Welcome to the start of the “work” week, when everybody has a day of “working at home” (i.e., raiding the fridge and snoozing). Yep, it’s Monday, November 10, 2025, and National Vanilla Cupcake Day. I can’t think of a more boring cakelike item, so here’s a video about meerkats (Suricata suricatta) :
It snowed fairly heavily last night, and the streets are icy and yet unplowed. I fell only once, right on my back. I am a bit sore but unhurt.
It’s also World Orphans Day and World Science Day for Peace and Development.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 10 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I still have a feeling that the government shutdown will end this week, as there is some sotto voce discussion between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. And it had better end before people need to fly home for Thanksgiving! But the GOP is now offering an alternative to renewing the medical-care supplements that is the fulcrum of the shutdown.
Senate Republicans have made what amounts to a counteroffer in a bid to end the government shutdown, proposing that some healthcare funding be provided directly to households rather than be used to pay for a one-year extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
The leading GOP proposal involves sending federal money into flexible-spending accounts instead of to insurance companies. The money could be used to cover deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs, which Republicans see as a way to give consumers more choice and control healthcare inflation.
“Let’s just move beyond our trench line, and let’s actually think creatively,” said Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Bill Cassidy (R., La.), the proponent of the leading idea, on the Senate floor Saturday. “And can we give just a little bit to find something which actually benefits the patient but may also get us out of this situation?”
Democrats and Republicans have been locked for more than a month in a standoff over healthcare coverage, with Democrats repeatedly blocking a GOP bill to reopen the government. Without an extension of enhanced ACA credits, which run roughly $30 billion a year, more than 20 million Americans are set to see increases in their insurance premiums. Open enrollment for next year started this month.
Republicans had previously said there would be no negotiations until Democrats ended their blockade, but the new healthcare pitch—despite many questions about how it would work and when it could be rolled out—showed the GOP could be flexible on that stance.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) has kept the Senate in session all weekend, as lawmakers see growing urgency to end the shutdown, amid growing airport snarls and delays in food aid being distributed to millions of Americans. Thune has been hoping to hold a vote on funding veterans programs, the U.S. Agriculture Department and the legislative branch for the full fiscal year.
At least people are looking for a compromise, but I’m dubious whether this one would work. How much money would be given, and would it vary among people? Given spiralling healthcare costs everywhere in America, I don’t think there’s any amount of money that you could put in people’s flexible spending accounts that would cover their healthcare costs without rendering the government insolvent. I always hated it when I had such an acccount, as I never knew how much to put in it.
*There is no limit to Trump’s narcissism, but this is pretty close to the event horizon. The administration is planning to issue a coin that features Trump’s head ON BOTH SIDES!
Nearly a century ago, the United States paused its 1920s roar to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the country’s birth. There were speeches, a Philadelphia flop of a World’s Fair, more speeches and a commemorative coin mostly remembered now as a numismatic misfire.
The 1926 coin featured the long-dead first president, George Washington, beside the very-much-alive current president, Calvin Coolidge, whose appearance broke with American convention not to depict a sitting president on money. The custom was inspired by Washington himself, who was so anti-monarchical he could have coined the phrase “No Kings.”
The Washington-Coolidge half-dollar is the only American coin to feature a sitting president. But not for long.
The Treasury Department recently announced plans to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary in 2026 with a one-dollar coin depicting President Trump. In a draft rendering, he appears twice, and alone: on the obverse, in a profile partly eclipsing the word LIBERTY; and on the reverse, his fist raised below the words FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.
The very idea of such a coin reflects the national divide over the Trump presidency. Is depicting the current president on money a pitch-perfect way to celebrate the Declaration of Independence, the world-altering denunciation of royal tyranny? Or is it a tone-deaf overreach with an unabashed “L’état, c’est moi” vibe?
Oh for chrissakes: it’s a tone-deaf overreach, and if anybody in the chain of command has two neurons to rub together, they’ll nip this coin in the bud. (I’m sure Trump loves the idea.) Here’s the filthy lucre from People Magazine credited to the U.S. Treasury:
Another reason why this coin is offensive is because you can’t call it “heads or tails” when you flip it. What would it be: “Heads or fists”? This is in honor of the 250
*Two professors at Yale, R. Howard Bloch and Nicholas A. Christakis (remember him?), have an op-ed in the WaPo arguing that the current crisis in higher education offers us a chance to reform the whole thing, and in a drastic way.
