Welcome to a Hump Day (“uroe bonggol” in Acehense): Wednesday, February 11, 2026, and National Latte Day, the drink I have every morning to get me going. Here’s a photo of the one I’m drinking now, all homeofficemade, with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top, The picture on the mug is that of Hili drinking from a cup on which is pictured Hili drinking from a cup.
It’s also International Day of Women and Girls in Science, National Peppermint Patty Day, Promise Day (today you reinforce your relationships by making promises), and National Make a Friend Day.
Today’s Olympic Google Doodle celebrates ice hockey, and if you click on it below, you can see how the different shots are made:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 11 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Luana has been telling me this for a long time, but it was only yesterday that the NYT posted about the three American states that represent the greatest educational successes in America. Perhaps the NYT didn’t want to write about them because, contrary to the narrative, they’re all southern red states: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. But as recounted by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT, the educational achievement in these states has been remarkable:
A ray of hope is emerging in American education.
Not among Democrats or Republicans, each diverted by culture wars. Not in the education reform movement, largely abandoned by the philanthropists who once propelled it. Not in most schools across the country, still struggling with chronic absenteeism and a decade of faltering test scores.
Rather, hope emerges in the most unlikely of places: three states here in the Deep South that long represented America’s educational basement. These states — Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — have histories of child poverty, racism and dismal educational outcomes, and they continue to spend less than most other states on public schools.
Yet, consider:
Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.
The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.
Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.
Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).
I wrote about Mississippi’s educational successes in 2023, but many of my fellow liberals then scoffed at the notion of learning from a state so tainted. Skeptics, mostly on the left, have made many critiques of the gains, including that they fade in upper grades, that the states are cheating, that this is all a temporary blip and that any progress is simply a result of holding back weak readers.
The critiques have been effectively rebutted — for starters, they can’t explain the continuing gains in Mississippi or the magnitude of the gains. Just as striking, the Mississippi gains increasingly are being replicated in Alabama and Louisiana, as they follow similar approaches. That’s enormously encouraging, for it suggests that other states can also lift student trajectories if they are willing to learn from Southern red states they may be more accustomed to looking down on.
So I traveled through Mississippi and Alabama with the photographer Lynsey Addario to understand the lessons to be learned. Perhaps the most important is an insistence on metrics, accountability and mastery of reading by the end of third grade. And while reading gets the attention, just as important is getting kids to attend school regularly.
. . . In classrooms and offices, teachers and administrators frequently mentioned the motivating power of report cards — not the letter grades given out by schools, but those they receive. Alabama gives its schools report cards, based in part on student performance and attendance, with grades that are widely noted in local communities, and these are one more reason to track down missing children.
. . . In Mississippi, where the four-year high school graduation rate is now 89 percent, the State Department of Education each year must approve a “dropout prevention plan” from each school district. The state education department “office of accountability” publishes lists that shame the 10 school districts with the lowest graduation rates.
. . . The gains in these states suggest that that critique is wrong. Mississippi and Alabama haven’t fixed child poverty, trauma and deeply troubled communities — but they have figured out how to get kids to read by the end of third grade.
In retrospect, I’m afraid that in some parts of the country — particularly blue states — we succumbed to the idea of lowering standards in hopes of improving equity. With warm and fuzzy hopes of reducing race gaps, for example, Oregon reduced graduation requirements and San Francisco for a time stopped teaching algebra to eighth graders. Some schools embraced “equitable grading” practices such as refusing to give zeros, ending penalties for turning in assignments late and allowing repeated retakes of tests.
These strike me as examples of what President George W. Bush called the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Our liberal leniency went off the rails in other ways, including grade inflation and a general coddling of students: Recent cohorts of high school students have simultaneously had rising G.P.A.s and falling A.C.T. scores, and at Harvard, 60 percent of grades in the last academic year were A’s. Colleges have accepted dubious claims of disability so that students can, for example, get extra time for tests. The Atlantic reports that 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability.
I have given more extensive excerpts than usual here because I think the article and its conclusions are important: emphasize reading, emphasize regular school attendance (important!), grade the schools, and avoid lowering standards and weakening the emphasis on merit. Sadly, Kristof says that both Republicans and Democrats have ignored these lessons.
