Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Nachos originated in the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas in the United States. Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya created nachos in 1943 at the restaurant the Victory Club when Mamie Finan and a group of U.S. military officers’ wives, whose husbands were stationed at the nearby U.S. Army base Fort Duncan, traveled across the border to eat at the Victory Club. When Anaya was unable to find the cook, he went to the kitchen and spotted freshly fried pieces of corn tortillas. In a moment of culinary inspiration, Anaya cut fried tortillas into triangles, added shredded cheese, sliced pickled jalapeño peppers, quickly heated them, and served them. After tasting the snack, Finan asked what it was called. Anaya responded, “Well, I guess we can just call them Nacho’s Special.” In Spanish, “Nacho” is a common nickname for Ignacio.
They would not be good breakfast food, though (although, in you crave Mexican food for breakfast, try chilaquiles). Nachos:
Simranjeet Sidhu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Each time you dig into nachos, you’re paying tribute to this man:
Ignacio Anaya; public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s also Basketball Day, International Stout Day, and Men Make Dinner Day. For a “”, I prefer Murphy’s to Guinness, as the latter is more like a meal than a pint you can quaff in bulk. Sadly, Murphy’s is going extinct. Maybe Colossal Biosciences can resurrect it by putting Murphy genes into a Guinness egg.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 6 Wikipedia page.
Supreme Court justices on Wednesday morning expressed skepticism about the legality of aggressive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump against most of the world’s nations.
Conservative and liberal justices sharply questioned Solicitor General D. John Sauer on the Trump administration’s method for enacting the tariffs, which critics say infringes on the power of Congress to tax.
Sauer, who is defending the tariff policy as grounded in the power to regulate foreign commerce, said “these are regulatory tariffs. They are not revenue-raising tariffs.”
“The fact that they raise revenue was only incidental,” Sauer said, shortly after oral arguments in the case began.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberal members, told Sauer, “You say tariffs are not taxes, but that’s exactly what they are.”
“They’re generating money from American citizens, revenue,” Sotomayor said.
She later noted that no president other than Trump has ever used IEEPA to impose tariffs.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of six conservatives on the court, pressed Sauer on the fact that Trump had unilaterally imposed the tariffs, citing purported international emergencies of trade imbalances and the flow of fentanyl into the United States, without Congress authorizing them.
“What happens when the president simply vetoes legislation to take these powers back?” Gorsuch asked.
“So Congress as a practical matter can’t get this power back once it’s handed it over to the president,” Gorsuch said. “It’s a one way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”
Other conservatives — Chief Justice John Roberts and the justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito — also pressed Sauer.
It’s time that Trump got his tushy spanked by the Supremes, for there is no recourse if they tell him that his method of enacting tariffs was illegal. He’ll either have to find a legal way, which seems doubtful given the Justice’s points, or defy the Supreme Court, which means it’s impeachment time. (Would Congress dare impeach him again?) Further, Americans already don’t like Trump’s tariffs, defying a Court order would just make him more unpopular.
President Donald Trumpon Wednesdayblamed his party’s bruising election night losses on the government shutdown and urgedRepublicans to end the funding gridlock, displaying fresh urgency as sweeping Democratic victories portended midterm trouble for the GOP.
“We have to get the country open. And the way we’re going to do it this afternoon is to terminate the filibuster,” Trump said during a meeting with Republican senators at the White House. “We will pass legislation that you’ve never seen before, and it’ll be impossible to beat us.”
The directive marked a shift in tone for Trump, who has laid the responsibility for ending the shutdown on Democratic leaders, even as it eclipsed past records and disrupted food aid for millions of Americans. He warned the group of Republican leaders on Wednesday that if they did not move to eliminate the filibuster, a procedural rule in the Senate that essentially requires 60 votes to pass most legislation, Democrats would.
“And when they do [abolish] the filibuster, they’re going to pack the court,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has a conservative majority.
Both parties have been reluctant to eliminate the rule, which historically has served as a potent check on the majority in a chamber where the balance of power frequently shifts.
The pointed remarks come as Democrats found success in framing key contests across the country — including in New York, New Jersey and Virginia — as a rebuke of Trump’s second term and a warning to his party ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Republicans had expected a tough Tuesday across the country as polling showed increasingly negative feelings about Trump. And much of Democrats’ messaging in big-ticket campaigns focused on the Republican standard-bearer. For his part, Trump had done little to campaign in many of the marquee races. But on Wednesday, he said the government shutdown was prominent in voters’ minds. And his remarks will likely give lawmakers hope in a path to end the impasse.