Recently, many universities have taken on an explicit mission of improving society or bettering the world and, in so doing, have come to neglect their most fundamental mission, which is the preservation, production and transmission of knowledge. Fulfilling this mission can and does lead to other benefits for society, as education itself is a means to improving human life in the myriad ways that educated citizens are encouraged and equipped to do.
. . . .A range of reforms is necessary to respond to this drift. But here are two:
First, universities should reevaluate the curriculum of the various divisions of knowledge, from the humanities to the social sciences to the natural sciences. While universities have become increasingly attentive to a limited set of political objectives, their curricular offerings have grown correspondingly narrow, self-serving or self-perpetuating in ways that inhibit open-ended discussion and discovery.
A step in this direction would involve the creation of a first-year core curriculum — before undergraduates choose a more specialized major.
AGREED!
Second, universities should revise the administrative arrangements that support education and research. While retaining the ability to teach classic observations and findings (the “preservation” of knowledge, after all!), the organization of university departments should evolve.
In the biological sciences, departments of anatomy, botany and zoology have largely disappeared. They have been replaced by innovative concentrations in stem-cell biology, neurobiology and molecular biophysics. This can be a model for the whole university. Creating or transforming departments keeps fields relevant to the frontiers of knowledge. We need to match institutional structures to contemporary intellectual challenges.
Where does that put organismal biology or evolution? I think some of the difficulties facing my university down the road is creating these niche areas that are expensive and will change as fields change? My solution? I don’t have any, but I do agree with the authors that perhaps traditional departments can be eliminated in favor of “programs” that encompass a wide variety of areas that fall under one umbrella.
. . . . The University of Chicago’s “committee” system is also instructive; there, entities such as the Committee on Social Thought or the Committee on Human Development have illustrated some of the best crossings between disparate disciplines. These committees span departmental lines and have powers that are essential for real reform, such as granting doctorates and, crucially, appointing faculty.
We also have a Committee on Evolutionary Biology which contains students with diverse interests, all of them relating at least tangentially to evolution. Students don’t have to come from regular departments: they can also study in the Field Museum. But they still have to have an affiliation with a University of Chicago Department to get a degree.
But the problems are bigger than those outlined by Bloch and Christakis. Their suggestions don’t touch several of the most important issues facing colleges: students want a more practical education that would help them get jobs (reorganizing the humanities won’t fix this), and grade inflation everywhere is making it harder for students to be evaluated for either jobs or graduate school after they finish college.
*This is a big deal in Israel: the body of an IDF soldier held by Hamas for eleven years has finally been returned to his family.
Politicians from across the political spectrum welcome the return of the body of IDF Lt. Hadar Goldin to Israel more than 11 years after he was killed and abducted by the Hamas terror group.
“After more than a decade of anticipation and waiting, Hadar has returned to eternal rest in an Israeli grave,” posts Defense Minister Israel Katz on X, calling the return of Goldin, who fell during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, “a moment of deep pain but also of great comfort and closure.”
His return is also welcomed by former defense minister Yoav Gallant, who notes the Goldin family’s “unrelenting struggle” to bring him home over the past 11 years.
“The people of Israel bow their heads and embrace the Goldin family with love in this deeply emotional moment,” says National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “Hadar gave his life for the people of Israel, and in his life and death he embodied supreme heroism.”
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid says that his heart goes out to the entire Goldin family and that “only now, will Hadar find a proper rest.”
Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman promises that “we will do everything so that all our sons return home,” while The Democrats party chief Yair Golan says that, as a senior IDF officer at the time of Goldin’s kidnapping, “we swore not to stop until his body was returned.”
“Today is a significant day for the Goldin family and for the entire people of Israel — the return of the last fallen soldier from Operation Protective Edge — but the struggle is not over; four fallen hostages are still held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip — we will continue to do everything, we will continue to fight, until the last hostage,” says Golan.
The good news is that Israel didn’t have to release any Palestinian terrorists (or any prisoners) to get the bodies back. The bad news is that their holding onto the body for 11 years is immoral, and in fact a war crime. But of course you haven’t heard about those crimes, have you? From the news you’d think that war crimes in the Gaza conflict are committed only by Israel.
