Welcome to Sunday, April 5, 2026, and it’s Easter, which gives me a chance to tell my Jewish Easter joke. My records say “It comes from the site Southern Jewish Humor, which gets the story from Eli N. Evans, who wrote The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South: Evans said he searched for the best example he could find of Southern Jewish humor. ”
He told the story of a Jewish storekeeper in a small town who was approached by the Christian elders to show solidarity for their Easter holiday.
Mr. Goldberg was chagrined but when Easter came, after sunrise services on a nearby hilltop, the mayor, all the churchgoers, and the leading families in the city gathered in the town square in front of his store. The store had a new sign but it was draped with a parachute.
After an introduction from the mayor, at the appointed hour, the owner pulled the rope and there it was revealed in all its wonder for all to see: “Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”
And, since it’s still Passover (until April 9). I hope you get this:
It’s also First Contact Day from Star Trek (humans contacted aliens on April 5, 2063 when the Vulcan ship T’Plana-Hath landed in Bozeman, Montana), National Baked Ham with Pineapple Day, National Caramel Day, and National Deep Dish Pizza Day (the best kind, but best only in Chicago).
Today’s Google Doodle marks the holiday; click to see where it goes:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*BREAKING NEWS (relevant to first post below). The missing U.S. airman has been rescued in a daring night commando raid in Iran.
An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky night mission deep inside Iranian territory, President Trump said on social media early Sunday.
The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, a weapon systems officer, officials said. The operation took commandos deep inside Iran and involved hundreds of special operations troops.
There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said. The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump added.
Finding the downed airman had been the U.S. military’s top priority since Friday, when Iran’s military shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle. It was the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being shot down by Iran since the war began more than a month ago. The two members ejected from the cockpit and the pilot was quickly rescued.
Of course the NYT, which wants America to lose the war, had to qualify the above by adding this right after:
The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. On Sunday, Israel and Gulf nations reported attempted drone and missile strikes they attributed to Iran. Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex.
This is excellent news for several reasons: the man is alive and apparently well, and Iran, who was using hundreds of forces to find him (plus offering a $60,000 bounty), would have used him as a bargaining chip to settle the war, much as the Palestinians do when they capture an IDF soldier or take civilian hostages.
*An airman shot down over Iran in an F15 fighter bailed out on Friday along with a fellow crewman. One has been rescued, but the other airman is somewhere in Iran, with the military doing a lot of sorties to find him.
The U.S. military was racing on Saturday to find an American airman who ejected from a fighter jet that was shot down over Iran, even as President Trump said time was “running out” on his ultimatum to escalate U.S. attacks unless a deal was reached in two days.
The White House has mostly been silent about the downing of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet by Iranian forces since it was first reported more than a day ago, as well as about the attempts to recover its two crew members. U.S. officials said one had been rescued, but the status of the second was unknown as of Saturday.
In a social media post on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump did not address the airman’s status. Instead, he reiterated that the deadline for his threat to massively bombard Iranian power plants would expire in 48 hours unless Iran agreed to stop blockading the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for Persian Gulf oil and gas.
Mr. Trump has already delayed the ultimatum twice, saying that there were ongoing talks between the United States and Iran. Iranian officials have publicly dismissed U.S. demands, however, and continued to voice defiance after the two airmen were shot down on Friday.
. . . The downing of the fighter jet on Friday was the first time U.S. personnel and combat aircraft have been shot down in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war began in late February. Iranian forces were also seeking to capture the missing American, Iranian officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing operations.
I can’t help but imagine what that pilot, who is likely still alive, is doing. The television news last night said he had been trained in how to survive in enemy territory, and I presume he has at least some food and water with him (I’m presuming that it’s a male). But Iran has offered a $60,000 bounty for anyone who turns the pilot over to the police, and I can only imagine what they’d do to him if they caught him. (Do no presume that Iran adheres to the Geneva Convention for POWs!). Sometimes I fantasize that he’ll be taken in by anti-regime civilians, who will forego the bounty, and endanger their own lives, by harboring an enemy airman.
*The Wall Street Journal discusses Trump’s attempts to open the Strait of Hormuz, a task that the WSJ calls “mission impossible”:
President Trump has called on allied nations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, to allow a fifth of the world’s oil to flow again through the passageway that Iran has effectively shut since the war started.
