Welcome to Oct. 31, 2025; it’s a Friday, which is good because it’s also Halloween, so American children will be roaming the streets tonight schnorring for candy. The first reader who sends me a photo of their cat with a Halloween them (and a few words about the moggy) will have their cat featured below:
YOUR CAT COULD BE HERE
It’s also Carve a Pumpkin Day, National Breadstick Day, National Candy Apple Day, National Caramel Apple Day (watch those fillings!), National Magic Day, and World Lemur Day. Here’s a picture I took of a ring-tailed lemur and baby (Lemur catta) at the Duke Lemur Center in 2006.
The Google Doodle today is a Pac-Man game you can play. Click on screenshot to do so:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 31 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*In a joint NYT op-ed discussion called “There are so many ways to shut down a country” (archived here), writers Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens debate the meaning of Mamdani’s inevitable victory as mayor of NYT:
Frank Bruni: Greetings, Bret. I’m especially eager to hear your thoughts this week because this is our last conversation before Tuesday’s elections, the results of which will be read like rune stones. We’ll see in them the fortunes of President Trump and of the Democratic Party in — and beyond — the 2026 midterms. What do you think these contests will (or won’t) reliably tell us? And while we can’t know who’ll win, which of the races do you find especially significant?
Bret Stephens: Hi, Frank. My concern is that a blowout victory for Zohran Mamdani in New York’s mayoral race and tight governors’s races, or even a loss, for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey will send a misleading signal that voters want more progressive Democrats, not more moderate ones. And I think that’s the worst possible lesson if Democrats want to take back Congress and win nationally.
Frank: I don’t worry too much that a Mamdani victory in the city — which is its own political ecosphere and the very antonym of a national bellwether — will be seen for very long as an instruction manual for the Democratic Party writ large. Whether Mamdani is dangerous baggagefor the party, in terms of being a convenient foil for President Trump, is another matter.
Bret: We’ll get to that in a minute. Go on …
Frank: But in terms of election postmortems, it’s the New Jersey results that I think will resonate most profoundly. Jersey isn’t purple; it’s light blue. If Sherrill loses to or only squeaks past Jack Ciattarelli — a Republican who, in his third bid for the job, is aligning himself with President Trump and the MAGA movement as never before — Democrats will have great reason to sweat, but not about whether they need more progressive candidates. About the fact that after the madness and melodrama of Trump’s presidency so far, association with him isn’t toxic to swing voters, which means that campaigning against him won’t be nearly enough in 2026.
Bret: You’re right that it isn’t enough for Democrats to be the un- and anti-Trumps; that was probably the biggest lesson of the Kamala Harris disaster last year. Where I think you’re mistaken is that a Mamdani win, which, as I’ve written before, I think will be terrible for New York on its own terms, will also scramble Democratic brains. The argument will be that Democrats win big when they move to the left and generate fresh enthusiasm among young voters and minorities, but lose, or struggle, when they choose moderates who appeal to the center. And, as the late, great John McLaughlin might have said: WRONG! Republicans will have a field day in the midterms if they can run against the “Mamdani Democrats.”
Stephens is a no-Trumper conservative, but I think he’s right about a Mamdani victory, though I know squat about what’s happening in New Jersey. Right now a lot of information is emerging about Mamdani’s associations with terrorist sympathizers or other Islamists (see here, and here, and here, for example, though you won’t find this stuff in the NYT). He also founded a chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin College, and SJP is, to me, an Islamist and somewhat antisemitic organization (this is based on my experience here and what I hear from other schools). So far the Democrats are not de-wokeifying themselves, but rather doubling down, and it worries me. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. But I’m glad I don’t live in New York City!
*A poll reported in the WaPo (archived here) shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House to build a superfluous 1000-seat ballroom.
Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make way for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom building by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Thursday.
Twenty-eight percent of Americans say they support the demolition project, paid for by $300 million in private donations from U.S. businesses and individuals, compared with 56 percent who oppose it, the poll finds. Another 16 percent are not sure whether they support or oppose the project.
The findings echo other recent surveys, including an Economist-YouGov poll conducted from Oct. 24 to Oct. 27 that found 25 percent of Americans supported the project and 61 percent were opposed.
The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll also finds partisan splits in how Americans perceive the project, with nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and roughly 6 in 10 independents opposing it, compared with about 2 in 10 Republicans. However, Democrats feel more intensely about the issue than Republicans. Some 78 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of independents strongly oppose the project, compared with 35 percent of Republicans who strongly support it.