*Ghislaine Maxwell, serving 20 years for child sex trafficking in the Epstein case, was questioned (virtually) by a House Oversight Committee yesterday, but pleaded the Fifth (refused to talk) unless she was given clemency from President Trump.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a federal prison sentence on sex-trafficking charges, refused on Monday to answer questions during a deposition before the House Oversight Committee.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s Republican chairman, said that Ms. Maxwell, who appeared virtually from a prison in Texas, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to every question asked.
“It was very disappointing,” Mr. Comer said. “We had many questions to ask about the crimes she and Epstein committed, as well as questions about potential co-conspirators.”
He also said that Ms. Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, told lawmakers in his opening statement that Ms. Maxwell “would answer questions if she were granted clemency” by President Trump.
Democrats in the deposition condemned that stance.
“She is campaigning over and over again to get that pardon from President Trump, and this president has not ruled it out,” said Representative Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia. “And so that is why she is continuing to not cooperate with our investigation.”
In a copy of his statement posted on social media, Mr. Markus said that “Ms. Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if
Maxwell has put the Administration—and everyone who wants the truth about EpsteinGate—between a rock and a hard place. Trump doesn’t want to give clemency to a pedophile and sex trafficker, but it’s also clear that Maxwell could spill the beans on lots of people, and everybody wants to see who’s guilty. She’s already been moved, without explanation, from a regular prison to a minimum-security prison. I don’t know what the answer is: should you free one pedophile to indict several more? If they decide to do that, could Maxwell provide enough evidence, besides hearsay, to convict several people who participated in the abuse and sex-trafficking scandal. Give you own opinion below.
*Guess which historical figure has now been canceled. According to Andrew Doyle (aka “Titania McGrath”) writing in the Washington Post, Samuel Pepys is “Another ludicrous canceling of a name from the past” (h/t Wayne). Pepys, of course, is most famous for the informative diary he kept for about a decade, a valuable source of information about the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London and, of course, his numerous extramarital affairs, often described in juicy detail. It’s apparently the last fact that has gotten people to start removing his name from things, including a house at the place he went to school:.
But anyone expecting infallibility will be disappointed. These diaries are not objective accounts of historical events, but history filtered through a singular and unmistakably human temperament. This quality explains their flaws, but also their enduring fascination. It also accounts for frequent discomfort over Pepys’s diaries, because they are the work of someone with apparently little sexual restraint. They were routinely censored by those transcribing from his shorthand in the 19th century. An unexpurgated version, including licentious episodes that he had disguised by using French and sometimes Spanish, wasn’t published until 1970.
This squeamishness over the diaries has never gone away. Recently, Hinchingbrooke School in Cambridgeshire — where Pepys was an alumnus — decided that one of its pastoral houses should no longer bear his name. This is just the latest example of an institution rewriting or minimizing aspects of its own history to fulfill the moral expectations of the present day.
Up until now, Hinchingbrooke School has been proud to advertise its association with the great writer. They have yet to name a replacement for Pepys House, but they may struggle to find a figure of unimpeachable virtue. And if moral purity really is to be the standard, they might want to reconsider the name of Cromwell House, given that Oliver Cromwell was responsible for the massacre of thousands of Catholics in the 17th century during his Irish campaign. But I suppose I shouldn’t give them ideas.
The shaming of the dead is one of the most asinine pastimes of today’s culture warriors. We have seen their shrill demands enacted in the renaming of streets and buildings, the removal of statues and the “decolonization” of curriculums. At the University of Liverpool, a student housing block named after the prime minister William Gladstone was rebranded in 2020 because of his father’s slaveholding in the Caribbean. Yet Gladstone himself became an advocate of emancipation, calling slavery “by far the foulest crime that taints the history of mankind”; apparently speeches early in his political career and the sins of his father were enough to see him condemned.
In the United States, countless episodes of colleges and institutions removing now-disapproved of names include Princeton University’s scrubbing of President Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school in 2020. His racist views, repugnant today, were unexceptional in his time.
Indeed, not to mention the geneticists like Ronald Fisher in the U.K. who advocated a form of class-based eugenics, though he never had any influence in British eugenics because there wasn’t any. The last bit is pure Doyle, of course, a contrarian who’s recently written one book on free speech and another on “the new Puritans“, criticizing social justice warriors. But regardless of that, to go after Pepys is ludicrous. If you canceled everyone who had a wide-ranging sex life, extramarital or not, many of history’s great figures would disappear from the scene.