The problem: Naval escorts for tankers through such a narrow waterway in a war zone would be nearly impossible, say allied officials and military experts. Reopening the strait would more likely come after a cease-fire and through international pressure on Iran, they say.
Forcing open the strait militarily is unrealistic, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. “It would take forever and would expose all those crossing the strait to risks” of Iranian attack, he said.
“Iran is trying to hold the global economy hostage in the Strait of Hormuz,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Thursday after convening a meeting of more than 40 countries seeking to reopen the strait. They discussed political and diplomatic steps, including potential sanctions, she said. Military intervention wasn’t on the list of options discussed.
Trump said Wednesday that strikes on Iran would continue for more than two weeks. During that time, shippers are unlikely to risk sending commercial vessels through the combat zone, analysts say. The question is what level of assurance they need to start sailing again in large numbers.
U.S. and Israeli strikes have badly damaged Iran’s regular naval assets. Yet the main threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz comes not from Iran’s conventional navy but from its arsenal of land-based antiship missiles, drones, swarms of small attack craft, midget submarines and various types of mines.
Geography complicates defending ships. The strait is roughly 20 miles wide at its narrowest point and divided into lanes to separate marine traffic, forcing merchant ships to travel along predictable routes. The warning time of a potential attack, and the chance to respond, would be exceedingly brief.
Iran has nearly 1,000 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf, which it can use to launch attacks against ships, such as the drone strike that earlier this week hit a fully laden Kuwaiti oil tanker off the coast of Dubai. The coastline is dominated by mountains and coves, allowing Iranian forces to launch surprise attacks with swarms of speed boats. Tunnels under the rock, or ones hidden by mangroves and in salt caves, shelter boats that can either be launched directly into the water, or from trailers.
If we need a cease-fire and negotiated settlement with Iran to open the Strait, then everything becomes a mess, as a negotiated settlement that leaves the theocracy in power doesn’t solve any problem except the transit of oil. It doesn’t solve the oppression and murder of Iranian civilians, the dictatorial nature of the government, and the government’s drive to produce nuclear weapons. The war is a mess, and I worry that Trump will just tire of it, let Iran go the way of Venezuela (no real change in leadership), and move on to his next “project.”
*Luana sent this NYT headline (article archived here):
An excerpt:
Syracuse University is closing or halting enrollment in about 20 percent of its academic programs, in a move that the school’s provost said was designed to create a university that would be “more focused, more distinctive and more aligned with student demand.”
The overhaul was revealed in a letter from the provost, Lois Agnew, that was sent on Wednesday to students and faculty members. And while the letter did not list the cuts, a spreadsheet provided by the university showed that the humanities and the fine arts represented the largest share.
Classics and ceramics are out as majors, along with a host of others that had attracted few students.
In all, 93 of the 460 academic programs at the school will be closed or paused, meaning that no new students will be able to enroll in those majors. Coursework in the areas will still be offered, and minors in many of the subjects will continue to be available.
Similar changes are happening at universities around the country, as students seek out fields that they believe will more directly translate into higher-paying jobs, a recent analysis by the American Enterprise Institute showed. College administrators, following the market, have been reducing humanities offerings.
Among the 17 majors ending in the College of Arts and Sciences are the undergraduate degrees in classical civilization, classics, German, Italian, Middle Eastern studies and Modern Jewish studies, the spreadsheet showed.
Students will still be able to study German and Italian — as well as Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish — as tracks in a new world languages and cultures bachelor’s degree program or as minors, a website detailing the changes showed.
In the College of Visual and Performing Arts, it will no longer be possible to major in ceramics, jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture, painting or art video, though coursework in those areas will remain. Instead, students will be channeled into a broader bachelor of fine arts degree that will offer those fields as concentrations.
You can see the full list of programs cut by Syracuse here. This has also happened, though on a smaller scale, at the University of Chicago:
The University of Chicago’s Division of the Arts & Humanities is preparing for a significant reorganization to cut administrative costs, with proposed changes expected to be presented to Provost Katherine Baicker by late August.
Citing new federal policies and shifts in the “underlying financial models” for higher education, the division is considering consolidating its 15 departments into eight, reducing language instruction, and establishing minimum class and program sizes.