I’m not sure this will make him more popular, though a slight majority of Americans blame Trump and the Republicans more than the Democrats for the shutdown. His popularity, which is all he cares about, will depend heavily on what Congress does when it resumes activity. Will it extend the healthcare subsidies? If not, Trump’s reputation will suffer more.
*I’m pretty pleased about the outcome of yesterday’s elections, but am not sure that Mamdani is a good candidate, and perhaps presages an era of intolerant progressivism that might cause problems. Heather Mac Donald agrees, and published a piece in the Spectator called “The cost of Zohran” (h/t Luana). If you want a critique of Mamdani’s program from a conservative, this is the one to read. A few quotes. First, an explication of his roots:
Mamdani fashions himself a champion of the working class. He chose not to attend New York’s most storied working-class college, the public City College of New York (then $6,330 a year), however, in favor of the private Bowdoin College, a bucolic, secluded retreat in Maine (then $59,900 a year). The centuries-old New England institution grew out of the finest ideals of America’s Founders; it boasts Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US president Franklin Pierce, Supreme Court justices, decorated Civil War generals, abolitionists and industrialists among its graduates.
Today, however, a Bowdoin education is awash with victim ideology, as documented by the National Association of Scholars in 2013, the year before Mamdani graduated. As an Africana studies major, Mamdani would have taken courses along the lines of “Race, Land and (Dis)/(Re)possession: Critical Topics in Environmental (In)justice and Subaltern Geography,” which examines how “race, gender, and class operate under racial capitalism and settler colonialism both in ‘the past’ and in ‘the contemporary.’” This is a new offering, but the high theory-based fields have been ossified since Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology burst onto the American scene in 1967. The rhetoric of 2025 is identical to that of 2014.
Had Mamdani attended college ten years later, he would probably have led chants of “globalize the intifada” from an anti-Zionist encampment on his campus quad. Instead, he did an arguably even more important thing for the pro-Palestinian cause: he founded Bowdoin’s inaugural chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). From his leadership position with SJP, the keffiyeh-wearing undergraduate tried to jumpstart a Bowdoin boycott of Israeli universities. Israeli higher education, he wrote, was “both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms.” Mamdani had well absorbed his intellectual patrimony.
Then Mac Donald discusses his program, which she divides into four major items, taking apart each one. They are rent control, free buses, free childcare for all New Yorkers, and city-run grocery stores. Here’s the beginning of one critique:
He was elected to the New York State Assembly for Queens in 2020 on the Democratic Socialists of America ticket. As a member of the State Socialists in Office bloc in Albany, he can take credit for a negligible three bills and a lot of missed Assembly votes. Next up: the New York mayoralty. Mamdani’s governing philosophy can be encapsulated in the slogans beloved of undergraduates confronting supposed injustice for the first time in human history: “People before profits!” “Fight corporate greed!” “Housing is a human right!” His campaign focused on four proposals, all inspired by the city’s alleged affordability crisis: he would freeze rents; make city buses free; offer free universal childcare; and open a government-operated grocery store in each of the city’s five boroughs.
These four proposals run the gamut from sweeping to weirdly narrow. But they all treat urban governance primarily as a means of shrinking the role of for-profit enterprise, expanding public control and redistributing wealth from its creators to the so-called poor. They may be quickly disposed of.
Proposal one: decommodify housing! Mamdani’s rent freeze would apply to nearly half of all rental units in the city: those whose rents are set by an appointed “Rent Guidelines Board,” not by the housing market. Those million or so rent-stabilized apartments make up one-third of the city’s homes, including owner-occupied homes.
Even left-wing economists have concluded that rent controls produce only housing shortages. Yet for those with an undergraduate mindset, landlords are greedy for wanting to earn a market rent, whereas tenants enjoying a below-market rent are merely receiving their due.
The four-year freeze would decimate New York’s housing stock. . .
Now Mandami may be the best of the four candidates, but I can’t work up a lot of enthusiasm for him. And the glee that greeted his election by many reminds me of the ridiculous “joy” attending the candidacy of another unqualified Democrat: Kamala Harris. Yes, Mandami may be the best of a bad lot, but his socialist programs and what I see as his antisemitism are a really crappy model for what kind of Democrats we should be putting up for President.