*Andrzej just got a prestigious award for buttressing Polish-Jewish relations and preserving the Jewish heritage in Poland. And he’s not even Jewish! He was born a Catholic (with his life saved by a Nazi doctor!), and later became an atheist who was sympathetic to Israel. (Malgorzata was, of course, Jewish). His short speech was read aloud on June 29 at the award ceremony in Wroclawek; Andrzej is too busy, and with too many health issues, to attend. You can read the speech, translated into English, on Listy: “A letter to my Jewish friends.” Some of his talk:
When people ask me why I always defend Israel, I usually respond with a laugh. The short answer is that if Israel’s existence depended on defenders like me, it would have ceased to exist long ago. Israel defends itself – I defend myself against lies about Israel. In such situations, I usually inform my interlocutor – openly or implicitly – that I am also defending myself against them, as they have, knowingly or not, succumbed to a campaign of lies and accepted slander as truth.
. . . .My wife Małgorzata and I run a website. Technically, that’s in the past tense. My wife died on Tuesday, June 17, at 4:02 pm She was sitting at her computer, reviewing a freshly translated text. Two minutes earlier she showed me a funny cartoon, forty minutes earlier we were sitting on the veranda steps, sharing a cigarette. Yes, a cigarette – ever since her heart attack in 1995, we always shared one cigarette between us. We joked that it was our peace pipe – between a Polish-Lithuanian goy and a very Polish Jew. At two minutes past four I looked up from my screen to say something to her. I saw her take her last breath. She died without pain, without suffering. She didn’t get a chance to tell me she was dying – and she always told me everything. She is no longer here, but I still run the website together with my wife Małgorzata. She still sends me dozens of emails each day. All our subscriptions go to her inbox – and just like before that Tuesday, I still receive messages from her. I read them on her computer and forward the important ones to myself for further work.
So on this website that Małgorzata and I run together, we try to expose the industry of lies, the manipulations of mainstream media, the allure of anti-Zionist propaganda at universities, the covert influence of Islamic antisemitism that is eroding the humanity of the youngest generation. We are aware that, ultimately, we are preaching to the choir, because others do not seek out such spaces. The effectiveness of our work is, to put it mildly, limited – perhaps this work is more necessary for ourselves than for anyone else.
We find ourselves in a unique historical moment – the scent of blood spilled on October 7, 2023, has roused the beast of antisemitism, which now rages not only in Tehran, Doha, Istanbul, Sana’a, Gaza, or Ramallah, but also in Western parliaments, at the UN, on university campuses, in the editorial offices of reputable media, and on the streets of Western metropolises.
Israel does not have an Iron Dome to protect it from the lies of the world. Superstitions and pyres are returning – the same ones Paweł Włodkowic once fought against with no chance of victory.
That street named after Włodkowic in Wrocław runs along the old city walls – it used to be called Wallstraße. There are no longer any walls to shield us from the tsunami of lies – only specific individuals can attempt to stop falsehood, and must do so even when they know their efforts may have little impact on reality.
I regret that I cannot be with you today in this place. Once again, thank you – and I send warm greetings from my empty home in Dobrzyń nad Wisłą, where my wife Małgorzata keeps sending me notes that say: “urgent, see if we’ll take it, I’m for it.” That last part – that was a frequent note. I don’t write it anymore, but I know it’s there.
This brings tears to my eyes, but Andrzej is a fitting recipient of the award. And so Malgorzata would be as well—had she not died 12 days before.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, pessimism still reigns:
Hili: I’m seeing which way the wind is blowing.
Andrzej: Usually not the way you’d want.
In Polish:
Hili: Patrzę skąd wieje wiatr?
Ja: Na ogół ze złej strony.
*******************
From Manter:
From Cole and Marmalade:
From Things With Faces:
Masih is busy at the World Liberty Congress, and JKR is quiescent. Here’s a tweet from Dawkins sent by Luana:
This social contagion memidemic has run its course and will soon fade into history. Except, unlike other playground crazes (yo-yos, jacks, hula-hoops, marbles) this one will never fade for those unfortunate children irreversibly damaged by chemical or even surgical mutilation…
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 9, 2025
“I don’t understand it”
She should have left it at that— AniYehudi – ברוך (@AYehudi1948) October 17, 2025
From Malcolm. Somebody adopt this kitten PRONTO!