This is also solely in the humanities, and undoubtedly for the same reason: students aren’t majoring in those areas because you can’t get a job with a major in, say, languages or fine arts. I find this all very sad, because consolidating departments inevitably means cutting courses that were essential for a major but not sufficiently attractive to be part of a liberal education. And that inevitably means cutting faculty lines. What’s essential is to maintain courses that would be pivotal for a liberal education, and I’m sure that at least Chicago will do that. I am surprised that gender studies has not been on the chopping block, but that may be for ideological rather than for enrollment reasons.
*Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign-policy positions under three Republican Presidents, has a critique in the National Review of Trump’s latest update on Iran: “The President’s not-so-reassuring Iran address.” with the subtitle, “President Trump could have done a better job assuaging the concerns of the American public.”
. . . as a performance, it was unimpressive. The president read his lines too fast, and instead of emphasizing the key words or passages, he added comments that were sometimes irrelevant, other times disturbing, and often inaccurate. Do Americans really want to bomb Iran or anyone else “back the Stone Ages where they belong”? Does anyone believe the second-level Revolutionary Guard officers who’ve replaced those killed are actually “less radical and much more reasonable”? In what possible sense was Iran trying to build “a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before”?
It would have been far better for the president to speak more plainly about the great achievements of these four weeks of combat. And the best parts of the speech were his explanations of our purpose: to prevent the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism from developing a nuclear weapon and from threatening its neighbors — and us — with intercontinental ballistic missiles and other growing military assets.
What did the president say about the future? Many predictions had suggested he would announce ending the war quickly, due to fear of the political effects of high oil prices and the falling stock market. But Donald Trump is always unpredictable and always thinking about bargaining to come. In the speech, he seemed to promise two to three more weeks of even heavier bombing, and by mid-April, it appears that both we and Israel will be getting to the bottom of our target lists. In early March, the White House and the Pentagon predicted the war would take four to six weeks, so they are pretty much on schedule.
And the war may end sooner. Pakistan is sending messages back and forth about a cease-fire. In my view, there will be no peace treaty to end the war, for two reasons. The two sides are too far apart in our demands, and there’s no individual or structure now in Tehran able to make the compromises any such multi-page agreement would require. So the likely end will come in a simple deal to stop shooting.
That leaves the Strait of Hormuz, and here the president is saying “don’t look at me, it’s an international responsibility.” He’s at least partially right: Why can’t there be an international maritime force protecting the strait from Iran? The European Union navies combine in EUNAVFOR Atalanta and the Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean, joint efforts against piracy and to enhance maritime security off the Horn of Africa, in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Persian Gulf. The Combined Maritime Force is a 46-nation effort led by the United States with similar goals.
It is regrettable that instead of urging (or leading) pragmatic, positive action, the president most often turns to insults of allies and threats to leave NATO. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer invited more than 35 countries to a meeting on strait security, in London. That’s a start. There is no reason why a large multinational naval coalition cannot patrol the strait once this war ends, presumably in April.
As I’ve written elsewhere, the president’s kind words about those who are actually fighting on our side (he mentioned Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, though except for Israel they are actually doing nothing but self-defense) makes his coldness to Ukraine even more indefensible. Ukraine is on our side too, helping our allies defend against the Iranian drones they know so well because Iran sells them to Russia. And like Israel, they fight patriotically and effectively. It is long past time for the president to square up who’s on our side and who’s against us, and to see Ukraine as a key ally and Russia as one of our worst enemies.
The speech seemed more like an effort to silence the critics who kept asking “why doesn’t the president speak to the nation?” than an important message he felt compelled to deliver on all the networks. Given that he speaks to the press almost every day, this kind of set speech may be superfluous in getting through to the public. And reading speeches isn’t his forte anyway.
I have to say that I didn’t listen to Trump’s bombast, as I simply forgot, but I know what he said from the news. As far as defending the Strait of Hormuz as an international responsibility, I can see why European countries don’t want to put their military in service defending commercial ships, because if Israel and the U.S. had not started the war, there would be no need to defend the Strait. Trump’s performance was lame, as Abrams says, and I always worry that regime change in Iran is not a priority. For several years I’ve been posting Masih Alinejad’s tweets about public opposition to Iran’s theocracy, and Iran seems second to only North Korea in oppressing its people. If the theocracy stays in power, my verdict will have been that we lost the war—especially if Iran doesn’t promise to end it’s nuclear problem, which it won’t. But, as I always say, I’m just a simple country geneticist, not a political pundit.