*When I heard on the NBC News two nights ago that Tom Brady had his beloved dog cloned, I thought “Colossal Biosciences strikes again.” And, sure enough, it did, though it costs $50,000 to get a dog cloned ($85,000 for a horse). This has been doing on for a while (remember Dolly the Sheep?), but now celebrities are engaging in this costly practice. And, sure enough, it’s Colossal who is doing it.
Tom Brady says he has been given “a second chance” with a clone of his beloved family dog.
The Fox Sports broadcaster and retired NFL legend revealed on Nov. 4 that his dog, Junie, is a clone of his family’s previous dog, a pitbull mix named Lua, who died in 2023.
Brady shared the details about Junie as part of a news release by Colossal Biosciences, which announced it has acquired Viagen, a company that specializes in animal cloning.
“I love my animals. They mean the world to me and my family,” Brady said in a news release. “A few years ago, I worked with Colossal and leveraged their non-invasive cloning technology through a simple blood draw of our family’s elderly dog before she passed.”
“In a few short months, Colossal gave my family a second chance with a clone of our beloved dog,” he continued. “I am excited how Colossal and Viagen’s tech together can help both families losing their beloved pets while helping to save endangered species.”
Brady is not the first celebrity to have a dog cloned.
Paris Hilton, who is also an investor in Colossal along with Brady, had a dog cloned in 2023 by Viagen, the company Colossal acquired. Barbra Streisand revealed in 2018 that she had her beloved dog cloned twice.
The world’s first cloned dog was produced by researchers in South Korea in 2005. The first cloned animal in history was a sheep named Dolly that was produced in 1996 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland using an adult cell.
Colossal said in the news release on Nov. 4 that Viagen has successfully cloned 15 species, including a black-footed ferret and a Przewalski’s horse.
I didn’t get the Colossal press release, though I’m signed up to get their announcements, nor can I find an announcement of this cloning on Colossal’s website. Why? I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s Colossal’s investors who are getting priority to have their pets cloned by company. What’s next? Gene-edited babies? That’s legal in the U.S., but not in most other countries, and you can do it here so long as you don’t use government money. In fact, there are several gene-cloning companies (not including Colossal) exploring this ethically dubious proposal.
Here’s video about Brady’s $50,000 d*g:
*In a Free Press article, multibillionaire Jeff Yass announced that he just gave a huge financial donation to the University of Austin (remember, it’s not the University of Texas at Austin). This will enable the University to make all tuition free and guarantee that it won’t any take government dosh.
I am giving $100 million to the University of Austin because the feedback mechanisms of higher education are broken.
Almost every system that works, works because of feedback. Evolution works because helpful mutations survive while harmful ones die off. Democracy works because voters support effective leaders and remove ineffective ones. Markets work because prices tell producers when to ramp up or scale back. Science works because the data from an experiment tells the scientist how likely their hypothesis is to be false.
Most systems or institutions that don’t work have broken feedback mechanisms. Think corrupt politicians, or crony capitalists, or ideological echo chambers. Unfortunately, higher education belongs in this category.
The purpose of higher education should be to instill students with knowledge, skills, judgment, and character, so they can flourish and contribute to society. By that standard, success should be measured by how graduates are doing.
That’s not happening anymore. Here’s what went wrong: First, students must pay almost all of their tuition before anyone knows whether the education will pay off. In other words, the school is paid regardless of students’ outcomes, while the student shoulders the risk.
Second, much of that tuition is paid up-front by third parties—through loans and grants from the government or foundations—whose stake in students’ success is indirect and diffuse. The graduate carries the debt whether or not the education delivers results.
Third, massive endowments insulate many of these institutions from healthy financial pressure to deliver results to their students.
All of these factors combine into a clear conclusion: In American higher education, there is no direct feedback loop between the success of graduates and the success of the institution.
. . . This gift is intended to kick-start a virtuous cycle: UATX will prepare students to become the next generation’s leading entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, and philanthropists. In turn, these successful graduates will financially support future generations of students, ultimately making UATX tuition-free. This would create an unprecedented level of accountability and alignment of incentives within the school. The university will only be able to achieve financial sustainability if it delivers genuine value to its students.
I’ve never been a big booster of UATX, as it seems to be ideologically motivated, too, but in an antiwoke direction. While I could be described as antiwoke, I wouldn’t enforce my ideology on the direction of a school. It might improve, but it has to hire a diversity of permanent faculty that are really good (the dosh should help ensure that). The refusal to take government money, however, is a more serious issue. Who is going to fund scientific research, particularly pure research that has no practical consequences (though it may someday) and that simply satisfies curiosity? My own past work on speciation in Drosophila, for example, would not be fundable by private companies, though it was relatively cheap, and so someone like me could not work at UATX. The school must find a way to permanently fund pure research, some of which is quite expensive.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili philosophizes and Andrzej kvetches:
Hili: At times, optimism is right on the edge of despair.