“People are loving it,” the president said in remarks in Tokyo on Tuesday, citing an editorial in The Washington Post and an op-ed in the New York Times that supported his project. (The Washington Post’s editorial page is independent from the newsroom.)
Well “people” doesn’t mean “The American people” but his people, also known as “toadies”. Look, this should not be a partison issue. Trump, who will be gone in about three years, is removing a historic wing of the White House. And yes, he has the power to do it, but that doesn’t mean he should do it, for the People’s House doesn’t need a thousand-person ballroom. It’s partly my house, too, and I don’t like it a bit. But Republicans do; here’s the NYT breakdown of the Ballroom Approval Issue by party. As with all issues, there’s a sharp split between right and left, but Independents don’t like it, either.
Here: look at this video showing what Trump has done:
Douthat’s main thesis is as follows:
“…that faith in its traditional form could accurately describe reality, that the God of the old-time sort of religion – supernaturalist and scriptural religion, angels-and-miracles religion, Jesus-was-resurrected religion – might actually exist, that religious belief might be not only socially or psychologically desirable but also an entirely reasonable perspective on the nature of reality and the destiny of humankind” (my emphasis).
Me being kind (and reasonable), I can absolutely grant that religion serves many positive functions in society (and many negative), and many people who believe and practice experience social and psychological benefits. That religion is “an entirely reasonable perspective on the nature of reality”? Absolutely not. And this book did nothing to provide evidence of that aside from baseless assertions and rhetoric. And many of the assertions and lines of reasoning brought in other implicit claims that I presume would see weird even to many religious people.
This review is longer than a typical one of mine, but it won’t address all the points in the book and I’m not going to dismantle each point with the scientific evidence (go read Jerry Coyne’s books Why Evolution is True and Faith vs. Fact for that). But I’ll point out some of the wilder things that stood out to me in Douthat’s argument for creation. I also won’t spend any time on the personal or social benefits because I largely think that if it makes you happy then that’s great, and there is evidence to that effect. But you mostly can’t get those benefits unless you also believe in the “reality” or “facts” of whatever religion you chose, and I still don’t understand how one can legitimately believe in that “perspective on reality” having had any legitimate science education.
I appreciate the shoutout, but if you want confirmation that religious people really do believe in the “factness” of their faith’s truth claims, read the philosophy paper I wrote with Maarten Boudry. A bit more from Simovski:
The arguments all generally fall into two camps: the scientific evidence is actually evidence for God, with the latter being more parsimonious than any physics or biology theory you could think of; and “we just don’t know, so therefore God!” It’s utterly unconvincing and unoriginal. At least science has humility.
Then, when discussing how the mysteries of consciousness bolster his argument for the divine and supernatural, he uses the classic “we can’t just be an ape!” which shows a lack of scientific knowledge more than anything else.
The book is probably frustrating to anyone with a general science degree and especially to those who have studied biology and physics. I want to be clear that I think the “argument for religion” is actually two separate arguments. Do you believe in a literal God that created the universe in some sense, and do you derive benefits from being religious? I think the latter depends a lot of the former, but I think most religious people don’t really care to think too hard about the former because they never studied the science deeply enough to care, and therefore, there is little internal cognitive conflict.
If you can’t accept the factual claims of a faith (in Douthat’s case, that Jesus was the son of God and was crucified and resurrected, giving us a route to salvation), then you can hardly call yourself a member of that faith. And, as the late Steven Weinberg said, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do eveil; but for good people to do eveik—that takes religion.” Finally, how can a set of propositions make you feel good if you don’t fully embrace them?
Kudos to Dr. Simovski!
*French police have arrested five more people (curren total: 7) in the Louvre jewel heist, but the jewels haven’t been recovered.
The French police have arrested five more people in connection with the spectacular jewel theft at the Louvre, including one who is believed to have been among the thieves at the scene, the prosecutor overseeing the investigation said on Thursday.
The DNA of one suspect connected him to the crime, Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said in an interview with RTL, a French radio station. The other four “are people who may potentially inform us about the unfolding of these events,” she said.
The arrests were made on Wednesday evening in operations across the Paris region. But the jewelry has not been recovered, Ms. Beccuau said.
Two thieves broke into the Louvre Museum more than a week ago, using disc grinders to cut through a window to the second-floor Apollo Gallery. They stole some of France’s crown jewels that were worth more than $100 million before escaping on high-powered motor scooters driven by two accomplices.
