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.
Welcome to CaturSaturday, February 28, 2026: the last day of a grim February, and shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s also National Science Day, which I’d say is a good day. Go appreciate and hug your local scientist (I’m available in Chicago). Here’s Carl Sagan telling Johnny Carson what was scientifically wrong with “Star Wars”, beginning with rerunning the tape of evolution.
I have described the beginning conflict between the US/Israel versus Iran in the previous post. Stay tuned for updates, but there may not be a Hili dialogue tomorrow.
Neil Sedaka, legendary singer-songwriter behind hits like “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Bad Blood,” “Laughter in the Rain” and “Calendar Girl,” has died, a rep confirms to Variety. He was 86.
A Brooklyn native and a veteran of the legendary “Brill Building” hit factory of the early ’60s, Sedaka scored three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and nine in the Top 10, primarily during his peak years in the early 1960s and a mid-’70s comeback assisted by Elton John (who performed with him on the 1975 No. 1 “Bad Blood”).
Sedaka also wrote many songs that were hits for other artists, most notably Connie Francis’ 1958 hit “Stupid Cupid” and, 17 years later, the Captain and Tennille’s breakthrough chart-topper “Love Will Keep Us Together.” He continued to tour and record for many years after his commercial peak.
His best song, in my view, is “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” written by Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, a toe-tapper that hit #1 in America in 1962. It is right up there with “So Much in Love“ by the Tymes as a bouncy doo-wop classic (the latter is the best of all doo-wop songs). But I digress: here is the original of the Sedaka song. with the singer lip-synching the original release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8ndaRoGUjsWith the threat of a U.S. strike on Iran looming, the United States embassy in Jerusalem has told its workers that they may leave Israel and warned them that if they want to, it is vital that they do so immediately.
The directive came from Ambassador Mike Huckabee in an email to embassy workers at the U.S. mission on Friday, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.
Those wishing to leave “should do so TODAY,” Mr. Huckabee wrote, urging them to find flights out of Ben-Gurion Airport to any destination for which they could book passage. “There is no need to panic,” he added, “but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later.”
The email, which was verified by three people with knowledge of the matter, made no explicit mention of Iran. It followed meetings and phone calls through the night, Mr. Huckabee wrote to employees, and resulted from “an abundance of caution” and conversations with the State Department in which officials agreed that the safety of embassy staff was a priority.
The embassy’s move “will likely result in high demand for airline seats today,” he said in the email. “Focus on getting a seat to anyplace from which you can then continue travel to DC, but the first priority will be getting expeditiously out of country.”
Umm. . . .I think Huckabee knows something the rest of us don’t. Why would he tell the staff to leave TODAY if the attack wasn’t imminent. On the other hand, this could be a bluff to force Iran to give up stuff. But the Islamic Republic will never give up what’s most important to them: the facilities for enriching uranium to the weapons-grade 90%+.
*As always, I’m stealing a few items from Nellie Bowles’s news/snark column in the Free Press, called this week, “TGIF: The situation has snowballed.”
→ Bill Gates and Larry Summers: Bill Gates, that poor malaria-curing genius, formally apologized this week to his foundation staff in a big town hall over his Jeffrey Epstein ties and the fact that he had affairs with two Russian women—that we know about. And Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, resigned from all teaching duties over his friendship with Epstein. I don’t know. I definitely think Epstein was a sex trafficker who deserved his fate (which was for sure that he was murdered), but I also think there’s a moral panic right now around anyone who came into contact with him. Like, Bill Clinton flew on his plane a bunch, but do I think Bill Clinton is a cannibal baby eater? No, I don’t. I think he cheated on Hillary and Jeff was someone to do bad things with. Do I think Bill should be entirely destroyed for that? Well, he was cheating on My Hilz, so, maybe. Wrong example. But to me, the current conniptions are a little manic, a little like a witch hunt. Now it’s become a whole thing about The Epstein Class. Maybe, I’m just defensive, as a member of the Epstein Files Community (I was a New York Times reporter doing a meeting for a story under the supervision of like five editors, I scream into the void, to no avail). Not everyone who emailed with Epstein was eating babies! We are a diverse community. Some are reporters, some are philanderers, and yes, morally that is the same, but still. Larry Summers is (probably?) innocent. Plus, I’m allergic to baby!