*Hooray! (Not!) Yet another book on why sex isn’t binary is coming out, and the good news is that you don’t have to waste your money on it (h/t Krzysztof ). Click on the cover photo below if you want to see the Amazon blurb, which includes this bushwa:
We see right away a conflation between “biological sex” (yes, the term is used) and gender. A tomboy or effeminate male are still female and male respectively, though their gender presentation may differ from what we usually see. And where did Berkowitz get the inflated 6% figure? Well, it could either include homosexuals, estimated at 3-6% of the population (yes, they are binary but are attracted to people of the same sex), or of women with polycystic ovary syndrome, which is a hormonal disorder of women, and has a relatively high frequency. But those women still produce eggs, for crying out loud. The real frequency of “intersex” people, who aren’t categorizable in the binary, is about 0.018%. As Colin Wright says in a good summary of these inflated statistics and expanding terms:
Consider people with so-called “intersex” conditions—developmental anomalies that result in sexually ambiguous genitalia or mismatches between sex chromosomes and physical appearance. These conditions are genuinely rare, affecting about 0.018 percent of the population, or roughly 1 in 5,500 people. To put that in perspective, you could fill a mid-sized sports arena and expect to find maybe three or four people with true “intersex” conditions (in the same arena, you’d likely find around 500–1,000 gay/lesbian people, based on estimates that 3–6 percent of the population are homosexual).
But advocates worried that such a small number wouldn’t generate the public concern needed to protect these individuals from unnecessary medical interventions and social mistreatment. So they broadened the definition to include nearly any difference in sexual development, no matter how minor. This inflated statistic then took on a life of its own, getting co-opted by activists in the transgender movement to argue that sex exists on a continuum rather than as a binary. They use these numbers to claim that the categories of male and female are “social constructs” that should be open to self-identification, arguing that individuals should be allowed to enter any sex-segregated space they choose.
And always be wary if someone puts the title “Ph.D” after their names on the cover.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s a typical holiday:
Hili: That Easter breakfast was wonderful.
Andrzej: I share your opinion, but we still have a lot of work today.
In Polish:
Hili: To wielkanocne śniadanie było wspaniałe.
Ja: Podzielam twoje zdanie, ale i tak mamy dziś dużo pracy.
*******************
From The Language Nerds:
From Stacy:
From Jesus of the Day, another medieval painting:
From Masih, who presents another human-rights activist imprisoned in Iran:
First, Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, nearly suffers a heart attack in prison, denied proper medical care.
Now, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and another human rights defender is arrested in Iran.When a regime shows no mercy to those who speak the language of peace,… pic.twitter.com/ELcXW7984y
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 4, 2026
From Emma, describing A Very Bad Idea:
I attended a scientific conference a few years ago where we were invited to cycle at the side of the platform, to power – at least – the energy costs of the visuals.
Nobody needs to see a panting developmental biologist alongside someone who is changing the face of cancer… https://t.co/bbRfA1DjQi
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) April 3, 2026
From Simon: the NYT screws up big time (they say they’ll publish a correction):
Can you imagine how many people approved it before publishing? Shameful.
— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) 2026-04-03T19:20:19.097Z
Two from my feed. First, boat cats (they all need lifejackets):
I didn’t know this life was an option pic.twitter.com/irtyM7zUIk
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 3, 2026
For some reason I love these repetitive foreign sentences:
Spanish is confusing: 😵💫pic.twitter.com/yrvyb687DJ
— AlphaFox (@alphafox) April 4, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old, and would be 84 today had she lived. https://t.co/qIfD6CF4Tz
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 5, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. The first one is amazing.
While you slept last night: ~100 million birds took to the skies 🐦 The Mid-Atlantic saw heavy traffic moving north/northeast, with migration hotspots from the Southeast to Ohio Valley and Southern Plains. The overnight rush continues this weekend.Details at cwg.live
— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T18:25:53.051Z
And Matthew sent me this NYT headline, saying, “If this were a UK newspaper you’d know they were taking the piss. In the case of the NYT, not.” (They’ve changed the headline to reflect that nobody at the Waffle House remembers this guy.)
“L’esprit de l’escalier” I certainly do use that one. It’s great!
