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 the first Monday in July: July 6, 2016, and National Fried Chicken Day. Here’s a plate of this quintessentially American dish (and a lovely salad) in Honlulu, of all places. I scarfed these down on June 23, 2019:
And I note (h/t Matthew) that it was on this day in 1957, when I was seven years old, that McCartney and Lennon first met, sparking the best rock music in history (and the best that will ever be!). Thank Ceiling Cat that I came of age when the Beatles had their brief period of musical hegemony.
69 years ago, on the 6th of July 1957, John Lennon met Paul McCartney for the first time. Lennon's skiffle group, the Quarrymen, were performing at the St Peter's Church garden fête in Woolton. McCartney met Lennon in between their two sets. #otd #history 🗃️
Clicking on the Google Doodle will show you the latest footy scores and upcoming games:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Footy news. There was a big upset yesterday as Norway beat Brazil 2-1, sending the Cariocas home in despair. As expected, England beat Mexico, but only by one point: 3-2. Today’s games include two good matchups: Portugal against Spain and the USA against Belgium. Let’s look at the Brazil/Norway game:
Erling Haaland scored two late goals to send Norway to the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time with a 2-1 victory that condemned Brazil to their earliest exit in the competition since 1990.
Haaland broke the deadlock in the 79th minute at Met Life Stadium off a left-wing cross from Andreas Schjelderup and then added a decisive second with a powerful low shot into the corner of the net in the final minute of the 90.
The Manchester City striker now moves level with Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé at the front of the race for the Golden Boot, with all three on seven goals. His scoring streak for his country has now reached 14 games, with Haaland scoring 27 goals in that span.
“Maybe this will write history in Norway,” Haaland said. “Everyone just need to enjoy themselves. This is just an insane day. It’s one of the most insane days in Norwegian history. Just enjoy it, embrace it and enjoy the moment.”
Bruno Guimarães missed a penalty in the first half, with a chance to give Brazil the lead, after a video review of a tackle from Kristoffer Ajer on Matheus Cunha. Brazil had another chance from the penalty spot after a foul on Casemiro deep into second-half stoppage time, which Neymar converted, but it came too late to rescue Carlo Ancelotti’s side.
Norway, who had lost on their two previous visits to the World Cup last 16 — in 1938 and 1998 — will meet either Mexico or England for a place in the semifinals.
“I think that all Norwegian citizens are experiencing the night of a lifetime,” coach Ståle Solbakken said. “Some people say that we have changed Norway forever. Probably, they will party for a week or so.”
Here are the highlights, with the goal-scoring plays given at times from the video: 10:48, 13:40 (Norway, both by Haaland), and 17:01 (Brazil, penalty kick).
*The AP reports that Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral (minus his son, who may be dead) occasioned a lot of hatred of America, which doesn’t portend well for a ceasefire.
Iran’s top officials and brothers of the new supreme leader emerged into public view Sunday to attend funeral prayers for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Their appearance signaled confidence in their safety as Iran pushes back on U.S. demands in negotiations to permanently end the war.
Crowds of hundreds of thousands chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” as they called for revenge over the Feb. 28 attack that killed the 86-year-old supreme leader and other top officials, triggering the war. Some hard-liners called for the assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has yet to make an appearance in the funeral ceremonies, which are unfolding over several days. He is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being wounded in the airstrike that killed his father.
The U.S. is meanwhile pressing ahead with negotiations with Iran aimed at fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz and rolling back its disputed nuclear program.
Ziba Naderi, a 42-year-old nurse attending the funeral Sunday, said Iran needed to heed Mojtaba Khamenei’s commands. “I heard the call for revenge, but our leader should say what we need to do,” she said. “And we must listen to him.”
The leader ain’t saying nothing. More:
Posters and graffiti at the Grand Mosalla called for the killing of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Why is the biggest bastard in the world still alive?” Mohammad Rasouli, a poet who emceed the event before the prayers, said to the crowd over loudspeakers, referring to Trump. “The world is no longer a good place” for Trump, he added as the crowd cheered.
“I came here to shout and seek revenge,” said Gholamreza Sabooni, a 29-year-old man who works in a grocery. “They killed our imam, we should kill their leader, Trump.”