→ How dare you use the Naval Yard for military companies: Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York, and his team are ousting military contractors from the city-owned Naval Yard. Here’s a local council member, celebrating the decision: “Easy Aerial is leaving the Brooklyn Navy Yard. [Brooklyn Navy Yard] leadership made the right decision last month to not renew their lease. This public asset should not be leasing space to companies producing drones that are being transformed into weapons of war.” It’s part of a movement to “Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard.” What do we think the word navy means? A deep shade of blue that symbolizes authority? Okay, fine. But genuinely, is the idea that America should not have a military, or just that the people who build our Air Force shouldn’t be allowed to live in Brooklyn? Play it out for me. I’m calling it—a “Let’s Sink the Intrepid Museum” movement (hiring 400 anti-Ozempic individuals to jump on it) is on the horizon.
→ Pack an AR-15 on your vacation, Grandma: Tourists were left stranded in Mexico as cartel violence exploded across places like Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, a fabulous vacation destination if you’re a burning tire. It looked like a civil war. Cars were on fire outside of a Costco. Women wearing custom pink trucker hats on girls’ trips were trapped.Hotels were reportedly denying late checkout, even to Marriott Platinum Elite members. Platinum Elites get a more dignified welcome internationally than most public officials. They may have more power than an ambassador. But now, everyone must fend for themselves. For some reason, this really made me laugh:
Gringos, especially members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, have been trapped in a drug war, and Canada’s government is like: We especially see you, two-spirit Puerto Vallarta party boys. Stay safe, queens. Because in those shorts? They’re coming for you, specifically.
And from Nellie’s bit on antisemitism. She gives two examples.
Here’s the investigations editor at The American Prospect, a mainstream progressive publication. She was a founding staffer at the popular feminist site Jezebel. And now this is what she explains would be the only way Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro could be considered a presidential front-runner:
The key phrase is the idea of mass slaughter to save the human race. Killing off this one people might just save the whole world.
Or here’s Ana Kasparian, another influential progressive commentator, elegantly summarizing the mood of the moment.
Verifying the above (yes, it’s real), I found that Kasparian had commented on that comment:
Antisemitic blockheads speaking! Israel has destroyed the United States? And no, Kasparian cannot be silenced; she can only be called out for what she is.
By sifting through an anonymized genealogy database, researchers have discovered a Utah family that has been having twice as many boys as girls for seven generations. It is the first clear evidence that humans might have ‘selfish genes’ that distort the sex ratio of offspring from roughly 50:50, the researchers argue in a preprint posted on bioRxiv earlier this month1. The findings have not been peer-reviewed.
Such sex ‘distorters’ have been discovered — and studied in great depth — in laboratory animals such as mice and flies, in which their effects can be detected through selective breeding. “If you look, more often than not, you find them,” says Nitin Phadnis, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who co-led the study.
Theoretical predictions suggest that sex distorters probably do exist in people as well, and that they could produce excesses of biological boys or girls at birth. But humans’ long generation times and low birth rates as well as ethical issues have made such genes — and other ‘selfish’ genetic elements , meaning that they bias their own transmission to future generations whether or not they improve an individual’s biological fitness — difficult to spot.
To overcome such issues, Phadnis and his colleagues looked to the Utah Population Database, which contains genealogical, health and other data for people from the late eighteenth century through to the present.
In humans, biological sex is determined by the sex chromosome that fathers pass onto their offspring: each sperm cell typically carries either a Y or an X chromosome, but not both. The mother’s egg cell, by contrast, usually carries a single X. Therefore, when sperm cells fertilize an egg cell, those with a Y chromosome give rise to biological male offspring (people who have both an X and a Y) and those with an X chromosome create biological female offspring (people with two Xs).
It’s likely that in this case the Y chromosome itself carries genes—although it carries few genes—that get it preferentially into a sperm or zygote, but there are several ways this can happen. We don’t know which one, nor do we yet know the molecular mechanism of sex-ratio distortion. Experiments are hard because these are humans, and you can’t do crosses with them, or manipulate their genes as we can do it in mice or flies. One might wonder if this distortion, if continued, would eliminate females from the population, but there are at least two reasons that won’t happen. I’ll leave you to think of them.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested a Columbia University student on Thursday, then released her hours later following a request from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to President Donald Trump.
Federal immigration officers arrested Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva in an early-morning operation Thursday that led to a federal lawsuit and conflicting accounts of how the federal agents identified themselves to gain entry into her university-owned apartment in New York.