😅❤️ pic.twitter.com/OtWHdAP5Ej
— cutest cats (@cutestscats) October 30, 2025
Two from my feed. Kitteh first (sound up):
Dads with the cat they didn’t want 😂 pic.twitter.com/wGWGpBj7VA
— Cats with Aura 😺 (@catwithaura) November 7, 2025
Kitteh doesn’t want to be caught:
Thank you.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/UbTmpkJ99H
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 8, 2025
One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial:
This Czech Jewish boy was sent to Auschwitz at age 12. And, as the note says, “He did not survive.” https://t.co/bzGGStUyO8
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 10, 2025
Here are two posts I found by putting “Matthew Cobb” in the Bluehair search box. As expected on that site:
White male Anglo-Saxon academics fall arse over tit to assert Jim Watson was a science genius despite some mean things he said. Watson however was a shit scientist not just because he stole the Nobel discovery, but because his genetics was that of racism, misogyny and antisemitism.
— For Better Science (@forbetterscience.bsky.social) 2025-11-09T08:24:51.846Z
. . . and, as expected:
Matthew Cobb blocked me now. Hey, I am a fellow white male, I am entitled to his respect! Oh right, I'm not Aryan.
— For Better Science (@forbetterscience.bsky.social) 2025-11-08T10:24:48.882Z
It’s Bluehair, not X, that is toxic!
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases. -Johan Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, poet and dramatist (10 Nov 1759-1805)
I’ve used it before, but it goes perfectly with the Thought For Today:
‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’
Anatole France
Meanwhile, in the UK, the Director General of the BBC has resigned after examples of woke bias have piled up (splicing snippets of Trump speeches together to give a false impression being one; there’s also the rampant anti-Israel bias, the rampant pro-immigration bias, and giving a bunch of trans activists a veto on any and all news items).
(I cancelled my licence fee about a year ago, being unwilling to fund wokeness, and now rather enjoy the tantrum-throwing letters and emails they send asking me to pay up.)
I cancelled mine in 2014 because of Nick Robinson telling bare faced lies on the national news. I know he lied because I watched him ask a question and get a detailed answer on live TV in the afternoon, and then on the 6pm news he stated that the person had refused to answer him. Lie.
I also don’t trust Panorama. My step niece was interviewed about poverty, and the programme producers moved some of her furniture out of the room to make her look poorer. 😡 My brother was furious as he had bought the furniture to help her. She was in tears at one point during the interview, and the producers asked her to redo it and cry again. 🤦♀️ Is it any wonder I’m cynical?
There is a place on the BBC website where you can make a statement saying that you don’t need a licence, when you sign it they leave you alone for 3 years. The only time I hear from them is when it needs renewing.
The link is here… https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/telling-us-you-dont-need-a-tv-licence
Watch out though as they changed the rules a few years ago and you now need a licence to watch iPlayer. You can watch all the other TV streaming services without one.
also this (as another area where BBC coverage systematically fell short during the last 10-20 years):
GB News: How the BBC has ‘distorted history’ for YEARS – Historian blows whistle on broadcaster. Nov 10, 2025, 11 mins
Historian Professor Lawrence Goldman discusses documented concerns regarding the BBC’s portrayal of key historical events in its programming between 2020 and 2022. Goldman and fellow historians submitted a detailed report to the BBC outlining inaccuracies, omissions, and ideological bias in historical coverage.
Lawrence Goldman FRHistS (born 17 June 1957) is an English historian and academic. He is the former director the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004 to 2014) and of the Institute of Historical Research (2014 to 2017), University of London. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
Seems the “Middle East” (Hamas central) part of the BBC looked at the genderwang dpt of the BBC and said “Hold My Beer”.
Their coverage of Israel has been as bad (or a few years ago WORSE) than Al Jazeera’s. (I did an article about this for Forbes a decade ago – was astonished).
Again, institutions can decline and enshit: Time mag, Pan Am, BBC. It is up to us to notice before it gets as bad as the once great Beeb has become.
D.A.
NYC
I found the report Professor Goldman mentions in the video.
https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/HR-report-on-BBC-FINAL.pdf
The full memo from Michael Prescott, the independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, which led to the resignations is here: https://archive.ph/F5K38
Well worth a read, IMHO.
Congratulations to Andrzej!