They would if they could, but they can’t. More:
Talks over reaching a permanent end to the war appear to be on hold until the end of the funeral.
The funeral was in part a show of unity and defiance as Iran demands a measure of control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global energy that it shut down during the war. The U.S. has rejected those demands, and the sides are divided on other key issues, including the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear program.
The U.S. assisted 70 transits of the Strait of Hormuz over the past 72 hours, including 18 on Saturday, a multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Sunday. It called traffic steady along routes near Oman and Iran but still below prewar levels. The threat level remained “substantial” and mine clearance and surveying work continued.
There’s no way this war is going to be over in a month and a half, as Iran will simply not agree to any stipulation that would prevent it from ever having nuclear weapons, much less to giving power to the people or opening the Strait of Hormuz restoring its pre-war state. Isn’t it nice to live in interesting times?
It’s been about 10 years since Hollywood stopped casting the turbaned Islamist as the villain in movies like these—but at this point, Iran’s just casting themselves in the role.
Call this the end of the brief U.S.-Iran honeymoon—the stretch where Iran kept acting against American interests but hid it behind a thin veneer of ambivalence and relatively polite rejectionism toward U.S. demands. Now the mask is coming off, and underneath is the exact same face.
In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is still using threats to compel commercial vessels through its shipping lanes. The calculation is simple: keep threatening and attacking, and countries and international bodies will think twice before facilitating alternative transit routes. Meanwhile, Tehran is floating the idea that it could weaponize both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb as leverage if the U.S. violates their memorandum of understanding.
But things seem to be moving. Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited for his seventh trip to the White House during Trump’s second term. If Bibi’s been keeping a punch card, I’d guess the next visit’s free. What the meeting’s actually about remains to be seen—though if my knowledge of 1980s action movies is any guide, it may be something explosive.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday said he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “get along very good” and that the Israeli premier “knows who the boss is,” in a brief phone interview with Axios.
Trump also confirmed that he would soon meet with the Israeli leader, saying that Netanyahu had asked him for a meeting at the White House, and that it could take place as early as next week after the NATO summit in Turkey.
The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Friday that the two leaders spoke on the phone and “agreed to meet soon in the US.”
An Israeli official told Axios that the meeting “might take place the week after [next]” due to scheduling difficulties.
“During their conversation, the prime minister said that the United States is a guarantor of global freedom, and that Israel greatly values the close relationship between the two nations,” Netanyahu’s office said Friday.
Don’t ask me what these dudes are going to discuss, or if it involves a resumption of hostilities. I doubt that Trump is up for that given the proximity of the midterms, and besides, he’s The Boss.
About the funeral of the late Ayatollah:
Trump also told Axios that he is following the ongoing funeral ceremonies for the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israel strikes on February 28.
Claiming that the Iranians are “begging to make a deal,” Trump said the two sides put negotiations on pause to allow for the days-long funeral to take place, during which the American president claims neither party will attack the other.
Huge crowds of mourners gather for the start of the funeral of Iran’s late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on July 4, 2026. (Screen grab/Iranian state media)
“They are all there. One shot [and we can take them all out], but we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with,” Trump reportedly said.
Adding that he was surprised to see Iranians crying at the funeral, Trump mused, “Maybe it’s fake tears.”
*Michael Shermer wrote a column for the Fourth in the Boston Globe, “The science of the Declaration of Independence.” Here are some quotes from the version reprinted in Skeptic magazine, which is slightly different but not paywalled. Shermer sees the Declaration as a quasi-scientific experiment designed to produce a better society, though I disagree with him one one point.
Many of the Founding Fathers were, in fact, natural philosophers — scientists in today’s language (the word wasn’t coined until 1834) — who deliberately adapted the method of data gathering, hypothesis testing, and theory formation to their nation building. Their understanding of the provisional nature of findings led them to develop a social system in which doubt and dispute were the centerpieces of a functional polity. Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and the others thought of social governance as problems to be solved rather than as power to be grabbed. They thought of democracy in the same way they thought of science — as a method, not an ideology. They argued, in essence, that no one knows how to govern a nation, so they had to set up a system that allows for experimentation. Try this. Try that. Check the results. Repeat. As Jefferson wrote in 1804:
“No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.”