The New York City mayor’s office confirmed her release, saying officials asked ICE not to move her from the city so that she could have her day in immigration court.
“ICE cooperated with the request,” city spokesman Sam Raskin said in an email. “Mayor Mamdani then raised the issue directly with the President at the White House, and shortly after their meeting, the President informed him over the phone that Aghayeva would be released.”
After her release, the university and federal officials gave starkly different accounts of the circumstances of her arrest.
Claire Shipman, the school’s acting president, released a video and statement Thursday evening saying officers had misrepresented themselves. She said surveillance cameras showed five federal agents enter the off-campus Columbia residential building where Aghayeva lived shortly after 6 a.m. After making their way to her apartment, they showed pictures of an alleged missing child.
“Once inside the apartment, it became clear they had misrepresented themselves,” Shipman said. “A public safety officer arrived, asked multiple times for a warrant, which was not produced, and asked for time to call his boss, which was not given.
“The agents took our student.”
Shipman called the incident “frightening” and “unacceptable.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit identified themselves verbally and displayed their badges. The department did not directly respond to allegations that the agents had entered student housing under false pretenses. Federal officials said the building manager and her roommate let them into the apartment.
ICE placed Aghayeva in removal proceedings, federal officials added, and released her to await a hearing.
This is why ICE agents should wear body cameras, as the Democrats have demanded (that standoff is still going on). At any rate, this seems to be a tolerable outcome. She isn’t captive, but is awaiting her day in immigration court. I hope that won’t take too long. All immigrants suspected of illegal entry, unless they were convicted of crimes beyond that, should be afforded freedom before they appear before an immigration judge.
*Bill Clinton began his deposition before the Senate about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, and was less abrasive than Hillary. He was deposed not in Washington, but in an Arts center in New York. He maintains his innocence, but I wonder about those 17 visits of Epstein to the White House (why so many?) and the photographs of Clinton with Epstein and women whose faces are redacted (you can see some at the Guardian). The Guardian notes this:
The former president has maintained that he was an acquaintance of Epstein’s but stopped communicating with him at least a decade before his arrest in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. He flew on Epstein’s plane several times in the early 2000s after he left office and says he severed ties in the mid-2000s, several years before Epstein’s 2008 conviction of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Former President Bill Clinton began what was expected to be hours of testimony as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, striking a less defiant tone than Hillary Clinton did a day earlier.
In an opening statement posted online, Mr. Clinton acknowledged that he did have a connection with Mr. Epstein and that he was wiling to answer questions about it. But he insisted that he never knew about Mr. Epstein’s crimes and cut off his association with him long before his first guilty plea.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” he said. “Even with 20/20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long.”
His deposition at the Chappaqua Performing Arts center near his home in the New York City suburbs marked the first time in history a former president was forced to testify before Congress against his will. The Democratic members of the panel have immediately signaled their intention to use it as a precedent to try to force President Trump to also answer questions about his relationship with Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Clinton’s session with House lawmakers was expected to follow the same format that Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, sat through on Thursday. Her deposition, which lasted more than six hours, appeared to yield no information about Mr. Epstein.
“I don’t know how many times I had to say I did not know Jeffrey Epstein,” she told reporters after the session ended. “It’s on the record numerous times.”
But Mr. Clinton did have a relationship with Epstein during the years he was building the Clinton Global Initiative, his post-presidential foundation, and Republicans said that they were eager to press him about their contacts. They also said that Mrs. Clinton had referred many of their questions to her husband and that lawmakers planned to follow up with him.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s chairman, declared the committee was bringing “some of the most powerful people in the world” to testify in the Epstein investigation.
He said he intended to ask about Mr. Epstein’s 17 visits to the White House while Mr. Clinton was in office, as well as photographs of the men together. “There are a lot of photos,” Mr. Comer said.
The Clintons fought for months to block the subpoenas they called invalid, unenforceable and politically motivated. They ultimately capitulated to Mr. Comer’s demands after some Democrats on the House Oversight Committee voted with Republicans to hold them in contempt of Congress if they failed to testify. Mr. Comer said on Friday that he would release the full transcript and video of Mrs. Clinton’s deposition, which she had requested to be made public, in the coming days.
This is the first time any President, sitting or ex-, has testified before Congress, and he’s the man who said “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.” Of course that depended on a weaselly definition of sex (fellatio), but like everyone, without a trial, we should presume that Clinton is innocent.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s getting bathing advice from Andrzej:
Hili: What was I about to wash? Andrzej: Your ear, I guess?