+1 Lovely guy. Thoughtful speech.
+1. Yes indeed. A fine recognition for Andrzej and Malgorzata’s tireless and excellent work.
And a lovely, thoughtful acceptance letter!
Well, the shutdown is over. Eight Democrats voted (“caved” says CNN) with the Republicans to end it. That’s all that’s ever been necessary. It had been suggested for a couple weeks that the Dems would end this once the election was over and they had wrung as much propaganda from it as they could. I suppose it was too much to hope that this would have generated a real conversation on Federal entitlements.
“The administration is planning to issue a coin that features Trump’s head ON BOTH SIDES!”
Well, one side shows a pose with his head, one is a close-up profile of the hind-quarters.
It is very clear to me!
It’s two-faced. Like him.
As to calling a toss of the Trump coin, the big question in my mind is, Does it have a flat edge so it can land on that edge once in 5600 spins or is the edge rounded off to guarantee a binary outcome every time?
LOL
… is it 1/5400 I thought?
(Google is not great here…)
I trust your memory, Bryan. I was referring to the claim that p(ambiguous genitalia .OR. mismatch of external genitalia with gonadal sex) ~ 1/5600 ~ p(vertically spun nickel coming to rest on its edge.)
The analogy has several things wrong with it from a logical and humanistic/clinical perspective which I won’t take space to go into. I did want to point out that contrary to what the intersex parallel assumes (I think), the edge case counts in a bet. You don’t ignore it and flip again to get a binary outcome. The flipper (or spinner in this case) invites the other bettor to “call it”. Say he calls “heads”. Edge is “not heads” and so edge is a member of the set of all losing outcomes which formally = {tails, edge, cat grabs spinning coin and runs off with it, coin vanishes into a worm hole or down the heating vent when somebody sneezed, . . .}
The caller is free to ignore the low probability (1:5400) of edge in being willing to make an even-odds bet on heads (or tails.) But he is not free to ignore the actual outcome of edge that just occurred with p=1. After all, roulette players do exactly this in betting on red or black. If zero comes up, the bettor doesn’t get a repeat spin. The house gets the bet. If the spinner was willing to offer a 5399:1 payoff for a bet on “edge”, the caller could rationally choose to bet on edge….if he believed the spinner could cover it!
My preference would be to express the chances of intersex in terms of 5-card poker hands of the same probability when dealt from a full deck without replacement. The probabilities can be explicitly calculated with combinatorics. Rare hands, like people with birth defects, aren’t “ignored” as too rare to worry about. As well, a Trump coin would have the non-trivial downside of having to be specifically tested to make sure it is not crooked, loaded, and statistically unfair….and that it would actually balance without toppling to the right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checking_whether_a_coin_is_fair
Thank you
You spurred me to take a look-see:
Google says a US nickel is 1/6000. I think we all were considering a penny.
Here’s a definitive site – Math StackExchange :
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/69400/calculating-the-probability-of-a-coin-falling-on-its-side
You see the 1/6000 figure for a nickel from a 1993 paper – check it out.
Cheers
Regarding the big decline in trans identifying kids and young adults:
For what it’s worth, at my university (Hofstra) in the last couple years there has been a huge decline in blue and purple streaks in the hair of students and other attempts to cultivate a “queer” appearance. Since I do math and physics and teach mostly engineering students, I hardly ever encountered trans or nonbinary claiming students anyways. But colleagues of mine in the humanities where the “queer” students were more numerous tell me that the fad for students to request special pronouns has died down considerably.
Anecdotally the fad is still going strong at my university here in Lotus Land. But that sort of makes sense: Canada is typically a few years behind the USA, and quite a few years behind New York.
Mike – my pet theory is that with MANY cultural trends the further a place is from the metropole that produces the culture (once London/Paris, now here, NYC and Cali)… the greater the expression of that trend.
So Canada will be woker than the USA, Australia and then NZ being even more bonkers.
Which seems to be the case in this trend and I’ve noticed it before.
Just a theory.
D.A.
NYC
That’s an interesting observation, thanks Michael.
Prof Eric Kauffman (Buckinghamshire) is looking into this issue and there’s been a bit of back and forth on the findings. Jean Twenge (sp?) weighted in on Eric’s side – and yours – that there’s a reduction in this trend.
D.A.