Two other suspects were arrested four days ago, including one at the Charles de Gaulle airport as he was trying to fly to Algeria. The two men have been charged with theft by an organized gang and with criminal conspiracy. They are accused of riding a truck-mounted electric ladder that was used to reach the gallery’s balcony from a road outside and cutting into the display cases inside before escaping on the scooters.
Ms. Beccuau said investigators, who number about 100, used various techniques to track the thieves. The thieves escaped less than a minute before police and security agents arrived on the scene.
“Everything obviously begins with the DNA traces, the fingerprints, everything that can be found at the scene,” she said. “Then, we have everything related to video surveillance, and then we have their phones, and then we have the discovery of other objects during the searches, and, brick by brick, the investigation is being built and tightening around those who may be involved.”
Given that they had their phones and DNA evidence, this became much easier. Still, it’s really hard to get away with this kind of crime these days, given cameras and the armamentarium of scientifically-based forensics. Still, I doubt whether those jewels will ever show up again.
*Harvard University has issued a report about excessive grade inflation, and what do you think? The students are up in arms. And some are even weeping! From The Crimson:
Harvard students pushed back forcefully against a new University report condemning grade inflation, arguing that it misrepresented their academic experience and would add pressure to an already demanding campus environment.
The 25-page report, released Monday by the Office of Undergraduate Education, suggested that Harvard’s grading system had become so lenient that it no longer meaningfully distinguished between students. It warned that current practices were “failing to perform the key functions of grading” and were “damaging the academic culture of the College.”
But in interviews with The Crimson, more than 20 students said the report missed the complexity of academic life at Harvard. Many objected to its suggestion that students were not spending enough time on coursework and warned that stricter grading could heighten stress without improving learning.
Sophie Chumburidze ’29 said the report felt dismissive of students’ hard work and academic struggles.
“The whole entire day, I was crying,” she said. “I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”
“It just felt soul-crushing,” she added.
The report called on Harvard affiliates to work with officials to “re-center academics” and devote time towards tougher and more strictly graded courses. But many students said the push felt misguided, warning that tougher grading, without attendant changes in academic quality, would shift their focus from learning to chasing grades.
Kayta A. Aronson ’29 said stricter standards could take a serious toll on students’ mental health.
“It makes me rethink my decision to come to the school,” she said. “I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school. I was looking forward to being fulfilled by my studies now, rather than being killed by them.”
The most incredible part of this report might be when Harvard acknowledges that its pedagogical crisis is partly due to coddling underprepared students:’
. . . .But several students said their involvements outside of the classroom were integral to Harvard’s identity.
“What makes a Harvard student a Harvard student is their engagement in extracurriculars,” Peyton White ’29 said. “Now we have to throw that all away and pursue just academics. I believe that attacks the very notion of what Harvard is.”
A tweet that explains some of the grade inflation (h/t Luana)
“For the past decade or so, the College has been exhorting faculty to remember that some students arrive less prepared for… https://t.co/8JR1h0zz0l pic.twitter.com/MsRG9cktmq
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) October 27, 2025
I’ve never heard such a diverse litany of kvetching from students, involving extracurriculars, having to do actual work (I know; I went there, though as a Ph.D. student, but I did teach undergrads), and sobbing on a bed because you got a “B”. The media GPA at harvard is 3.8 this year, with 4 being the top grade (an “A”). Cry me a river, you entitled gits, and get your butt to the Widener!
*As I briefly posted earlier, Toronto beat the Dodgers in game 5, and are one game away from a World Series championship. There’s a break today, and the finish, whoever wins, will take place in Toronto. Go Dodgers!
As the 2025 World Series heads back to Canada for Friday’s Game 6, the Toronto Blue Jays need just one more victory to win the Fall Classic.
Behind back-to-back home runs by Davis Schneider and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to lead off the game — the first time that has happened in World Series history — and a masterful pitching performance by record-setting rookie Trey Yesavage, they drubbed the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 5 to take a 3-2 series lead.
Yesavage started the season not just in the minor leagues, but pitching in the A leagues (there are AA, AAA, and High-A leagues above that, with the major leagues topping them all), and yet he still wound up pitching 7 great innings in the last game. It’s America, baby, and big talent rises quickly! He’ll get a fat contract next season.