Hili: The right or the left?
In Polish:
Hili: Co ja miałam teraz umyć?
Ja: Pewnie ucho?
Hili: Prawe, czy lewe?
At least 23,000 Roma and Sinti people – including 11 thousand children were deported by the Nazi German regime to Auschwitz. After the Jews and Poles, they are the third largest groups of the victims of the camp.
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, one of his beloved illusions, and a paper about it:
Here's a striking visual illusion – the 9 purple dots.Focus your eyes on the top left dot. That one is more purple than the others, right? Now try another dot… that one becomes the purple one! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41744429/
I’ve posted this before in English, but the point is the same in French, and I love the video because it shows a savvy mallard. (“Cesars” are the French equivalent of Oscars.)
The Department of Defense should either (1) cut-off all Federal funds to NYC and NY state until the leases are renewed, or (2) even better, seize the yard.
I’m off to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow for two months. Can’t wait to get there!
Oct. 9, 2012–Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.
Sept. 10, 2013–Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!
Sept. 16, 2013–I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!
Sept. 25, 2013–Remember what I previously said–Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.
“May have misprepresented themselves”? There’s a lot of wiggle room in that may. They may not have. It’s also not clear that they would have been wrong to do so. Wapo seems to silent on that. It seems clear that they identified themselves as law enforcement, or they wouldn’t have been let in to look for a missing child. If that is true, then the school is upset because ICE enforced laws that they don’t like rather than ones that they do. It is also unclear whether there was a deportation order for Aghayeva. I am guessing there was, otherwise the Wapo would have made hay with that. There does not have to be a warrant if there is a deportation order (and that leads to detention, not arrest). Like all these illegal alien horror stories, this sounds like a lot of half-truths intended to stoke outrage.
I read that she hasn’t been actually enrolled, but was rather kicked out years ago.
I recall…
That Algerian/”Pal” deported and not deported rabble rouser and terrorism salesman… a few months ago was similarly being “housed” – with wife and baby – by Colombia U.
D.A.
NYC
Like the short “what they didn’t tell you” clip, though it’s a bit idealised in the other direction.
I remember 35 years ago a friend asking why people think that we and the descendants of slaves should be “enemies”, when their ancestors and our ancestors were being repressed and exploited by the same (sort of) people, so shouldn’t that make us “allies”?
A colleague says that I’m a marxist because I always bring class into everything, but then as Dennis the peasant points out, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?
It is incredibly noticeable how so much discourse goes on about nationality, gender, ethnicity etc but almost entirely ignores class. When everything is seen in terms of nationality etc and not in terms of class, who benefits? (Answer left as an exercise for the reader).
You mean “money”, when you say “class”. At least today, that’s what it means. In the past class was closely associated with heritage, but today that is not so. All of the “watch your privilege” crap that was thrown at us during the worst of the woke years blithely ignored the true privilege rank in the world today; wealth. That is our class system now; based entirely on wealth. Just as in the past, there are relatively few people who have any real privilege or power and they abuse both. It is time again for the pitchforks.
Except that the desire of many of the people without wealth is to get it somehow and do the oppressing and abusing themselves. Much better than pitchforks, and less risk of being mowed down by someone guarding his property with a machine gun. Also the pitchfork wielders won’t have the faintest idea of what to do with the goose they have just disemboweled and found it’s not full of golden eggs. 🙁
The ambitious poor, the ones who come to America, know the route to true wealth and power is ascension through the middle class where taxation of disposable and investable income is the most rapacious. So even poor people, if they want to get ahead, should favour lower taxes on those with higher income than themselves, because that is the tax bracket they themselves will have to occupy in their next move up. This logic applies all the way up: if a striver is thinking, “Gee, my marginal rate will go up so much if I earn more, it’s not worth the effort,” he won’t make it. It might be nice to earn $1 million a year and pay “only” $450,000* a year in income tax and another $30 k in property tax, but the hard part is getting ahead on $120,000 before you make your first million. High taxes on upper-middle income earners, not abusive plutocrats, trammel up the effort to get rich.
(* The top combined federal-provincial marginal income tax rate is 53.5% in Ontario, and it kicks in at a taxable income of ~$220,000. Almost all income in Canada is taxable except, oddly, government lottery winnings, so if someone advertises a salary of $300,000, pretty well all of it is taxable. If your business made a profit of 300,000 and you took all the profit out as your personal income, you would pay the personal rate, not the (lower) corporate rate on what you left invested in the business.)