Even the fundamental principles underlying the Declaration of Independence, which is usually thought of as a statement of political philosophy, were in fact grounded in the type of scientific reasoning that Jefferson and Franklin employed elsewhere. Consider the foundational line “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” Jefferson’s original phrase was “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” Why was it changed?
According to author Walter Isaacson, on June 21, 1776, in reviewing the Declaration Franklin “crossed out, using heavy backslashes that he often employed, the last three words of Jefferson’s phrase, ‘We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable’ and changed them to the words now enshrined in history.” Isaacson explains why in his book “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written”:
“The idea of ‘self-evident’ truths was one that drew less on John Locke, who was Jefferson’s favored philosopher, than on the scientific determinism espoused by Isaac Newton and on the analytic empiricism of Franklin’s close friend David Hume.”
Hume, the great Enlightenment philosopher whose writings were well known to the Founding Fathers, famously made a distinction between analytic truths that are self-evident by definition (cardiologists are doctors) and synthetic truths for which one needs to check the evidence to see if they are true (cardiologists are rich). By using the word “sacred,” Isaacson continues, “Jefferson had asserted, intentionally or not, that the principle in question — the equality of men and their endowment by their creator with inalienable rights — was an assertion of religion. Franklin’s edit turned it instead into an assertion of rationality.”
My disagreement with Michael (and the Founders, I guess) is that the Declaration was prompted by moral realism, a view I see as bogus but which Shermer defines this way:
The concept underpinning the Declaration of Independence is known as moral realism, which is central to how we think as a nation and to our way of life. Moral realism says that right and wrong, just and unjust, moral and immoral, are not the whimsical products of power or culture but are discoverable through reason and science. In the same way that Galileo and Newton discovered physical laws and principles about the natural world that really are out there, so too did the founders purport to discover moral laws and principles about human nature and society that really do exist.
It’s true that if you specify what kind of society you want, it’s possible in principle to do social experiments to see if your “moral” dicta yield that kind of society you desire. But dfifferent people will prefer different kinds of societies, and this means that there are no “objective truths” about morality. And this means in turn that societies like America were really set up on consequentialist principles, with morality judged by the results of actions. “Morality” like that underlying America’s founding is relative to what consequences people desire, and thus cannot be objective “universal truths.” Now it’s likely that the Founders all envisioned a similar kind of optimal society, but the “moral laws” they envisioned may not hold for others, as we can see by how different societies embrace other principles that we consider immoral (viz., Soviet society).
*In the NYT, ten writers offer their choice of “The definitive movie about America” (archived here). Here are some (I’ve put asterisks next to the ones I’ve seen), and there is more at the site for each movie. The rules:
I asked 10 writers what films they would pick to define America and why. Their choices ranged from blockbusters to indies, homegrown comedies to enigmatic Italian drama, a recent best-picture Oscar nominee to a little-known debut — in short, movies as varied as the country itself.
And the choices:
Killer of Sheep (1978). Charles Burnett’s masterpiece takes place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, in the mid-1970s, a decade after civil unrest there. Shot in black-and-white, the film is at once an expressionistic portrait of a poor Black family and of the country they live in, its idealism and bitter truths. There is soaring beauty as well as rueful comedy in Burnett’s vision, and pain that cuts to the bone. Here, every scarred wall and empty lot speaks to promises broken, as does the hollowed-out face of the father, a slaughterhouse worker (Henry G. Sanders).
*There Will Be Blood (2007). A ruthless, self-made mogul with a string of shady dealings in his past. An opportunistic preacher more interested in power than holiness. A country where fabulous wealth is available, if you’re willing to stomp your boot on your neighbor’s back. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 epic, “There Will Be Blood,” which gave Daniel Day-Lewis one of his greatest roles, rips into the American dream, borrowing the cinematic language of Hollywood’s great westerns but inverting their themes.\
Dazed and Confused (1993). Not long into “Dazed and Confused,” as Texas high schoolers pour out of classrooms for summer break in 1976, the cool teacher hollers about the impending Bicentennial: “Don’t forget what you’re celebrating, and that’s the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic white males didn’t want to pay their taxes.”