Here’s a video of Wednesday’s game highlights. It may be all over tonight, though I’m rooting for the Dodgers.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili continues to hate on Kulka:
Hili: Kulka has drank all the water again.
Me: Some accusations carry a hint of prejudice.
In Polish:
Hili: Kulka znowu wypiła całą wodę.
Ja: Niektóre oskarżenia noszą znamiona uprzedzeń.
*******************
From CinEmma:
From Cats Are Assholes:
From The Absurd Sign Project Uncensored 2:
I knew Masih would post a tweet of elation today, and so she did. Good for her!
Justice is beautiful ✌️🌻
They wanted to see me on the porch of my Brooklyn home, covered in blood.
I wore red instead to face my would-be assassin and to celebrate life, justice, and freedom.
The Russian mobsters hired by Iranian regime sent to kill me on US soil were… pic.twitter.com/xffWgwQAoT— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 29, 2025
From Luana. And there’s a residuum of these origins in the language and intonation:
People from different regions of the British Isles settled different regions of the U.S. These groups had deep geno-cultural differences that are still noticeable today. Appalachia and New England are deeply different, in a way mirroring the differences that were present in… pic.twitter.com/zDdJ4BK9WL
— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) October 28, 2025
From Rowling, with her usual funny snark. For more info on the cover, go here.
I grew up in an era when mainstream women’s magazines told girls they needed to be thinner and prettier.
Now mainstream women’s magazines tell girls that men are better women than they are. pic.twitter.com/ybEFr8XdSv
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 30, 2025
From Simon. Let nobody say that Larry the Cat is self-denigrating!
Wishing all my friends in the United States a happy National Cat Day. We don’t have a National Cat Day in the UK, just a National Cat. Me.
(Pic @PjrFoto) pic.twitter.com/5Hlf5OI2tV— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) October 29, 2025
From Malcolm; kitty gets a post-spa treat:
Kitty spa day
[📹 Dindin]https://t.co/hQ0K6ylZUf
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 16, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This eight-year-old Austrial Jewish boy was gassed, together with a bunch of other boys from a children’s home, as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. https://t.co/tZU5Svfn2w
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) October 31, 2025
And two posts from Dr. Cobb. This seems a bit unethical since Church founded the company (Colossal Biosciences) that Lamm works for. I can’t wait to see those Woolly Mammoths!
🧪 I see Ben Lamm of Colossal is in Time as a "2025 World’s Most Influential Rising Stars, Innovator class" with a profile written by… George Church.Amongst other things, it says: "Ben has faced technical hurdles and skeptics with respect and humor."🤔time.com/collections/…
— Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes (@lemoustier.bsky.social) 2025-10-30T10:58:13.362Z
And since the furin cleavage site was supposed to be hard evidence for human genetic engineering of the Covid virus, this new finding that such sites can occur naturally adds credibility to the alternative “wet market” hypothesis:
That would have been big news a few years ago, unfortunately the great science that gives important understanding in coronaviruses is now back to the small circle of scientists. Anyway: A fully functional furin cleavage site in a bat betacorarnavirus! Congrats to the authors!
— Isabella Eckerle (@eckerleisabella.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T21:56:08.064Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed. -Natalie Clifford Barney, poet, playwright, and novelist (31 Oct 1876-1972)
Hi Jerry:
I went to read the article by you and Boudry, but it’s $56 for the article, or $759 (!) for the entire issue. A bit out of my price range…
I’ll send it to you assuming your correct email is given with your comment.
Got it. Thanks!
Here’s an interview with Philipp Markolin, author of Lab Leak Fever from the Decoding the Gurus podcast:
He makes the point that while the lab leak conspiracy is stuck with the same points, science marches on and uncovers more and more evidence, as shown by the paper mentioned above.
Great to see this. And I object to the text paragraph characterization above of the “wet market” as alternative hypothesis. For Ceiling Cat’s sake, the wet market zoonotic spillover is the null hypothesis, and the lab leak speculation an alternative … at best.
Exactly. I can’t say that the zoonotic spillover scenario is a fact, but known facts align with it, while lab leak is all b.s. innuendo.
When this was heavily discussed here some months ago, someone appeared in the thread citing this unpublished ms (of course unpublished), from behind a paywall, claiming a Bayesian model that heavily favors lab leak. But such modeling is only as good as the data put into it.
I was that “someone”. The paper was published: that is why it is available online, albeit behind a paywall. Perhaps you should not disparage the data quoted until you have read it.