So do I, although I usually only think of using it later on…
Oh, I wish I’d thought to say that!
Sorry, Jerry, I can’t see any of the pictures in either Firefox or MS Edge. X and Bluethingie are showing OK.
I can’t help you, I’m afraid. I use Chrome.
Never mind, thanks, most of them showing now.
In Ari Berkowitz’ book that is not The God Delusion, bold added :
“The only way to make sense of these apparent contradictions is that our society insists—regardless of our biology—that each body look a specific way from infancy until death. It’s a disturbingly limited view ”
Gnosticism operates on these two sensible-sounding ideas – by [1] framing them as contradictions and thus subjects of dialectical opposites, and [2] rather than deny common knowledge, in Gnosticism common knowledge is limited.
PS cheap advertising is to blend the title with another highly successful title – for any reason.
It’s all derivative – drawing thought out of reality, forming an ersatz enlightenment.
Many such cases – through all history.
New Discourses Bullets no. 61
James Lindsay
The Gnostic Temptation (23 min) https://youtu.be/svFxRVW0IfU?si=KX3sXNXJ4tGePV2I
Am reminded that several years ago Richard Dawkins referenced the bon mot “Every dog has its fleas” in response to books (e.g., “The Dawkins Delusion”) written by detractors.
I’m certainly grateful for the rescue of the F-15 weapons officer. Would that one could have had that same positive experience from a successful 1980 rescue effort in Iran.
Re: the NYT NATO headline kerfuffle, considering the eastward expansion of NATO during the last three decades, perhaps the organization’s name should be changed to reflect a shift in its geographical locus to some point in Europe east of the Atlantic.
Not a problem. After iDJT’s withdrawal it will be the Non-American Treaty Organisation.
Sure. Let’s just call it the Continental Alliance to Keep the Germans Down and the Russians Out. (The first part of the strategic triad, “Keep the Americans in”, seems not be aging well, but the former Warsaw Pact countries have good reason not to put much stock in Moscow’s anxieties, its threats and actual actions during the four and a half decades before 1989 being fresher in their collective memories.)
Have to say, Mr. Filippo, only you could turn thanks for the rescue of a downed airman into a sneer about the failure of Operation Eagle Claw. So sorry the Americans disappointed you this time.
Jeebus, 460 academic programs! I expect that that begat a shitload of associate deans, assistant deans, assistants to the associate deans, deputy assistants to the associate dean, etc, etc.. in checking the link to that buffet of 460 academic programs, and looking at something I thought would be straightforward, mathematics, I still found myself as confused as looking at the breakfast cereal choices on our supermarket shelves. Glad I got through when the catalog was simpler in our simpler time.
Sigh. As an official old fart(ess) I guess it comes with the territory, but in my day we first met Bayes’ Theorem in high school algebra, not in a graduate level university course. I had to stop perusing the MAT offerings after hitting introduction-to-arithmetic (advertised as “number theory”, gaggg!) and related courses; has “remedial” joined the list of taboo words? I didn’t dare look for any mathematical logic offerings. “You want answers? … You can’t handle the proof!”
</rant>
Claire Ainsworth (author of “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic” in Sciam) has a pretty good comment on this (in my opinion). Quote from her
“No, not at all. Two sexes, with a continuum of variation in anatomy / physiology”
Not much of a continuum for some traits, like genitalia.
My guess (and it is just a guess) is that Claire Ainsworth was referring to breast size, penis size, hormones, height, weight, etc. where a continuum is less controversial. Note that Colin Wright notes considerable variation in genitalia. See Case 5 of https://theparadoxinstitute.org/articles/a-response-to-natures-sex-redefined.
I think the following superb piece is germane – to PCC(E)’s point as well :
Question : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?
Richard Dawkins :
Essentialism
2014
Edge Magazine
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25366
Excerpt :
“If you think, following the dictionary definition of essentialism, that the essence of rabbitness is “prior to” the existence of rabbits (whatever “prior to” might mean, and that’s a nonsense in itself) evolution is not an idea that will spring readily to your mind, and you may resist when somebody else suggests it.”
I think any given living, material thing – or even associated but non-living features – can be swapped in for “rabbitness” – “liverness”, “hairness”, “eyeness” … and … you know.. “noseness”… 🫢
I heard that Southern Jewish joke before, which is unusual because I rarely remember jokes. It’s a good one. And, of course I understand the Pilsbury joke. Try the unrisen matzos with peanut butter. Highly recommended!