*The BBC has reported on a mushroom in China that has a specific hallucinatory effect on people who eat it when it’s not fully cooked: it makes people see tiny little people! This is the first psychedelic substance I know of that produces specific and similiar qualia on different people (h/t Susan). The syndrome, found in several different Asian countries, is called having “Lilliputian hallucinations.”
Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.
Every year, doctors at a hospital in the Yunnan Province of China brace themselves for an influx of people with an unusual complaint. The patients come with a strikingly odd symptom: visions of pint-sized, elf-like figures – marching under doors, crawling up walls and clinging to furniture.
The hospital treats hundreds of these cases every year. All share a common culprit: Lanmaoa asiatica, a type of mushroom that forms symbiotic relationships with pine trees in nearby forests and is a locally popular food, known for its savory, umami-packed flavor. In Yunnan, L. asiatica is sold in markets, it appears on restaurant menus and is served at home during peak mushroom season between June and August.
One must be careful to cook it thoroughly, though, otherwise the hallucinations will set in.
“At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, ‘Don’t eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'” says Colin Domnauer, a doctoral candidate in biology at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah, who is studying L. asiatica. “It seems like very common knowledge in the culture there.”
But outside of Yunnan and a couple of other places, the strange mushroom is largely an enigma.Domnauer is on a quest to solve the decades-old mysteries about this fungi species and identify the unknown compound responsible for its unusually similar hallucinations – as well as what it can potentially teach us about the human brain.
Domnauer first heard of L. asiatica as an undergraduate from his mycology professor.
“It sounded so bizarre that there could be a mushroom out there causing fairytale-like visions reported across cultures and time,” Domnauer says. “I was perplexed and driven by curiosity to find out more.”
Understanding this mushroom will be no easy feat, Domnauer says, but as with studies of other psychedelic compounds, the scientific research it produces could end up touching on the biggest questions of consciousness and the relationship between mind and reality.
It could also provide important clues about what causes spontaneous lilliputian hallucinations in people even when they’re not consuming L. asiatica. The condition is rare, and as of 2021, only 226 non-mushroom-related cases had been reported since lilliputian hallucinations were first described in 1909. But for those relatively few people, the outcome can be serious: a third of those patients who came down with non-mushroom-related cases did not fully recover.
This is totally bizarre, but also fascinating. Once they identify the compound or the brain region that causes hallucinations to specifically see tiny people, scientists might be able to figure out how the brain causes these consistent delusions. That it’s part of the brain is supported by a similar condition in people who haven’t eaten mushrooms. I wondered immediately if, say, the mushrooms would have the same effect on mice, but making them see tiny mice. At first I thought that experiment that would be impossible, but my friend Peggy Mason, a neuroscientist who worked on mice and rats, said that it’s potentially testable. She suggested that you first train mice to tell us whether they are seeing pictures of tiny mice as opposed, for example, to tiny elephants. You would do this by showing them pictures of each one, and rewarding them with a treat when they go to a correct port (there would be two) associated with elephants or mice. Then you give them the mushrooms and see if the mice, seeing hallucinatory tiny mice, would preferentially go to the port associated with seeing a mouse (the ports don’t have pictures themselves, but mice learn ports based on color, location, etc.). Peggy wanted me to add that she didn’t think the experiment would work!
*Finally, Ginger K. pointed out that I was mentioned in a Grammarphobia post explaining the meaning of the word “osculate,” which, as you know, I regularly use to describe some people’s behavior towards religion.
Q: Here’s the title of a post on a blog I follow: “More osculation of religion by the NYT and Free Press.” I’m not aware of this figurative use of “osculation,” but it could be ignorance on my part.
A: “Osculation” is being used here to mean “kissing,” the original sense of the English noun and its Latin ancestor. However, the noun is now used humorously in its kissing sense, or used as a mathematical term for the point at which a pair of curves or surfaces touch.
The evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne, a religious skeptic, is using “osculation” satirically on his website Why Evolution Is True to say The New York Times and The Free Press are kissing up to religion by taking it seriously.
English borrowed the noun “osculation” and the verb “osculate” from Latin in the mid-17th century. Both terms ultimately come from osculum, Latin for a “kiss” (literally, a “little mouth,” the diminutive of os, or “mouth”).
