee camp” to refer to what has simply been a typical city for most of the 77 years of its existence. Which makes Mahdawi likely the fourth generation of “refugee” from the so-called “camp”.

    So, I Googled his lawyer. I am sure that the fact that she is a member of the Arab American Bar Association & Fund, and the Muslim Bar Association of New York is not relevant to the choice of words used:

    https://www.blhny.com/attorney-bios

    But it does make me wonder how Mahdawi can afford her.

      2. Wow. That is so stark and blatant and frankly disturbing.

        Hiding in plain sight and with the approval of the media just mind blowing.

        Thank you.

  10. President Trump and his administration resort to muscular language as an opening salvo. This was the case with possible military action against Iran, and it is the case with the government’s campaign against Harvard. But when push comes to shove, the administration is choosing diplomacy with Iran instead of military action (leaving Israel in a difficult spot and possibly catching them off guard). Will the administration do the same with Harvard, and move toward some sort of negotiated settlement? It’s difficult to know with the Trump administration—unpredictability is one of it hallmarks, both good and bad. My guess is that at some point the administration will back off and declare victory. (I could be wrong because, well, Trump is unpredictable.)

    And, my maternal grandmother used to bring us grandchildren boxes of Animal Crackers when she visited each Wednesday. They were wonderful and the little boxes—with the attached string handles—were such fun. She died when I was 9 and I still miss her.

    1. Trump makes a lot of noise but as they say in French “Le chien qui veut mordre n’aboie pas” (The dog that wants to bite doesn’t bark). He proved it with North Korea. It’s better to have him as an enemy than as an ally; he’d make the best cause bad.

      Yours sincerely; may Jerry Coyne get back to sleep!

  11. “Mr. Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank”

    God DAMN it!
    They are NOT refugees and they are not camps.
    What an artful full retard lefty rape of the actual truth and facts. FFS.
    What an angry Friday. (In my defense I accidentally saw the BBC/Voice of Pal news today).

    Back to fake “Palestine” (est. 1965):

    “Even calling Palestinians “refugees” is a total misnomer. “Refugee” – in all other contexts everywhere – is a status, a legal fiction that one loses on arrival at safety/sanctuary. It certainly isn’t inherited like a title or a piano. Only in the UN, the Arab world and on idiot Western campuses are Palestinian descendants “refugees”.”

    From my article/column:
    https://democracychronicles.org/worst-houseguests-ever-the-palestinians/
    variously syndicated.

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. I read your piece, David. Yes. “Refugee camps” are nonsense. The media misuses the term to create sympathy for the Palestinians—taking advantage of the good will and inherent kindness of people in the west—and to promote anti-Zionism (=antisemitism).

    2. D.A. — Just read your persuasive article. By the way, in a previous post you addressed me as: Mr. Normal and I appreciated that. (why a ‘nym? reasons though they may be weak). Just think of Situation and Normal as my pronouns. (and sorry it’s not likely that someday we might sit by the creek, on acid).

  12. Looking at things through the lens of no-free-will, I can’t but help find a call for apologies a bit of a non sequitur.

  13. Thanks for the archived Richard Dawkins link — elegantly written. There are some other tempting links in this thread (above).

  14. Historical note: Paul Revere’s ride was April 18, 1775; tonight will be the 250th anniversary.

    2. “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?
      Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.” — Harrington.

      Well, certainly not at a Fourth of July picnic, anyway.

      Just kidding. You guys done good.

    3. But I read that hardly anyone now alive remembers that famous day and year….

  15. A little bit about the latest terrorist pet of the media:
    “If you have fallen for the PR blitz surrounding Mohsen Mahdawi” see thread:
    https://x.com/mishtal/status/1913184390877790477

    David Collier is a respected UK investigative journalist.

    I only took one class on journalism in college. If I were to teach that class I’d use the tweet chain above as a lesson in media awareness.

    D.A.
    NYC

  16. Re: The sign about electricians:

    I get that it’s spelled very badly. But why are the electricians forbidden to sing? Is “sing” a misspelled version of something else? Not sign, surely? And if not, then what?

  17. On Harvard and foreign students, I suspect enrollment may fall even without the administration banning them. The news about backpackers and professors and tourists being detained at the border, sometimes for weeks, has been widely reported outside the US. So have the snatching of grad students off the street, the revocations of hundreds of visas, Rubio’s instructions to search foreigners’ social media for wrongthink, and the Garcia case.

    It would be a brave overseas student who risked applying to a US university while all that is going on.

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