It’s hard to know what the New York Times and some of the other news outlets want. I don’t believe that they truly want us to lose the war. More likely, they write what they write because they hate Donald Trump and love to see him squirm. When something goes bad, they expound on the mishap with glee. Even if we win the war, the media will claim that we lost.
Regarding the Strait of Hormuz, it was almost certainly known that Iran would try to disrupt shipping through the Strait if the regime survived for long enough. My disappointment lies in the apparent fact that the U.S. didn’t have a viable plan to counter that obvious possibility. With no plan (as far as I can tell) to keep the Strait open, did the U.S. just wing it in the hope that the regime would topple quickly and that the Iranian regime wouldn’t have a chance to block the Strait? That’s my guess.
Most importantly, I am so glad that we rescued our airman!
It would have taken far more time, and might be impossible, for a nation at war to also protect a strategic asset off the shore of an enemy.
One does now wish that a wide canal was carved across the adjacent peninsula in the UAE. That would have presumably taken decades, though.
Not necessarily. Remember Ike’s “Atoms for Peace” proposals? Seemed like a good idea at the time….
There was no viable plan to keep the Strait open because, given Iran’s existing capabilities, they can effectively close the Strait at will. The options are limited: 1) degrade its long-range anti-ship capabilities sufficiently to allow naval escorts to operate with acceptable risk, or 2) change the will of the leadership. Previous administrations were deterred, in part, by Iran’s capacity for global economic blackmail. It remains an open question whether they would have remained steadfast in their inaction and allowed Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
The Arab oil-producing countries have a plan to bypass the Strait of Hormuz using pipelines (some of which have already been built). However, the plan is long-term.
I don’t know if this has been covered by the MSM, but sense not.
Reporting from Ukraine, in a by-subscription-only piece, reported yesterday that US/Israel, which anyway holds an over 2:1 advantage over Iran in aircraft (whose aircraft are all older than what U/I is flying), has totally crippled Iran’s ability to fly by bombing the runways of all 17 Iranian military airports, in addition to bombing a lot of their aircraft despite Iran’s having painted decoy aircraft here and there on the tarmacs, which largely did not fool U/I.
If you have the dosh to spare for a subscription (~$100/yr), that gets you the text versions of all that they post free on YT, plus some exclusives, of which the above was one. There’s also a higher-level subscription that gets yet more exclusives, but I haven’t gone that far yet.
Subscription to what?
Frau K: Sorry. Reporting from Ukraine. They have a YT channel. You should be able to get to the subscription page from here. https://www.youtube.com/@RFU
Yes it is excellent: I watch the free youtube often.
Also Preston Stewart, “Perun” and William Spaniel’s ones, each with different specialties.
I also make time to read my own column. 😉
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Thanks very much, Mr. Anderson, for your last sentence. I needed a good laugh today.
David – Glad you think it’s good, too. I did not expect that I’d find the text versions that you get by subscription to be much preferable to the audio versions – you can scroll back and forth between pix when needed. Nor did I expect that there would be some exclusive reports that sometimes span out beyond what directly concerns Ukraine.
No kidding. Does the writer genuinely believe that people aren’t aware of overlapping sex traits? That no one has ever encountered a short man or tall woman?
Or perhaps he thinks we should say that a short man has a “female height,” thus making him a form of intersex.
I’m not sure what the point is here. He’s obviously trying to couple people whom he believes are both male and female (an empty set) with men who have long hair and women who’ve had mastectomies. But is he claiming that the people who think sex is binary are in favor of forcing everyone to follow rigid rules on appearance? Or is he saying that if we don’t want people to follow rigid rules on appearance, then we have no choice but to throw out the sex binary, too?
Either way it’s a bad argument.
Yes, the whole book is a bad argument. Also I do wonder how the subjects of this bad argument view being shoe-horned into some sort of in-between sex or into a particular sex to which they don’t identify. An effeminate man or a masculine woman will likely see themselves as still male and female respectively. They should be pissed off at being used this way.
And, to further point out the incoherence of this, sex distinctions are said to be arbitrary social conventions, yet it is taboo to suggest that on average boys might be better at maths than girls are. Pick a lane, dammit.