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “osculation” as “the action of kissing; a kiss.” The earliest OED citation is from The New World of English Words (1658), by Edward Phillips: “Osculation, a kissing or imbracing.” Phillips was a nephew of Milton and educated by him.
As for the verb, the OED defines it as “to kiss (a person or thing), to salute with contact of the lips.” It labels the usage “now archaic or humorous.” The dictionary’s first example is from a dictionary of difficult words:
Well, that’s a mere scintilla of fame, but I’ll take it.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again peckish, like Winnie-the-Pooh:
Hili: At last you pulled yourself away from the computer.
Andrzej: So what?
Hili: It’s time for a little something.
In Polish:
Hili: Nareszcie oderwałeś się od komputera.
Ja: I co z tego?
Hili: Czas na małe co nieco.
*******************
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Now That’s Wild:
From Jesus of the Day, a Joe Pesci cat:
Masih on a child “protestor” who was killed:
I kept looking at Taha’s photos, every single one filled with smile, life, joy…
Taha was only 12 years old.
Khamenei’s soldiers shot him from behind with live ammunition, chanting “Heidar, Heidar.”
A bullet that destroyed this beautiful face, this pure smile, and an entire… pic.twitter.com/y2soNk57Be— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 10, 2026
From Muffy, Islamicat fakes victimhood. (That account is a hoot.)
The problems in Middle East pic.twitter.com/JurjKgis8Z
— Islamicat 💣😾🕌 💥 (@_Islamicat) February 9, 2026
A dad joke from Simon, who’s a dad:
This is a hilarious one on cat names! 😀😛😂 #CatsOfTwitter @DrDeepakKrishn1 pic.twitter.com/Un5ilBMSj4
— Ananth Rupanagudi (@Ananth_IRAS) February 7, 2026
From Malcolm; scene at a Chinese festival (sound up):
Kid dressed up as a Chinese dragon meets some grown up dragons. pic.twitter.com/e3k3ZO8eT3
— The Best (@Thebestfigen) January 31, 2026
One from my feed; a good and faithful cat:
The doctors had to treat a sick man and his cat was there watching everything, all worried about what was happening.pic.twitter.com/GJp1GWLzJm
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 10, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she got to Auschwitz. She was ten years old and would be 92 today.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-02-11T11:20:50.665Z
Two from Dr Cobb. First, the Grasshopper that Ate New York:
I love this one, which Matthew calls “fate.” It is true that whales probably evolved from ancient terrestrial artiodactyls, possibly like Indohyus.
— Chris DeLeon ⓥ DevPods.gg gamedev collabs (@chrisdeleon.bsky.social) 2026-02-10T03:27:32.297Z
One needs to be careful with claims about the “Mississippi Miracle” in education. Just for example:
Part of the “Mississippi Miracle” is refusing to progress children who have not reached grade proficiency in reading. So, a third-grader who can’t read well gets held back and repeats third grade. Normal practice on other states is to progress all children regardless.
But that instantly causes a selection effect. If Mississippi’s fourth-graders include only those who are proficient at reading a third-grade level, whereas Massachusetts’ fourth-graders include all kids of that age, then it’s not surprising that Mississippi looks good in comparison.
So it’s not easy to compare, and no I would not trust a NYT reporter to properly understand such things. If you want to read about this try, for example, this piece for starters.
If anyone knows of an account of Mississippi practices that shows that they really have developed methods to do way better than other states, and explains how they have done it, then please point us to it since I’d be very interested.
This maddening logic is dooming American public school students. The key here is third grade students who can’t read at grade level are held back until they can. The comparison of a cohort between two states is irrelevant.
I am a Hispanic who graduated in the 40th percentile of my high school class of 3,200 students. But thank God (or as Jerry would prefer) and my 8th grade teacher who would not pass me unless I read and wrote at grade level. I went on to a very successful career in which writing was my primary skill.
Primary education is so important and not rocket science. As Jerry writes, emphasize reading, emphasize regular school attendance (important!), grade the schools, and avoid lowering standards and weakening the emphasis on merit.”