Andrzej: I’m aware of that, though I’ve always been a pessimist.
In Polish:
Hili: Czasem optymizm graniczy z rozpaczą.
Ja: Wiem o tym, chociaż zawsze byłem pesymistą.
From Luana, an angry woman gets booted from her gym simply for objecting to a biological male displaying his penis in the gym locker room. Here’s the story in the NY Post. In the video, the guy appears to blithely stroll back into the women’s room after the heated exchange.
😱🤯😳🙈This is my old gym in LA, where I worked out – golds gym. I’m still a member & will be canceling today & boycotting them and planet fitness because they ban women who don’t like men verbally abusing them and staring at them, naked in the shower! pic.twitter.com/dpoIZFoGfK
— Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News🥜 (@unhealthytruth) November 3, 2025
From Malcolm. I can’t embed the tweet, but click on the image (with sound up) to see a terrific 9-year-old breakdancer:
Two from my feed. First, a nonhuman primate tying a double knot:
Patrick is a 34-year-old orangutan at the Metro Richmond Zoo who recently gained internet fame after a video of him tying a double knot went viral.pic.twitter.com/FwY0uQZqWi
Matthew’s giving a talk at Cambridge on Crick this Friday. Here’s one of the slides he’ll be presenting (read Crick’s Moon-centric poem):
The draft of the never-completed 'Scale' book included a poem that Crick composed in the bath, about the Moon and Earth seen from the point of view of a lunar colonist who lived on the far side. Here is the beginning and the end.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I don’t think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won’t even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don’t even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become. -James Jones, novelist (6 Nov 1921-1977)
Nial Ferguson’s and Bari Weiss’ new uni in Austin seems to be a best case scenario for students who don’t want woke indoctrination BUT also don’t want a religious bias.
Anti woke schools in our country seem to be entirely religiously based.
I know Pinker was going to be involved but then got cold feet for some reason.
I don’t THINK.. they’re looking to have a STEM faculty at all so your (legit) concerns about the price of research is less of a problem. I think.
It is a new model and I think not a bad idea. I’ve “sat in” on a class there and listened to Nial talk about it.
So far it’s very much a “liberal arts” college, and they’ve not attempted to set up research groups in science or to cater for STEM students. That would, of course, be way more expensive. But then, it’s in the arts/humanities and social sciences that non-woke courses are really needed.
Fortunately, I guess, mathematics has adequate liberal-arts cred to survive the lack of STE. But not a good move, considering that T is where a lot of the current entrepreneurial buzz is, E is a huge part of T, and S is arguably the crown jewel of human understanding. Maybe they need a few more billionaire donors.
“It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses – all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.”
“The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity, and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For Law is the objectivity of Spirit; volition in its true form.”
Di State a di Divine Idea weh deh pon Earth. So wi have di object a History inna a more definite shape dan before; di t’ing weh Freedom get objectivity, an live an enjoy dat objectivity. Cause Law a di objectivity a Spirit; di will inna it true form.
It makes at least as much sense, and is much more euphonic.
Yes – he’s got a bunch of cloned dogs he named after various economists of a free market bent. Adorable dogs!
Goodness though – I wouldn’t pay (esp large sums) to clone my dog – it doesn’t make sense behaviorally …. aside the insane money. I bet that footballer got freebe for the publicity.
D.A.
NYC
Dog cloning has also been successfully tried by police departments. It’s cheaper than the genetic lottery!
(And then there is the polo player Adolfo Cambiaso who cloned his best horse. Nay-sayers claimed it could not possibly work (epigenetics and all that), but it turned out well because genetic determinism is true.)