I’m going deep into the memory banks here, but I thought the genes on the chromosome carried within sperm were not expressed; I thought the chromosome within a spermatozoa is inactive, wrapped up and everything. That’s what’s got me confused about the sex distorter. I am sure, like in almost everything else, I am wrong. What better place to get re-educated about this than WEIT.
Another note which, if there really is a Ceiling Cat up there, might get me banned; it was empathetic to rescue the penguin. I would do the same. I like penguins. They’re cute. But what about the seal? No empathy for him? That was his meal and life for a seal can be very hard.
I don’t know how sex distorters work, but my online perusal shows that there are various mechanisms although I did not seen specifics in the time spent looking for them. I have a hand-wavey idea though, which is that even if chromosomes are shut down in a mature sperm cell, they are most definitely expressed during sperm cell development. So perhaps that is one solution — where expression of a Y-linked gene in developing sperm cells gives the cells advantages in reaching or penetrating the egg.
I don’t have much empathy for penguins after one swam over and bit me in the neck while I was peacefully snorkelling in the Galapagos. Maybe that was just a psychopathic penguin though and not representative of the species in general. Or come to think of it, maybe he/she thought I was a seal!
I saw Neil Sedaka in concert around 1974. He put on a great show. Last night, my wife and I listened to some of his hits. He had a beautiful voice and was a fine talent.
October 7 (and 9/11)
Supporting terrorism throughout the world
Massacring their own civilian population
Desperate for nukes
None of these were mentioned by Ilhan Omar, a loathsome human being. If her co-religionist gets the Dem nod for 2028, I will vote for the Republican, no matter who he or she is.
Curing Malaria (Bill Gate) is a mere trifle compared to the monstrous crime of being associated with Epstein. I actually think that cheating on his wife was Bill Gates biggest offense. He agrees and says that he deeply regrets his past conduct. The Gates foundation has done both good and bad things (in my opinion). I consider global vaccination program to be a plus. The small schools (in the US) initiative is a minus.
The Department of Defense should either (1) cut-off all Federal funds to NYC and NY state until the leases are renewed, or (2) even better, seize the yard.
I’m off to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow for two months. Can’t wait to get there!
Please report to us here on WEIT what you find in Puerto Vallarta.
YES! How cool, Mark. Have a great trip and keep us informed.
Mexico is fantastic!
all the best,
D.A.
NYC
Actual Trump tweets:
Oct. 9, 2012–Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.
Sept. 10, 2013–Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!
Sept. 16, 2013–I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!
Sept. 25, 2013–Remember what I previously said–Obama will someday attack Iran in order to show how tough he is.
Good one!
“May have misprepresented themselves”? There’s a lot of wiggle room in that may. They may not have. It’s also not clear that they would have been wrong to do so. Wapo seems to silent on that. It seems clear that they identified themselves as law enforcement, or they wouldn’t have been let in to look for a missing child. If that is true, then the school is upset because ICE enforced laws that they don’t like rather than ones that they do. It is also unclear whether there was a deportation order for Aghayeva. I am guessing there was, otherwise the Wapo would have made hay with that. There does not have to be a warrant if there is a deportation order (and that leads to detention, not arrest). Like all these illegal alien horror stories, this sounds like a lot of half-truths intended to stoke outrage.
I read that she hasn’t been actually enrolled, but was rather kicked out years ago.
I recall…
That Algerian/”Pal” deported and not deported rabble rouser and terrorism salesman… a few months ago was similarly being “housed” – with wife and baby – by Colombia U.
D.A.
NYC
Like the short “what they didn’t tell you” clip, though it’s a bit idealised in the other direction.
I remember 35 years ago a friend asking why people think that we and the descendants of slaves should be “enemies”, when their ancestors and our ancestors were being repressed and exploited by the same (sort of) people, so shouldn’t that make us “allies”?
A colleague says that I’m a marxist because I always bring class into everything, but then as Dennis the peasant points out, that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?
It is incredibly noticeable how so much discourse goes on about nationality, gender, ethnicity etc but almost entirely ignores class. When everything is seen in terms of nationality etc and not in terms of class, who benefits? (Answer left as an exercise for the reader).