Your discussion of selection effect considers a single year of test results, in isolation, and assumes that the low-performing students were removed from the testing pool. That isn’t what’s happening, and this isn’t a new process; Mississippi has been doing it for a decade. The underperforming third graders who are kept back eventually pass and move into the fourth-grade testing pool; they aren’t removed from it indefinitely. Are people really surprised that back-to-basics instruction along with an extra year of teachers working with low performers can be successful? Or are we to accept social promotion as the baseline norm and any deviation from it as an unfair comparison?
I get the skepticism—and I say that as a part-year resident of our nation’s poorest state. Before adopting their methods elsewhere, other states should first rule out systemic cheating, statistical artifacts, etc. But, importantly, it isn’t only the average score that is rising or the low performers who are benefiting. Absolute scores are up at every quartile/percentile—an effect that cannot entirely be explained by student retention policy. And also keep in mind that we aren’t asking these nine- and ten-year-olds to do calculus and read James Joyce. We are asking them to read at a grade-appropriate level; once upon a time that wasn’t considered a stupendous feat.
Here’s my unsubstantiated guess: if Mississippi had seen the same absolute gains over the last decade but remained relatively behind the blue states and the wealthy, nobody outside the region would care about this story. Nobody in our education establishment would have to question the low expectations they place on black students, poor students, and redneck communities. Nor would the Mississippi results call into question the “we need more money” pleas as the solution to every woe. That’s my guess, with one caveat. If Mississippi were 100% black rather than 38% (the highest percentage in the US) and it lacked its racist past, then the criticisms would be significantly muted. Note I don’t say Mississippi would be praised; that would require others to wrestle with their policy failures.
In many ways I’d like this to be genuine. I also think we should enforce class discipline, make demands of kids, not accept excuses, and judge them on merit and results. But I’m also sceptical. So let’s look at long-run outcomes, say age 15 or 18, for comparable cohorts of students, evaluated on standardised tests. Again, I invite readers to point me at such outcome comparisons.
Agreed. I would also be greatly interested to see results at age 18—particularly on tests with more advanced material. I have long held the disfavored notion that the brain drain is very real in places like Mississippi. When only one county in the state has a per capita income at or above the national average, and when there are precious few jobs in most counties for those with advanced degrees outside of K-12 education or healthcare, then many of the more accomplished people flee—even when they don’t want to—and their offspring go to school elsewhere.
“Comparable cohorts” needs to mean truly comparable. Poverty is rampant and social dysfunction widespread—in white communities and black. A simple drive through the rural counties will show you “house” after house that I am confident most WEIT readers wouldn’t deem fit for service as a garage, a shed, or a backyard dog pen. But, you know what, those who aren’t racked with addiction problems still have dignity. I’m happy for them if these gains prove real and the results can hold. But I wouldn’t expect them to send students to the Ivy League in droves. Plus, most of them don’t care. A degree from Ole Miss or State carries far more local currency.
Coel, The PISA assessments for 15ish year olds has been given in Europeu and U.S. for decades. It has even been grabbed by some large school divisions acting like a country to get internationally normed data for themselves if I recall correctly from the 2007-2010 period when I was advocating enrolling Virginia. It went nowhere because I think we were lacking political will to see some truth to guide investments.
Interesting the Lilliputian hallucinations are also the hallmark of vascular dementia. That might help narrow down the part of the brain responsible.
[meme : Mr. Incredible : ]
Lilliputian hallucination | Vascular dementia
https://i.imgflip.com/ajuo7y.jpg
… hey, it worked!
This changes everything 😆
Doyle’s superb piece – on an old topic that never gets old, somehow – suggested the famous quote (in added bold) to me :
“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now.
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
Chapter 4 : The Bluecaps
Written 1958-1968
N.B. the above quote is straight from the book. There are a few variants out there … sooooo… I took the liberty of adding some context.
I’m afraid I think you’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick about Pepys. The controversy around him is not that his sex life was extramarital (which I agree is neither here nor there), it’s that it was often non-consensual – Pepys was at best a self confessed serial sex pest and rapist, and probably a serial rapist, targeting lower class women with no realistic recourse to law.
Google Samuel Pepys rape quote to find some of the things he wrote in his diary about attacks in women
Pepys was a rapist and should be remembered as such. I’m prepared to believe that you may genuinely not know that, but I think the passage of Doyle’s you cite is probably a deliberately dishonest, bad faith attempt to misrepresent a controversy about rape as one about implicitly-consensual affairs.