In reply to Dr Brydon’s quote from Mamdani’s victory speech, from the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), one of the greatest economists of the 20th century (top 3 or top 5):
„The most important Agenda of the State relate not to those activities which private individuals are already fulfilling, but to those functions which fall outside the sphere of the individual, to those decisions which are made by no one if the State does not make them. The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.“ (The end of laissez-faire (1926) in: Essays in persuasion. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932, p.317)
“dangerous human proclivities can be canalized into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunities for money-making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandisement. It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens; and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative” (last chapter of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936)
„modern capitalism is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and pursuers. Such a system has to be immensely, not merely moderately, successful to survive. In the nineteenth century it was in a certain sense idealistic; at any rate it was a united and self-confident system. It was not only immensely successful, but held out hopes of a continuing crescendo of prospective successes. To-day it is only moderately successful. If irreligious Capitalism is ultimately to defeat religious Communism, it is not enough that it should be economically more efficient – it must be many times as efficient.“ (A short view from Russia (1925) in: Essays in persuasion. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932, pp.306-307)
„But Marxian socialism must always remain a portent [omen; marvellous thing] to the historians of opinion – how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and through them, the events of history.“ (The end of laissez-faire (1926) in: The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol. IX: Essays in persuasion. London, Macmillan, 1972, 272-294; p.285)
„though no one will believe it – economics is a technical and difficult subject.“ (The great slump of 1930. in: Essays in persuasion. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932, p.136)
Keynes was a great economist, but not a good one. We don’t have a State in the U.S., we have a government, with limited powers. Governments which seek to do everything are called Totalitarian. Remember when Tocqueville lauded the American passion for private associations?
“Heads of State” is the language of the Declaration or Constitution — the word “leader(s)” actually appears just once in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as I am just checking. (Federalist Papers is another story).
But I’d say there’s 50 States, and their federal union.
Keynes gives no concrete examples of “.. decisions which are made by no one if the State does not make them.” I suppose the library and fire station (credited to Franklin) were too low-brow to note.
The essay purports a grand (dialectical?) synthesis from Bentham to Rousseau to the date (1926) – but he balks by saying any decisions in the moment are based on knowledge that is already 50-100 years old.
This is an example of the Aufheben of Leftist theory – a synthetic omniscience arising from almost intoxicating abstractions, yet somehow evinces a theoretical roadmap to design the material world around.
Thanks for pointing out these important quotes/essays (no snark here – honest 😁)!
Good catch. I think he got it right. He made a few mistakes at first and his fingers are so big. But I think he got it right. The final knot looks correct. But I can’t be sure! Still, I find it fascinating that he can do it at all. Maybe it’s just my naivete, but I’d no idea how adept they are.
As much as I loved and now miss my dear old friend, there’s no way, even if I had the dosh that some folks have, that I would want to clone such a fine cat. Rocket (named by my then 4 year old son), spent seventeen years with me and that was seventeen years of a life that the clone wouldn’t have. He’d look like Rocket but he’d in no way be him.
Cloning beloved animals is an understandable response to loss, but it is (a) creepy and (b) not going to bring the beloved back.
In cats, fur coat patterns are controlled epigenetically. So, Rocket’s clone likely won’t look like Rocket.
See this example of a calico cat clone: https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Cloned_Cat.html
I vote for a good public spanking by the Supremes as a new form of punishment for any president, not just good old Trump. The Supremes can use a rolled-up copy of the constitution. Stiff paper. Make it official and show it live on tv 🙂
President Trump can’t defy a Supreme Court ruling that his tariffs are unconstitutional, unless he wants to go down to a Port of Entry himself and stand between the importer and the goods being held in a Customs warehouse, and personally not unlock the door until the importer writes Uncle Sam a cheque. President Trump himself doesn’t collect any tariffs, of course. They are collected by thousands of federal civil servants, Customs officials, who assess goods crossing the border and determine how much duty the importer has to pay according to U.S. Customs law before releasing the goods to him. If the law now says No Tariffs, the customs official will collect no tariff. (Of course for many goods, even small personal shipments, the tariff is paid in advance by electronic funds transfer and the goods clear Customs with a receipt showing duty paid. The representative of a fertilizer factory doesn’t have to bring a wagon-load of cash to the border crossing where the trainload of potash enters the U.S., without which the train can’t proceed.)
Those civil servants are not going to illegally extort money out of importers just because the President says so. (In corrupt countries they would be happy to, if they could keep some off the top for themselves.) If they did, the importers would sue the government and get their money back, through the same Court system that had just ruled the tariffs unlawful, just as other taxpayers do when they have a case that the tax collectors applied the tax code incorrectly.