Just trying to group comments topically, not replying specifically to anything Sastra said.
Really, no human is “non-binary” or “intersex”. Everyone is either male or female, no in-betweens, no “a bit of this, a bit of that”. All agree?
The 1 in 5600 figure — 14 in Colin Wright’s football stadium assuming unrealistically they all survived beyond late childhood and enjoyed football enough to afford the ticket prices — is misleading when applied to adults. Probably 9 or 10 of them appeared ambiguous at birth because of maldevelopment of their external genitalia in utero. By the time they started attending football games, all of them would have been diagnosed unambiguously as male or female. Some will have handicaps in their sexual function that may prevent them from performing the typical male or female role in procreation, just as people with other congenital anomalies have handicaps as well. But they don’t violate the binary nature of sex.
A handful of that 14 — four or five — will fall into Colin’s other group: those whose sex chromosomes don’t match their phenotypic appearance. Some in that stadium may know already: a woman hadn’t got her period by 16 and was found to have XY, CAIS. A man “assigned” female at birth went through male puberty — oops! — causing the diagnostic penny to drop: XY with 5-ARD. A man is entirely unwitting that he is XX due to the SRY gene having translocated onto his father’s X during meiosis. Unless he is investigated for infertilty he’ll never know. The most these individuals do is test our understanding of the sex binary because of things that went wrong. None of them disprove the binary. None produce third gametes. None have hybrid sexual structures except insofar as the external genitalia were not fully masculinized (in a boy) or were excessively virilized (in a girl), just as some palates don’t close and some anuses don’t open. With an imperforate anus you’re still a human, not a hydra.
The true proportion of intersex in humans is zero. Disorders of sexual development don’t violate the sex binary. Even when we clarify the 1 in 5600 = non-binary, saying it at all is a little chink for the activists to lever their screwdrivers into.
I disagree. A very small number of humans are not either male or female. They are both. Mosaicism occurs (rarely) in humans. In these people, some cells are 46-XX, some are 46-XY. Consider that there are reports of Ovotesticular Disorder. See https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6737443/.
None of the individuals with the conditions you cite have body plans organized to produce both small motile gametes and large immotile ones, nor do they have “non-binary” organs like “uteroprostates”. Therefore they are not “intersex.” A few XY cells in a cheek swab (or anywhere else) does not make a woman a man or a non-binary hermaphrodite. Nor does ovarian tissue in an ovotestis and abortive Müllerian development make a man a woman (as in the case you cited. It’s not known why he developed as an almost normal-looking boy->man given that he is 46,XX and had no detectable SRY gene. But he is still a man by body plan type, albeit malformed, not a woman, and not “both” or “in-between”.)
Some people are born without sex organs. That doesn’t say anything more about them as individuals or us as a species than that some people are born without kidneys or brains. In fact, a baby born without any gonads or internal structures will have vulva regardless of karyotype so will be sexed as a girl.
I have another reason for rejecting these rare DSDs as challenging the sex binary. In embryology, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong at some fortunately rare frequency. Sex-binary society (chivalry, men’s and women’s bathrooms, the #me-too movement, etc.) might look different if these disorders of embryology were much more common than they are. A large caste of these infertile individuals would have to be taken into account instead of just being shunned as sexually unattractive and reproductively incompetent freaks. Imagine if 10% of people had DSDs. But that doesn’t happen because of strong sexual selection against whatever genes produce them. They are lethal traits in that they can’t be transmitted to progeny. A trait that makes reproduction impossible can’t be adaptive under any selection regime. If an “exception” to the sex binary makes you infertile (either anatomically or socially) it can’t be considered a “normal” variant on the spectrum, yes respecting how difficult it is to define that term.
P.S. You are quite right about Dayton in its heyday.
I don’t buy this “The NYT (and other media) wants us to lose.”
In most cases, the media are just reporting the facts, which don’t look promising.
If the war ends with the regime still in place, that’s a loss as I see it. Even worse, Iran is now using geography as a weapon in the Strait of Hormuz.
See this article about ships stuck in the Gulf.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/life-and-death-aboard-ships-stranded-near-the-strait-of-hormuz-960e78f1
Agreed. The US and Israel hope that if they play aerial whack-a-mole long enough, regime change will ensue. While they do so, the strait of Hormuz remains closed, an economic crisis deepens, and the moles keep replacing each other. Trump doesn’t want to send troops, since he knows mass casualties won’t look good for him or his promises, so he’s stuck and flailing.