Thanks for posting this. To think clearly about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 it is important to learn about the ecology and biology of coronaviruses and the practices that result in zoonotic spillovers. This has been discussed in some detail on TWiV (MicrobeTV) and in the papers discussed there, as well as the reference therein.
There’s also a broad and deep literature around other coronaviruses that are infect dogs, cats, livestock and the interface with wildlife, all relevant to the spillover question. Furin cleavage sites have previously been reported in naturally circulating coronaviruses, for example. The functions, activities, structural relationships of the RNA-depended RNA polymerase complexes and the RNA templates that result in the remarkable rates of recombination in this class of viruses are particularly interesting to me.
The WP editorial this weekend had it right on the East Wing:
“The teardown of the White House’s East Wing this week is a Rorschach test. . . . Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties. . . . The next Democratic president will be happy to have this.”
But if mosquitoes, mud, soggy lawns, and stench-filled porta-pots are what one likes, then I guess we can continue to pay millions for tents, rentals, and lawn resodding every time we host a state dinner.
Forgive me for believing that this would barely warrant a news story if it weren’t the Donald in charge. And for those who shriek about the history being lost, I would have loved hearing from them when statues of the Founders were being vandalized and torn down.
I would like to think that anyone who gets to be president of a large nation would have the intelligence that if he wants to alter the icon of the government would ask architects to offer their plans and the public to vote on these plans. (Ofcourse with some expert guidance :))
The East Wing is hardly iconic. Most of it dates to the WW2 era; it is predominantly office space and other functional facilities—both then and now. The man did not tear down the Lincoln Bedroom.
I am not fool enough to defend how Trump bulldozes his way through life; we may long pay the consequences for the unsettled norms he leaves in his wake. What I am calling out is the unhinged and disproportionate emotional response to a building project. (None of our presidents seek voter “permission” for such things.) Most of the outrage from public figures is fake, as it often is in our politics the last decade or so. It is telling that the WP reports Democrats commenting “privately” that they agree with the need for this facility. And so the world turns.
Execute a total clusterf@ck of an evacuation from the Afghanistan war zone? Blow up “drug” boats on the open sea without a declaration of war or other concurrence of Congress? Meh. It only warrants outrage if the other guy does it. Let’s instead get all huffy because the East Wing has come down.
I have found a quote from DJT on the building of his perfect addition to the White House: “I am Trump, king of kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
I’m rolling!!! Praising that one is worth a ROOLZ penalty for excessive commenting! Shelley would love it.
My final post this morning: many of our historic icons are less than wonderful spaces. I have had the opportunity to spend some work-time in two of note: “Lincoln’s Quarters No. 1” at Fort Monroe, VA and the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), now named the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds. In the first, the single bathroom for the building, shared by men and women with the door secured by a simple hook, a tiny room with an old toilet and sink; offices that I used in the OEOB were dated with ill-fitting (though securely locked) wooden doors and creaky, worn wooden floors. That said, we all respected and passed down the incredibly important history of events associated with both buildings. I hope this doesn’t come across as cheesy, but it was an honor to work in those spaces.
Not cheesy at all, Jim.
I agree! WaPo is running MAGA editorials at the instruction of owner Jeff Bezos.
To me, no building is sacred (nothing is, actually) and it seems to me that until the Orange Toddler’s latest affront to both the office of the presidency and good taste, so did most others. I think almost every administation makes changes to the White House. The oval offfice hasn’t always been oval. The now destroyed east wing wasn’t built until 1902. Our lovely Queen Jackie had the famous White House Rose Garden installed and Harry Truman had it completely gutted; only the facade remained.
I have two – no three- problems with it;
1: From what I understand, there was no attempt at the normal process of public planning or permitting commentary. It was done as if the Orange Toddler actually owned the place. He doesn’t. He’s just a guest. It should have been done correctly.
2. It is obvious to anyone with two neurons that the donors for this monstrosity are expecting a quid pro quo, and I expect they’ll get it.
3: I’ve seen the rendering of what it will look like. What an embarassment. A laughing stock. Gaudy to a contemptible degree.
Well, it is big, but it needed to be big. It could use a little less gold leaf inside, but that is easily fixed later.
The Washington Post poll of 2500 people …
1) did they reach people in flyover America, or only their choir?
2) WaPo can frame any poll with leftish slant
3) did WaPo polling predict Donald Trump would win the presidential election with 312 electoral votes?