Naturally we in Canada are watching this case with interest. I could point out that the Cabinet in the person of the Prime Minister can impose, modify, and rescind tariffs on a whim without having to get individual legislation from Parliament. Indeed that’s what he has been doing since the tariff war started. This is because the Cabinet executive Government is assumed to have the “confidence” of the legislature until the legislature withdraws it, which precipitates an immediate election. In practice, Parliament is even less likely to so constrain a dictatorial Prime Minister (because he controls the political future of his party’s MPs) than the U.S. Congress is to veto-proof a vote to take back the tariff power. Regardless of the merits of the tariffs I have to admire Judge Gorsuch’s thinking that Congressional legislative power can ebb to the executive but can’t flow back unless the Supreme Court steps in.
Canadians have long (until NAFTA) chafed under our own regime of tariffs masquerading as half of an industrial strategy — the other half being subsidies — to nudge us away from our extractive rocks and trees economy and join the 20th century. (“No truck or trade with the Yankees” was a slogan in the 1911 election.) All we have to show for it is that our economy is now rocks and oil, with the trees part mostly going bankrupt given collapsing demand for newsprint. Toilet paper and Amazon cardboard are two bright spots. The low-value car-parts stamping business is dribbling away to Mexico and now back to the U.S. to evade tariffs.
Anyway, when we live and die by imports and exports, trade barriers soak into the consciousness of even retired doctors. My son did his MSc. Economics thesis on the impact of tariffs on currency exchange rates and he works now in a cross-border business. He keeps me informed. 🙂
Regarding free universal childcare: Here’s what happened in Canada when the government instituted a program for $10-a-day childcare.
First, there were already people offering childcare for rates higher than $10 per day. Those people were squeezed by the new cheap competition. Next, the government plan didn’t have enough places for the demand, so a wait-list quickly grew.
Couldn’t the government get rid of the wait-list? Probably not, they would have to (a) recruit a lot more childcare providers, and (b) spend a lot of money on those providers. I don’t know why they don’t do either of those things, but speculating: (a) There aren’t enough people who want to be childcare providers; (b) They don’t want to spend a lot of money on this attractive program.
At the end of today’s NPR “Morning Edition” segment on the SCOTUS tariff case, the presenter told listeners, “It is unclear how the Supreme Court will vote.” Why say that?
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 6 Wikipedia page.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I don’t think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won’t even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don’t even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become. -James Jones, novelist (6 Nov 1921-1977)
Nial Ferguson’s and Bari Weiss’ new uni in Austin seems to be a best case scenario for students who don’t want woke indoctrination BUT also don’t want a religious bias.
Anti woke schools in our country seem to be entirely religiously based.
I know Pinker was going to be involved but then got cold feet for some reason.
I don’t THINK.. they’re looking to have a STEM faculty at all so your (legit) concerns about the price of research is less of a problem. I think.
It is a new model and I think not a bad idea. I’ve “sat in” on a class there and listened to Nial talk about it.
D.A.
NYC
So far it’s very much a “liberal arts” college, and they’ve not attempted to set up research groups in science or to cater for STEM students. That would, of course, be way more expensive. But then, it’s in the arts/humanities and social sciences that non-woke courses are really needed.
Fortunately, I guess, mathematics has adequate liberal-arts cred to survive the lack of STE. But not a good move, considering that T is where a lot of the current entrepreneurial buzz is, E is a huge part of T, and S is arguably the crown jewel of human understanding. Maybe they need a few more billionaire donors.
Abstract->Negation->Concrete
Dialectic
“It must further be understood that all the worth which the human being possesses – all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.”
“The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of History in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity, and lives in the enjoyment of this objectivity. For Law is the objectivity of Spirit; volition in its true form.”
-G. W. F. Hegel
Has this ever been translated into English?
Here’s GPT-5’s translation into Jamaican Pidgin:
Di State a di Divine Idea weh deh pon Earth. So wi have di object a History inna a more definite shape dan before; di t’ing weh Freedom get objectivity, an live an enjoy dat objectivity. Cause Law a di objectivity a Spirit; di will inna it true form.
It makes at least as much sense, and is much more euphonic.
LOL
Reading it without enough self-consciousness, it will sound like Sophisticated Theology (TM).
Ask your doctor if more dialectic is right for you.
Another cloned dog owner: Javier Milei of Argentina (in the news as Trump’s ideological friend).
Yes – he’s got a bunch of cloned dogs he named after various economists of a free market bent. Adorable dogs!
Goodness though – I wouldn’t pay (esp large sums) to clone my dog – it doesn’t make sense behaviorally …. aside the insane money. I bet that footballer got freebe for the publicity.
D.A.