I don’t think renaming things named after him is morally obligatory, but I’d certainly vote in favour of it.
No, I didn’t know that. And your snarky statement that “I am prepared to believe that you genuinely not know that. . .” is not appreciated.
Thanks for the clarification, but you better read Da Roolz. Clearly you haven’t.
Sorry, that was intended as a substantive criticism of Doyle, not a sideswipe at you, and not meant to come across as snark – I genuinely don’t view not knowing the details of the personal life of a 17th century naval secretary, MP and rapist from another country, whose only claim to fame is that he wrote a diary that happened to be preserved, as a failing, whereas I don’t find it credible that a professional British journalist would choose to write and publish an article on this subject without knowing that the controversy around Pepys is about rapes rather than just affairs. My apologies for getting the tone wrong.
This has two parts, the second of which should be under Coel’s comment #1 above:
First, regarding Maxwell, since our host asked for opinions: who the hell would believe anything she has to say under any circumstances? Just lock her up.
Second, regarding K-12 public ed in the US. President W and others are correct to “beware of the soft racism of low expectations”. I would amend as the pernicious and soft racism of low expectations. I have seen it among do-gooder liberals on our school policy making boards both at the state and local levels. And that drives what I see as a simple lack of political will to do the right thing to get all children properly educated for THEIR next fifty years. While I have been a very vocal promoter of STEM education, that push has been mostly urging educators to teach 21st century appropriate science, technology, engineering, and math rather than a curriculum developed by the committee of ten in 1894. Teach chemistry before biology (or Leon Lederman’s “physics first”); teach numerical analysis or how math is done on digital automata (computers); either integrate modeling and simulation into appropriate courses or teach it as a stand-alone semester; have math courses do a handshake with science and engineering such as an algebra 1 course called algebra 1 with applications to chemistry; teach engineering design elements as part of science courses (already recommended by the NGSS); use asynchronous learning in SUBJECT AREA content to get k12 teachers up to date on developments in STEM itself…not just pedagogy; make sure biology teacher graduates of college teacher prep programs have at least a freshman chem and freshman physics course; make sure all science and math teacher prep programs have a semester of engineering design taught by someone from the school of engineering, not a cte prof in the school of ed; and so on….teaching is the only profession that I know of that stops stem content area professional development upon entry into the profession.
Finally, and most importantly, reading is fundamental to learning any STEM. A number of my ninth grade general math students years ago could not get to learning math simply because they could not read! There are methods to teach reading to those who struggle in pK-2, but they take some additional resources (not a ton) and skills…but these are not flashy programs and require hard work and persistence. Unfortunately I do not see the political will on the part of public policy-makers to see the job through. There are numerous independent schools who have been successful in these 21st century curriculum and teacher prep changes…providing an existence theorem if you like…so it can be done…
Jerry, thanks for the opportunity to spout off!
Agree on Maxwell. She’s a known liar. Her testimony would be worthless.
I don’t know about that. Known liars give testimony all the time. Known liars don’t lie about everything all the time. To some extent, we are all known liars who tell truths to varying degrees.
The fact is that we know something more important about Maxwell. We know that she is a criminal, engaged in a criminal enterprise that hurt and quite likely killed young women. And we know that some of the most powerful people in the world were involved in that enterprise while she was there. Right there.
Her testimony would be extremely helpful to help achieve justice for all the women harmed by those SOB’s. And, since those SOB’s want people to consider an eyewitness to their perfidy to be worthless witnesses, I am inclined to consider her testimony absolutely required.
Yes, but she won’t speak without being pardoned. And her reputation for truth is so bad, only the most gullible would believe her.
Relying on her is true desperation.
GM might well be credible, just not that useful. Prosecution witnesses are often scoundrels who testify in return for immunity. It’s often the only way to get any evidence on the Mr. Bigs, or even to know which ones to investigate. The defence gets a crack at impugning them.
Judges tell juries that they don’t have to believe on faith what any witness says, but they are free to decide that a proven liar is telling the truth this time. Ms. Maxwell did lie under oath in denying she had herself had sex with any of the women. Someone said, in defence of President Clinton, that when a gentleman is asked if he has had sexual relations with anyone who was not then his wife, the only possible answer is “No.” That particular lie doesn’t fatally wound credibility the way, say, embezzling or otherwise breaching trust might.