Dubious
The USA, leading nation of the free world … hosting state functions in tents. That’s dubious too. Build that ballroom.
I wonder if WaPo conducted a poll on the $376M project (taxpayer money) at the White House which President Obama could have halted.
It’s a Washington Post/Ipsos/ABC poll, and you can read the methodology here. I would do that before I started firing off accusations. I’m not sure what all that irrelevant stuff about ballrooms, the election, and so on. I gather you don’t like the Post, but jebus. . .
Regarding the Obama White House renovation project:
“…many social media posts omitted key context: Congress approved the funding in 2008 following a report by the administration of then-President George W. Bush, and the renovations aimed to upgrade the building’s aging infrastructure, according to the news reports.”
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/10/23/obama-white-house-renovation/
Go Jays! Go Ernie Clement for the Gold Glove!
RE Harvard College Report on grade inflation and the like: it might be a good time to pull out and refresh ourselves with our dog-eared copies of Lukianoff and Haidt’s 2018 “The Coddling of the American Mind” which seems to help us understand the bigger picture here.
Hear hear. I have students every semester who are working to pay their way while also taking a full load of classes. They are stressed, and they have good reason to be stressed. And very few will get an A.
I had never thought about it this eay before, but this grade inflation stuff seems a bit like the conflating of equal outcomes with equal opportunity in DEI. I had a roommate freshman year who was extraordinarily smart…he could spend the night playing poker and shooting pool after simply listening to a freshman chem class lecture and still know more about the lesson than I did after a full night of studying. Or if I may embarrass our host a little, who I knew as an undergrad: I could never work as hard as he did studying, but even if I did, Jerry was just smarter than I was and would always get better (or in my best efforts, the same) grades than I would. I did not feel bad, but admired and respected those who did so well as measured on a common scale. But something certainly happened after 2010 and I think that Lukianoff and Haidt got it right.
I’m sure a lot of grade inflation has to do with the “student-as-customer” model that operates at universities these days. Students (or their parents) pay a lot of money for a university degree, which is nowadays seen as a prerequisite for higher-paying jobs rather than as education as an end in itself. University administrators have largely bought into this view and actively discourage instructors from failing students.
I am not sure where I come down on the new White House Ballroom. I hate that he is doing it, and that is no doubt why I should hate this thing because I too have some TDS. I also very much dislike how it’s being funded by sources that are clearly currying favor with Trump — especially because he will likely return those favors, and the optics of that will be all icky and gross.
But we could use a large space to host Big Events at the White House, right? And once it’s done and he is a fading memory, the ballroom could become a New Normal. A place where new history is made. It will actually be useful, I think.
Re: Jonatan Pallesen on British settlers and customs in North America. I highly recommend David Hackett Fischer’s book Albion’s Seed, a detailed analysis of the way regional differences in U.S. culture still reflect centuries-old regional and class differences in British folkways.
As you say he has the power to do it. I don’t have any problem with it, but I hope he finishes the project while he is president.
There are people who reject ‘God of the gaps’ arguments but nevertheless think that the best explanation as to why this universe is intelligible (even to the limited extent that we understand it) is God. They do not consider this explanation for God’s existence as bunging a gap with God. I guess they do that by defining ‘gap’ in such a way that the intelligibility question is not a gap in the ‘God of the gaps’ sense. It’s so arbitrary that it sounds like a desperate attempt to hang on to religion while not appearing to be scientifically illiterate.
I’d bet that most of the respondent’s to the East Wing poll didn’t even know there was an East Wing until the MSM told them that they should be upset about it.
The “respondent’s” what?
Go Blue Jays!
East Wing: Besides that the thing is unimaginably gauche as depicted, the enormity of the thing will both dwarf the WH itself, and throw off the whole balance of it, or the complex if you will.
Plus, there’s the secrecy under which the operation was pulled off. It got zero review from any planning committee that I’m aware of. It’s a fait accompli now. I’m very familiar with people who pull fait accomplis, and they’re all underhanded.
But, the White House Historical Association, of which I’ve been a member for the past couple years, knew about it and documented the specs and details of the place starting in July, according to an email I got from them a few days ago (whole email available if anyone wants). So, they KNEW about it but raised not a peep of alarm. I suspect they had to sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement, just like O’Julius’ doctors @ Walter Reed.