NYC
I have six US cities on my bucket list as they each have museums with over 5000 Egyptian exhibits, but that Trump coin is another reason not to go to the USA. Not specifically because of the coin itself, but because of the environment and administration it represents, idolising that man, while people don’t have proper health care.
Thankfully, there are 33 museums on my list and 10 of them that I haven’t seen yet are in Europe, so that will keep me busy until you get rid of Trump 😄. Of course there’s no guarantee that the Democrats will get in next time, or be much better. I’ll probably die without completing the list 😪
No! Don’t let Trump cause you such unhappiness. Visit the museums! 🙂
I have Munich and the Netherlands next, maybe after that I’ll have another look and see how the USA is. I’ve been there a few times with no problems, but it just seems to be getting worse.
Gotta come to NYC, Joolz – we’ve got mummies and pyramids galore at the Met!
And of course the whole Center of the Universe thingie we enjoy here!
🙂
D.A.
NYC
😂 The Met is already ticked off, but I went there long before I started my list, so maybe it doesn’t count? 😁
I totally get the reluctance to come here. The Orange Toddler is only the most obvious symptom of the rot at the heart of this place. Three hundred and forty million people who hate each other is not a place I’d like to see either. I’m used to it and can’t move eleswhere, where I suspect it’d be just as bad anyway! hah! The problem is me- to my horror, I’ve become misanthropic!
Anyway, I’m curious about those museums here that are on your bucket list. I can think of a few; I’ve heard that the Penn museum and the Fine Art museum in Boston have excellent collections of Egyptian and Nubian artifacts. My eyesight is failing and I want to get to as many as I can in coming years and I want to be selective.
I found the list on wikipedia 😄 i hope you get to see a lot more places. In Vienna the museum had exhibits especially for people with vision issues. You could change the lighting to make them easier to see with different colour spectrums.
I’ve been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, USA: About 26,000 artifacts[15], and below are the 6 US ones I’ve still to see. Haven’t looked them all up on a map, but I suspect it may take a few visits to see them all.
I often find it hard to pick somewhere to go on holiday because the world is a huge place, so it’s quite good to have a list like this as it helps me pick new places to go. The ones you mentioned are on the list.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA: About 45,000 artifacts[9]
Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA: Over 45,000 artifacts[10]
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: Over 42,000 artifacts[11]
Oriental Institute, Chicago, Illinois, USA: About 30,000 artifacts[14]
Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, California, USA: Over 17,000 artifacts[17]
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta, Georgia, USA: 7,500 objects[29]
The Penn Museum’s Egyptian galleries are currently closed for renovation and the Hearst Museum is entirely closed for renovation. For what it’s worth, the other museums on the list are located in blue parts of the country, so you won’t encounter too much Trumpiness.
Thanks, i’ll check the places before I go. One of the times I went to Berlin the Egyptian Museum was closed, but they had transferred a lot of their Egyptian stuff to another museum. Turns out I was quite lucky because, at the temporary location, they allowed you to take photographs of the famous Nefertiti bust, so I think have photographs from every angle possible.😄 When I went back to the main Egyptian museum a couple of years of years later the bust was in a separate section and they had a guard stopping visitors using cameras.
I didn’t think about the politics of the individual states, that’s a very good point!
Decades ago there was controversy regarding whether or not the Nefertiti bust’s excellent condition was due to it being a modern forgery by the German archeologist(s) who claimed to have discovered it. Has this been definitively resolved? Back then the German authorities were firmly non-cooperative with investigations of their prize artefact.
I don’t intend to be antagonistic here, but I am genuinely curious: what type of “Trumpiness” do you believe a tourist would find—and would be best off avoiding— in a red state, city, or town? Perhaps I should bring my sidearm when I visit the Mennonite store this week?
Actually on my present trip across the usa l’ve found it much friendlier than my home country Australia or previous homes in Europe. Seems to me the negative hype is overblown.
Cheers, that’s good to know. Most of the time I was in New York City it was great, and we only came across one crazy person, but the trouble is that over there, the crazy people may be carrying guns 😬 I’ve driven from Toronto to Monroe County in the US, and I met a lot of good people there.
I usually read up on places before I go, and I’ll make sure to do that more closely with US destinations. 👍
Oh don’t worry about that. Very safe here. I’ll even take you out to lunch!