The big danger, though, with offering her immunity from further charges in exchange for naming names is that she may not know anything juicy. Contrary to Roger Lambert (who has gone way farther down that rabbit hole than I care to), Ms. Maxwell may not have been “right there.” She certainly knows who visited, but unless she saw various Names having sex with minors in front of her, she won’t be of much use in fingering people who
mwe already know were Epstein’s friends.Why would these powerful men with so much to lose do it front of a witness they weren’t interested in banging as part of the deal (she being a bit old for that particular taste despite being attractive and charismatic to any normal male that age), and who on top of that was their host’s main squeeze? GM’s job was to groom the girls, and manipulate them into giving favours for peanuts instead of the thousands of dollars an underage girl should have been worth to wealthy men with that fetish*. She wasn’t there to be part of threesomes. Think: what older woman would want a man to see her naked beside a teenager?
So the DoJ might not get much juice out of her, and they won’t know what she knows and doesn’t know until she takes a deal acceptable to her. She could be playing them, as double agents do.
(*Ephebophilia, not pedophilia, btw.)
“….quite likely killed young women”.
This is the first I’ve heard of this specific allegation. Can you elaborate? Who is missing and what evidence is there that they are dead? Why do you think the DOJ didn’t follow up on murder?
Please, I am NOT baiting you. It’s a serious question. I have no interest in reading the Epstein files. In fact, like “Trump”, “Epstein” is a word I sincerely hope I never hear again. sigh Foolish. It’s Epstein all day, every day. 24/7. I’ve been ignoring it best I can, but it is inescapable. I’ve heard all sorts of claims -did you know Trump once killed and ate a boy? It’s true. It’s right there in the files – but this claim about murdered adult women, I hadn’t heard.
Not to worry.
And it’s not like I obsess over the Epstein stuff – I just spend time on YouTube.
The delta between what is in the files that have already been released (and supposedly there are 3 million more that Bondi and DOJ are refusing to release despite Congress passing a law [which Trump signed!] that demands their release) and what one would hope to see as far as action by the FBI and DOJ is so enormous that it is clear that a huge coverup has taken place. And not just by the Trump II admin, but by Biden et al also.
Re murder:
1) There is an eyewitness account of two young female bodies, supposedly “accidently” asphyxiated during sexual abuse being carried through a mansion. Epstein had at least three mansions – in NYC, on his island, and at the 10,000 acre Zorro ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, about 100 miles from Mexico itself. Supposedly, human trafficking is known to occur along that corridor. I don’t recall if the eyewitness account of bodies took place at Zorro, sorry. But there are multiple accounts of sexual trafficking and sexual abuse that involved the Zorro ranch.
2) Two graves appeared on the Zorro property at this time frame.
3) There is a report – either police or FBI, sorry can’t recall – by a retired Police officer who lived next to the Zorro Ranch, who reported a suspicious large addition to a barn that did not seem related to its function. Not only did it not have enough openings to the outside, but it included a large chimney. The Police officer was concerned that it was evidence of an incinerator.
4) There is no record whatsoever that either the FBI or the DOJ ever searched, or initiated any paperwork or investigation to justify a search of the Zorro ranch, despite multiple recorded attestations by victims. The ranch was sold to an opaque entity after Epstein’s death.
How much of Epstein’s activities involved minors? How much can be proven? I assume there was some, but was ‘some’ a lot? the burden of proof will need to be high and testimony from Maxwell will fall well short of that.
Meanwhile, we see all the time accusations that Trump was a pedophile. I cannot stand the man, but this is very unlikely and anyway it will never be proven unless a former minor victim comes forward.
Re. Trump as pedophile, I remembered Katie Johnson and this is what AI brought up. I’m not saying I believe her, just that there has been at least one accusation from a “victim”.
The woman who used the pseudonym “Katie Johnson” (also known as Jane Doe) accused Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein of raping her in 1994 when she was 13 years old. She filed a lawsuit in 2016, which was withdrawn just days before the presidential election after she reportedly received death threats.
Here are the key details regarding the case and the accuser:
The Allegations: The lawsuit alleged that Trump and Epstein sexually assaulted her at a Manhattan townhouse and other locations in 1994.