You mean “money”, when you say “class”. At least today, that’s what it means. In the past class was closely associated with heritage, but today that is not so. All of the “watch your privilege” crap that was thrown at us during the worst of the woke years blithely ignored the true privilege rank in the world today; wealth. That is our class system now; based entirely on wealth. Just as in the past, there are relatively few people who have any real privilege or power and they abuse both. It is time again for the pitchforks.
Except that the desire of many of the people without wealth is to get it somehow and do the oppressing and abusing themselves. Much better than pitchforks, and less risk of being mowed down by someone guarding his property with a machine gun. Also the pitchfork wielders won’t have the faintest idea of what to do with the goose they have just disemboweled and found it’s not full of golden eggs. 🙁
The ambitious poor, the ones who come to America, know the route to true wealth and power is ascension through the middle class where taxation of disposable and investable income is the most rapacious. So even poor people, if they want to get ahead, should favour lower taxes on those with higher income than themselves, because that is the tax bracket they themselves will have to occupy in their next move up. This logic applies all the way up: if a striver is thinking, “Gee, my marginal rate will go up so much if I earn more, it’s not worth the effort,” he won’t make it. It might be nice to earn $1 million a year and pay “only” $450,000* a year in income tax and another $30 k in property tax, but the hard part is getting ahead on $120,000 before you make your first million. High taxes on upper-middle income earners, not abusive plutocrats, trammel up the effort to get rich.
(* The top combined federal-provincial marginal income tax rate is 53.5% in Ontario, and it kicks in at a taxable income of ~$220,000. Almost all income in Canada is taxable except, oddly, government lottery winnings, so if someone advertises a salary of $300,000, pretty well all of it is taxable. If your business made a profit of 300,000 and you took all the profit out as your personal income, you would pay the personal rate, not the (lower) corporate rate on what you left invested in the business.)
I’m going deep into the memory banks here, but I thought the genes on the chromosome carried within sperm were not expressed; I thought the chromosome within a spermatozoa is inactive, wrapped up and everything. That’s what’s got me confused about the sex distorter. I am sure, like in almost everything else, I am wrong. What better place to get re-educated about this than WEIT.
Another note which, if there really is a Ceiling Cat up there, might get me banned; it was empathetic to rescue the penguin. I would do the same. I like penguins. They’re cute. But what about the seal? No empathy for him? That was his meal and life for a seal can be very hard.
Yes, they are expressed, and you can Google or use AI and look up “meiotic drive genes on the Y chromosome”.
Please obey the “not too frequent’ posts rules. I will not comment on your hope to see the penguin eaten by the seal.
You’re right! I should have just googled it instead of bothering people here with questions.
Sorry for da rule violation.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
There wouldn’t be much of a discussion if we all just looked things up on Google. That’s sad.
I don’t know how sex distorters work, but my online perusal shows that there are various mechanisms although I did not seen specifics in the time spent looking for them. I have a hand-wavey idea though, which is that even if chromosomes are shut down in a mature sperm cell, they are most definitely expressed during sperm cell development. So perhaps that is one solution — where expression of a Y-linked gene in developing sperm cells gives the cells advantages in reaching or penetrating the egg.
I don’t have much empathy for penguins after one swam over and bit me in the neck while I was peacefully snorkelling in the Galapagos. Maybe that was just a psychopathic penguin though and not representative of the species in general. Or come to think of it, maybe he/she thought I was a seal!
The cat/rooster friendship video is nice and all, but I am pretty sure it is AI.
I saw Neil Sedaka in concert around 1974. He put on a great show. Last night, my wife and I listened to some of his hits. He had a beautiful voice and was a fine talent.
Donald Trump is about to apologize for bombing Iran – “My fellow Americans, it was supposed to be Greenland.”
October 7 (and 9/11)
Supporting terrorism throughout the world
Massacring their own civilian population
Desperate for nukes
None of these were mentioned by Ilhan Omar, a loathsome human being. If her co-religionist gets the Dem nod for 2028, I will vote for the Republican, no matter who he or she is.
Curing Malaria (Bill Gate) is a mere trifle compared to the monstrous crime of being associated with Epstein. I actually think that cheating on his wife was Bill Gates biggest offense. He agrees and says that he deeply regrets his past conduct. The Gates foundation has done both good and bad things (in my opinion). I consider global vaccination program to be a plus. The small schools (in the US) initiative is a minus.
The first sentence is pure sarcasm on my part. For some reason that sarcasm tags are not visible.