NYC
The local AM sports talk station in Houston mentioned this story two days ago, and they said that Tom Brady is an owner of the company
Dog cloning has also been successfully tried by police departments. It’s cheaper than the genetic lottery!
(And then there is the polo player Adolfo Cambiaso who cloned his best horse. Nay-sayers claimed it could not possibly work (epigenetics and all that), but it turned out well because genetic determinism is true.)
“Another cloned dog owner: Javier Milei…”
Why aren’t they cloning cat owners?
lol! 😺😺😺
These people seem to have forgotten that Dolly died of premature aging, possibly because of reduced telomeres.
I remember that now.
I predict that Mamdani’s tenure will be a mess.
God protect New York from a government that cares.
DrBrydon : “I predict that Mamdani’s tenure will be a mess.”
That is the whole point.
Maoism with American Characteristics
“We cannot repeat too often that men do not lead the Revolution; it is the Revolution that uses men.”
-Joseph de Maistre
1796
In reply to Dr Brydon’s quote from Mamdani’s victory speech, from the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), one of the greatest economists of the 20th century (top 3 or top 5):
„The most important Agenda of the State relate not to those activities which private individuals are already fulfilling, but to those functions which fall outside the sphere of the individual, to those decisions which are made by no one if the State does not make them. The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.“ (The end of laissez-faire (1926) in: Essays in persuasion. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932, p.317)
“dangerous human proclivities can be canalized into comparatively harmless channels by the existence of opportunities for money-making and private wealth, which, if they cannot be satisfied in this way may find their outlet in cruelty, the reckless pursuit of personal power and authority, and other forms of self-aggrandisement. It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens; and whilst the former is sometimes denounced as but a means to the latter, sometimes at least it is an alternative” (last chapter of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936)
„modern capitalism is absolutely irreligious, without internal union, without much public spirit, often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors and pursuers. Such a system has to be immensely, not merely moderately, successful to survive. In the nineteenth century it was in a certain sense idealistic; at any rate it was a united and self-confident system. It was not only immensely successful, but held out hopes of a continuing crescendo of prospective successes. To-day it is only moderately successful. If irreligious Capitalism is ultimately to defeat religious Communism, it is not enough that it should be economically more efficient – it must be many times as efficient.“ (A short view from Russia (1925) in: Essays in persuasion. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932, pp.306-307)
„But Marxian socialism must always remain a portent [omen; marvellous thing] to the historians of opinion – how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and through them, the events of history.“ (The end of laissez-faire (1926) in: The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol. IX: Essays in persuasion. London, Macmillan, 1972, 272-294; p.285)
„though no one will believe it – economics is a technical and difficult subject.“ (The great slump of 1930. in: Essays in persuasion. Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1932, p.136)
Keynes was a great economist, but not a good one. We don’t have a State in the U.S., we have a government, with limited powers. Governments which seek to do everything are called Totalitarian. Remember when Tocqueville lauded the American passion for private associations?
Also I note :
“Heads of State” is the language of the Declaration or Constitution — the word “leader(s)” actually appears just once in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as I am just checking. (Federalist Papers is another story).
But I’d say there’s 50 States, and their federal union.
Here’s the laissez-faire essay :
https://www.panarchy.org/keynes/laissezfaire.1926.html
Keynes gives no concrete examples of “.. decisions which are made by no one if the State does not make them.” I suppose the library and fire station (credited to Franklin) were too low-brow to note.
The essay purports a grand (dialectical?) synthesis from Bentham to Rousseau to the date (1926) – but he balks by saying any decisions in the moment are based on knowledge that is already 50-100 years old.
This is an example of the Aufheben of Leftist theory – a synthetic omniscience arising from almost intoxicating abstractions, yet somehow evinces a theoretical roadmap to design the material world around.
Thanks for pointing out these important quotes/essays (no snark here – honest 😁)!
Crick’s lunar poem, with its melodious rhymes and profound ruminations, would make for a highly promising entry into a Vogon poetry contest.
Sorry, but as a producer of attempted poetry I beg to differ. Remember that the contest judges are themselves Vogons.
It’s hard for me to see – did Patrick the orangutan tie a proper square knot or did he end up with a granny knot?
Good catch. I think he got it right. He made a few mistakes at first and his fingers are so big. But I think he got it right. The final knot looks correct. But I can’t be sure! Still, I find it fascinating that he can do it at all. Maybe it’s just my naivete, but I’d no idea how adept they are.