Rarely am I shot just walking around and almost never stabbed!
D.A.
NYC
The argument that: “I don’t think there’s any amount of money that you could put in people’s flexible spending accounts that would cover their healthcare costs without rendering the government insolvent.”
must also imply that extending the subsidies for health care would also render the government insolvent. These are aimed at the same target.
Probably neither would render the government insolvent as we have already had the subsidies and we are not insolvent (yet). Out of control, sure. But there is a lot of out of control spending.
Jerry writing this makes me anxious (bolding added):
Jerry, have you considered crampons to affix to your shoes?
If you don’t know what I mean, do a Google image search for: crampons to affix to one’s shoes
I would absolutely hate to read that you fell and broke something or sustained some other injury.
That caught my attention, too. Falls are a leading cause of death in people over 70.
Glad it was no big deal.
When in East Lansing, MI for a year as a late teen, I wore my Adidas cross country running shoes in the ice and snow to give a good grip. Of course as a youngster I had better balance and quicker reactions then, so never fell.
At 77, I slipped on wet grass in the back yard ten days ago and only this morning have I finally awaked without back pain. You have years of experience with Chicago winters by now, so please be slow and careful. Being emeritus, you have plenty of time to get anywhere you are going.
You chose English Lit for 100. Name the Victorian-era poem being riffed:
Well, a classic Iambic Tetrameter poem is Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
But this is before the Victorian Era, so this is probably wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut that class so much.
The poem is Invictus by William Ernest Henley. The riffed 2nd verse is:
Invictus is best known for it’s 4th and final verse:
When I first read it in high school, the extreme stiff-upper-lipness was quite off-putting. But half a century later, after reading about the author’s circumstances that inspired it, I have found the poem very moving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invictus
For some reason I am reminded of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life”:
In the world’s great field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle,
Be a hero in the strife!
That first cat’s name should be Bismarck. Or just Otto would do.
I do think that universities should still cover the “classics” in evolutionary biology. We need organismal and evolutionary biology as the foundation of everything else. When I read about Baby Fae being transplanted with a baboon heart back in 1984, I immediately knew that this baby was doomed. A baboon is not a great ape, and was too far removed genealogically to have any chance of surviving the inevitable organ rejection.* An organismal and evolutionary biologist would have known this to be the case.
*Yes, today we’re making great progress with organ transplantation thanks to drugs that suppress the immune response.
Jerry,
More, possibly unwanted, advice; keep one or two trekking poles by the door that you can grab when the sidewalks might be icy.
THAT is why (New Yorkers, say) move to Florida! I’m 55 and having experienced a few, and looking at the numbers, I’m TERRIFIED of falls.
Take care.
D.A.
NYC
Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Martin Gilbert’s book “Kirstallnacht: Prelude to Destruction” (2006) is excellent. Elie Wiesel called it “Factual, well documented and brilliant”.
Congratulations to Andrzej. Such a shame that he (and Malgorzata) couldn’t be there in person. A very moving speech, though.
I’ll second this one because I happened to scroll here – good things are good…😁
Many, many thanks, as always, to our host for this marvelous website—with its outstanding scientific, cultural, and historical content, and its connection with Malgorzata, Andrzej, and Hili.
+1
^What he said!
Mr. For Better Science Leonid Schneider “is a Ukrainian-German science journalist and molecular cell biologist. He is known for his blog […] that covers research integrity and ethics.”
How embarrassing that he seems to care very little about ethics (he spreads falsehoods) and journalistic and scientific standards and prefers to insult other people in a vulgar manner.
He is an activist “Haltungsjournalist”. Sorry, I do not know, if there is an exact English translation of the German word “Haltungsjournalismus“.
Having a very narrow, biased journalistic attitude (perhaps)?
One English translation for Haltungsjournalism is militant journalism. German Wikipedia has an entry for Haltungsjournalism. But there are no related Wikip. entries in different languages. Of course, one could do a Google search. But militant journalism is good enough for me.
I may well have been ninja’ed above, but if the primary purpose of the university is to preserve, discover, and transmit knowledge, then it is in a tension with the goal of graduates to get good jobs. Both are possible, and both align sometimes, and the devil is the details of the balance, but anatomy, botany, and zoology are still relevant to the preservation, discovery, and transmission of knowledge. Let’s not forget the primary purpose of the university.