Withdrawal and Disappearance: A press conference where she was expected to appear in November 2016 was abruptly canceled by her attorney, Lisa Bloom, who cited “multiple threats” against the woman’s life. Following this, she dropped the lawsuit and effectively disappeared from the public eye.
Identity and Credibility: The woman’s true identity was never officially revealed, and she remained anonymous throughout the proceedings. While some lawyers associated with the case asserted they verified her story, others raised questions about the legitimacy of the filings, noting that an investigator could not locate the address provided by the plaintiff.
Trump’s Response: Trump’s legal team vehemently denied the allegations at the time, calling them a “hoax” and “completely frivolous”.
The case has resurfaced in the media and on social media periodically, particularly in 2025, in connection with renewed scrutiny of Trump’s past ties to Jeffrey Epstein
There are multiple reports in the latest tranche of released Epstein files from supposedly underage victims made to the FBI that Epstein et al was human trafficking underage girls for sex. These reports included allegations of rape. One of these reports included an underage victim who had sex with Donald Trump who then told her personally that if she breathed a word to anybody, she and her family would be killed.
These reports span many years. I have yet to hear of any follow up on these reports. There may have been, but so far, nobody is talking about any.
It is now 1:15 chicago time, five hours after I posted on two items. Look at the preponderance of interest in the criminal maxwell versus making some breakthroughs in k12 ed….”just sayin’ “ as the kids say.
Well, I read your post with great interest and thanks, Jim. Particularly your disappointing observation that teachers don’t get any STEM content in their continuing education (which of course they cancel classes for so they can learn more about DEI pedagogy on our time, not theirs.) There’s not much to comment, unfortunately, because the unions won’t let it happen. Good ideas, though.
Luckily ..to the chagrin of many of my (former) leftish friends who believe if you disagree on anything, you disagree oneverything, we are a right to work state…which means unions are more like a voluntary association in k12 professionals. But still the stuck in second gear state dept of ed will not disrupt the mediocrity of the status quo… standards of learning in physics in 2008 still required teaching of tv picture tube (cathode ray tube)as the central element of. A tv set when most of the nation had flat panels…and no traching of lcd, led, transistors, or ic’s. At least we DID get rid of picture tubes.
This isn’t relevant to today’s post, but I wanted to tell you my small library in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, has a copy of Matthew Cobb’s “Crick” prominently displayed with their new books, which you see as soon as you walk in the door. Encouraging but I guess that’ll cut down on his sales. There’s a website where you can check on which libraries have a book (WorldCat) for all you published writers.
Hey, I live in a small suburb of Atlanta, too! Unfortunately, our library has been closed because somebody was murdered there just last week…
A body in the library? If only Miss Marple were here 🙂
Those mushrooms aren’t the only things that can cause different people to have similar hallucinations. Another is the chemical DMT.
I’ve always been interested in psychedelics and have actually, ahem, succeeded in synthesizing the chemical..
I’m still in the process of ‘experimenting’ with it. Unfortunately, in order to experience the hallucinations, you have to achieve ‘breakthrough’. Different people require significantly different doses to reach this stage, and I seem to require a higher-than-average dose. So I’m still working on it.
How interesting Brooke. I have some commonality of interest with you there. I don’t tweet about it (and I have no DMs thx to Elon) but I’m here-
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
D.A.
NYC
I went to Woodrow Wilson Elementary School, which still exists with its name unchanged.
And to “osculate,” or to kiss. My beloved tenth grade earth science teacher, with whom I remained close friends for the rest of his life, defined kissing as “the mutual juxtaposition of two orbicular muscles in a state of contraction.” As a very literate tenth grader, I never forgot that playful definition.
For some reason, Titania Mcgath is funnier than Andrew Doyle. Given that they are the same person, that doesn’t make sense, but is true anyway.
Doyle writes serious pieces as well as comedy, whereas Titania is always satire.
The Chinese mushroom thingie is strange. I’ve also not encountered the same qualia from users of psychedelics in my personal research or for articles.
The closest I can think of is DMT (Ayahuasca) users commonly report experiencing vivid geometric patterns when they close their eyes. (which I can attest)
And “love of nature” was so frequent one Swiss study included a question about it on future questionnaires, but that’s pretty broad.
D.A.
NYC/CT
I confess that I am the one who sent in the piece to the Grammarphobia site. They and I have become friends over the years through an interest in etymology and current usage.