Speaking of flailing, here’s what Trump posted to Truth Social on Easter:
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
I am at a loss for words, but Trump never is, praise Allah.
I saw that too as it’s everywhere since it’s so unhinged, even for Mr. Unhinged…war crimes, anyone?
Not a reader of…
I’m gonna pile in on the NYT as a bunch of misery guts just for fun 😁 all quotes are taken from an X post of: @hansmankcle
“The story behind the New York Times’ 1903 claim that human flight was between one and ten million years away is even worse than it looks.”
“…the New York Times story is not really about flight at all but about how elites and credentialed “experts” mistake their own failures for the boundaries of possibility.”
However 9 days later… 2 blokes from Ohio
“Two totally unknown bicycle mechanics from Ohio achieved the first powered flight using improvised parts, a few hundred dollars of their own money, and sheer persistence.
The story of flight is, at its core, a story of the triumph of American individualism over elite credentialism. The fact that it was the New York Times that inadvertently delivered the proof is the most fitting conclusion imaginable.”
You’re complaining about a story from 1903?
Not complaining, just a bit of levity. What side of the bed did you rise from?
Well, those fellas were from Ohio.
Flyover country.
The Wright brothers were from Dayton, OH. Dayton, OH was the Silicon Valley of that time.
Umm. . . if you think that the NYT and WaPo are reporting on the war totally objectively, well, to use your argot, I do not buy your opinion I may have exaggerated the statement you single out, but how the facts look depend on your politcs and biases. To some, the fact look more promising than they do to you.
I agree with Jerry, David, and others about the NYT’s motivations. I can name a great many examples of how, by their choice of stories, as well as the spin of their articles, they are doing everything that they can to oppose the actions of the US and Israel.
They have long ceased to serve as a source of news.
Respectfully disagree with you FK. The Times is unreadable. TDS and woke have destroyed a once great newspaper (about a decade ago).
Now they seem to really, really want Trump and America/the civilized world to go down with him.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
“FEMA Official Says He Teleported to Waffle House. Experts Are Dubious.”
I need to know more about these teleportation experts.
Did he see any unidentified frying objects?
I presume their expertise is not in the field of teleportation but in mental health. 🙂
I don’t think regime change is a war aim. It’s really too difficult. It means invading the country and surrounding the bunker where Hitler and his surviving cronies were hiding and making them come out with a white flag. That’s the infantry’s job. By not publicly declaring regime change to be a war aim, President Trump avoids criticism that he “lost” the war.
If Americans want President Trump to achieve regime change, they are going to have to start approving of the war at FDR-WW2 levels and letting him invade the place. He knows you’re not going to do that — half of you hate him too much, half of the other half think he’s an insane pedophile — so he’s not going to give that to you. It’s no skin off his nose if you all think he lost the war. So what? He’s not up for re-election and he doesn’t care much about GOP Congressmen facing the mid-terms. You can’t vote him out of office. This makes him different from a Parliamentary Prime Minister whose fortunes sink with his party’s elected representatives.
I rather like Iran as a failed state. The surviving Republican Guard colonels will run it as warlords. They will be too busy fighting with each other and funneling oil revenue and piracy tolls, said to be $1 a barrel for oil, to their Swiss bank accounts (the better to escape to country estates and expensive private schools in England when the time comes) to be doing serious state functions like making atomic bombs and exporting antisemitic terror. Might be the best outcome President Trump can achieve, and it looks like success to foreigner me. The US Marines should hang around at the throat of the Strait to interdict Iranian tankers shipping oil to your enemies. That way the only money the Guard makes is from tolling your friends: a dollar a barrel instead of $100 a barrel.
Israel and the US are quite aware that regime change can only happen by the will of the Iranian people. And while that is a hope, it is not a realistic strategic goal. The only thing that the allies can do is to weaken the Iranian government’s military and other security apparatus to the extent that it will be possible.
While I agree with Leslie that a failed Iranian state is preferable to the current regime in therms of the threat that Iran poses to the world, it is a pity for the Iranian population; those who simply want to live a normal life without worrying that their daughters could be raped or killed for the “crimes” of wanting to dress as they please.