As much as I loved and now miss my dear old friend, there’s no way, even if I had the dosh that some folks have, that I would want to clone such a fine cat. Rocket (named by my then 4 year old son), spent seventeen years with me and that was seventeen years of a life that the clone wouldn’t have. He’d look like Rocket but he’d in no way be him.
Cloning beloved animals is an understandable response to loss, but it is (a) creepy and (b) not going to bring the beloved back.
But behavior has an important genetic component.
In cats, fur coat patterns are controlled epigenetically. So, Rocket’s clone likely won’t look like Rocket.
See this example of a calico cat clone: https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Cloned_Cat.html
I vote for a good public spanking by the Supremes as a new form of punishment for any president, not just good old Trump. The Supremes can use a rolled-up copy of the constitution. Stiff paper. Make it official and show it live on tv 🙂
Parchment.
I think that’s the best portrait of Hili that I’ve ever seen on this website.
I noticed too how beautiful a photo it was.
President Trump can’t defy a Supreme Court ruling that his tariffs are unconstitutional, unless he wants to go down to a Port of Entry himself and stand between the importer and the goods being held in a Customs warehouse, and personally not unlock the door until the importer writes Uncle Sam a cheque. President Trump himself doesn’t collect any tariffs, of course. They are collected by thousands of federal civil servants, Customs officials, who assess goods crossing the border and determine how much duty the importer has to pay according to U.S. Customs law before releasing the goods to him. If the law now says No Tariffs, the customs official will collect no tariff. (Of course for many goods, even small personal shipments, the tariff is paid in advance by electronic funds transfer and the goods clear Customs with a receipt showing duty paid. The representative of a fertilizer factory doesn’t have to bring a wagon-load of cash to the border crossing where the trainload of potash enters the U.S., without which the train can’t proceed.)
Those civil servants are not going to illegally extort money out of importers just because the President says so. (In corrupt countries they would be happy to, if they could keep some off the top for themselves.) If they did, the importers would sue the government and get their money back, through the same Court system that had just ruled the tariffs unlawful, just as other taxpayers do when they have a case that the tax collectors applied the tax code incorrectly.
Naturally we in Canada are watching this case with interest. I could point out that the Cabinet in the person of the Prime Minister can impose, modify, and rescind tariffs on a whim without having to get individual legislation from Parliament. Indeed that’s what he has been doing since the tariff war started. This is because the Cabinet executive Government is assumed to have the “confidence” of the legislature until the legislature withdraws it, which precipitates an immediate election. In practice, Parliament is even less likely to so constrain a dictatorial Prime Minister (because he controls the political future of his party’s MPs) than the U.S. Congress is to veto-proof a vote to take back the tariff power. Regardless of the merits of the tariffs I have to admire Judge Gorsuch’s thinking that Congressional legislative power can ebb to the executive but can’t flow back unless the Supreme Court steps in.
Leslie I thought you are a medical doctor (probably retired). But now it seems you are a doctor and a custom’s official. Color me impressed!
Canadians have long (until NAFTA) chafed under our own regime of tariffs masquerading as half of an industrial strategy — the other half being subsidies — to nudge us away from our extractive rocks and trees economy and join the 20th century. (“No truck or trade with the Yankees” was a slogan in the 1911 election.) All we have to show for it is that our economy is now rocks and oil, with the trees part mostly going bankrupt given collapsing demand for newsprint. Toilet paper and Amazon cardboard are two bright spots. The low-value car-parts stamping business is dribbling away to Mexico and now back to the U.S. to evade tariffs.
Anyway, when we live and die by imports and exports, trade barriers soak into the consciousness of even retired doctors. My son did his MSc. Economics thesis on the impact of tariffs on currency exchange rates and he works now in a cross-border business. He keeps me informed. 🙂
Regarding free universal childcare: Here’s what happened in Canada when the government instituted a program for $10-a-day childcare.
First, there were already people offering childcare for rates higher than $10 per day. Those people were squeezed by the new cheap competition. Next, the government plan didn’t have enough places for the demand, so a wait-list quickly grew.
Couldn’t the government get rid of the wait-list? Probably not, they would have to (a) recruit a lot more childcare providers, and (b) spend a lot of money on those providers. I don’t know why they don’t do either of those things, but speculating: (a) There aren’t enough people who want to be childcare providers; (b) They don’t want to spend a lot of money on this attractive program.
At the end of today’s NPR “Morning Edition” segment on the SCOTUS tariff case, the presenter told listeners, “It is unclear how the Supreme Court will vote.” Why say that?