Here’s a hilarious satiric take on the ballroom.
https://youtu.be/BbiXMQwBEaA?si=iHT7pR50cOgpMhRA
I take a little comfort from history. Gustav III of Sweden had embarked on a grand project to build a palace to rival or exceed Versailles. Construction had gotten as far as building the massive stone foundations by 1792, when it all came to a halt at a masked ball. You can look up Gustav III to find the reason.
News Flash! I just saw that the Lincoln Bedroom Bathroom has been re-done bigly to make it much more betterer! Check it out–it’s now a dignified marble with gold accents. Thank you President Trump! Of course, it’s possible that what I saw was an alternative fact. I hope not!
That is uncomfortably humorous!
Crushed by a garbage can while going down in an elevator. How often does that happen, really?
The translation is: Warning for crush risk. Dangerous to transport goods in elevators that don’t have inner doors or gates.
I can’t imagine such an elevator existing in Sweden.
Makes me think of the Shel Silverstein song, “Killed by a Coconut.”
Looks like it could be a paternoster lift (elevator).
Phyllis Chesler and a guest write about Masih:
https://phyllischesler.substack.com/p/not-without-my-principles
“….Sophie Chumburidze ’29 said the report felt dismissive of students’ hard work and academic struggles. “The whole entire day, I was crying,” she said. “I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”
Oh poor diddums. This is a piece of data supporting the “feminization” hypothesis of higher education…I can’t imagine even today’s young men a) reacting to this by sobbing and b) admitting to it in public manner.
Also, to my cynical Gen X mind, this crying behavior is infantile and manipulative. I am crying so much…see…because of the meanie things you have done…see…so you need to change things to accommodate my emotions…see. This fragility is EXACTLY what Jonathan Haidt was criticizing in his excellent book The Coddling of the American Mind.
And finally, what would a first or even second wave feminist think of this blubbering? Crying hysterically after being told some facts about grade inflation?…this seems to reinforce every old stereotype about women being overly emotional and frail.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/womens-tears-win-in-the-marketplace
Richard says this 2022 article is his most-often cited.
PCC(E): “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to. But I’m glad I don’t live in New York City!”
Beginning to agree with him there, but I DO (live here). For now…. and I really can’t leave. NYC has a “hotel California” thing to it. After living here my whole adult life, everywhere outside Manhattan seems very slow, dull and lonely. Before here I lived in Tokyo but returning there wouldn’t be easy.
Happily, even if comrade Zohran wins, MANY of his idiot promises are not within his jurisdiction. Most of them, in fact. What he CAN screw up is justice and prisons and that terrifies me.
De Blazio was terribly left, but not Jew-hating, “Third World Socialism” left.
D.A.
NYC
ps I have my city ballot right here in front of me!
Furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses — this is not new. Quick search for coronavirus furin cleavage sites brings up this open access article. There have been a number of articles before & since then, easily searchable.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.649314/full?ref=tjomlid.com
Good on the general question of recombination, open access:
https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(23)00196-8
More pointed about SARS 1 & SARS 2, open access:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00353-8
It’s worthwhile to at least consider this sort of information if one is interested in the SARS-CoV-2 origin question.
Thanks, I thought so, but didn’t have time to check earlier.
I thought grade inflation at Harvard was bad back when I was a grad student there in the 80’s, but it only seems to have inflated more since then. I spent a couple of semesters teaching Harvard undergrads in organic chemistry labs. Some general observations & anecdotes:
1. I thought they were really coddled. Case in point: they could just grab whatever glassware they needed from the stock and didn’t have to clean anything after use. Compare that to my experience in undergrad organic chem lab at U of C, where we were issued a set of glassware, had to clean it ourselves after use, and were told that we would have to pay for anything that we broke.
2. The students who told me that they wanted to make a career in chemistry were the ones who were the most incompetent in the lab (note: they were all pre-meds).
3. One student was a rower and had open blisters on his hands. Naturally he refused to wear gloves. I told him that I didn’t really care whether he wore gloves or not, but was only concerned that when he got solvent on his hands, his screams would disturb the rest of the class. He got the message.
4. Another student proudly handed me 20 grams of clean white powder from his reaction, saying he got excellent yield. The reaction couldn’t have given more than 1 gram of product. He had given me the silica gel from the chromatography column used to purify the stuff.
Don’t recall what grades were issued, but you really had to screw up to get a C. At some of my chem courses at Chicago back then, almost a third of the students were flunked.