The national milestone lingers in the teenagers’ minds — “This country was founded by people who were into aliens, man,” the head stoner insists — but it’s mostly a backdrop for a rowdy night. As social cliques bleed together, conflicts arise: between old mores and new cultural groundswells, between patriotism and rebellion, between boundless freedom and nowhere to go. It’s in this friction that the Americanness of Richard Linklater’s 1993 dramedy is undeniable.
*Scarface (1932). Talk about American types: The epitome of slapstick mayhem and the censor-consternating sensation of 1932, “Scarface” was bankrolled by a legendary Texas-born tycoon (Howard Hughes) and directed by a big-time Hollywood auteur (Howard Hawks) from a script mainly by a celebrated Chicago newshound (Ben Hecht) as a vehicle for a former idol of New York’s Yiddish theater (Paul Muni), who plays a fictionalized portrait of the most notorious man in the country then (Al Capone). “Scarface” wasn’t the studios’ first gangster film, just the most violent and noisiest.
The Florida Project (2017). Is there a more American city than Orlando, Fla.? Its attractions promise big dreams, big fun, total escape. But it often masks the tremendous working-class struggle required to keep those dreams alive. The director Sean Baker interprets the complications of Orlando, and America itself, in film form with this sun-soaked drama that unspools on the other side of the Disney world. Discount motels with names like Futureland Inn and Magic Castle are the homes and de facto playgrounds of children who spend their days engaging in games and a little mischief, amid these tarnished environs.
*Nashville (1975). There are few filmmakers whose work encompasses America, in all its complexities and contradictions, as fully as Robert Altman’s. In his best movies, he took on sacred cows, hidebound institutions, frontier mythology and conventional notions of heroism, and did so with a knowing wink and quiet cackle. There’s something inherently American about his 1975 masterpiece, “Nashville”— how he’s reaching for something big and all-encompassing and audacious in interweaving 24 characters from a variety of backgrounds and social strata over a few days in the capital of country music.
*Dirty Dancing (1987). A study of class divides, labor, identity, women’s rights, health care and more hiding in a frothy coming-of-age romance, “Dirty Dancing” has all the right moves for understanding postwar America — anda killer soundtrack.
*Zabriskie Point (1970). Set in summer 1968 in the Mojave Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point” is a hypnotic meditation on American ideals told through strangers turned lovers: a college dropout on the lam and a secretary driving through on a work trip. They spend one fever dream of an afternoon wandering the landscape, discussing societal tensions and stumbling into an extremely dusty orgy. (It’s Antonioni and the ’60s, after all.)
Nothing but a Man (1964). Starring an unforgettable Ivan Dixon (as Duff), with an outstanding supporting cast (Abbey Lincoln, Yaphet Kotto, Gloria Foster), “Nothing but a Man” tells a political story in a personal register. Its characters — informed by research trips that Roemer took across the South with his co-screenwriter, cinematographer and fellow Jew, Robert Young — are never anything other than human, for better and worse.
Disclosure Day (2026). The world, as a villainous Colin Firth puts it, is on the brink. Quasi-government operatives work in the shadows. Paranoia and distrust, sometimes with good reason, fill the air. The fight to reveal the truth is as furious as the fight to suppress it. Yes, “Disclosure Day” is an aliens-are-here epic, but tonally, when the cardinals, crop circles and car chases give way to regular people struggling through a chaotic nation, it conveys the anxiety and uncertainty suffusing modern-day, non-sci-fi American life.
This is a dog’s breakfast of selections, and who on earth would think that “Zabriskie Point” (a good movie) or “Dirty Dancing” (an awful movie) would define America. If I had to pick one of the above, it would be “Nashville,” but I bet you can guess what my own choice would be. Yes, it’s “The Last Picture Show,” of course. But remember: nobody puts Baby in a corner!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili turns up her nose at Andrzej’s dinner:
Hili: Are you going to eat that? Andrzej: Yes. Why are you asking?
Hili: You know perfectly well that a vegetarian diet doesn’t suit me.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ty to będziesz jadł?
Ja: Tak, dlaczego pytasz?
Hili: Wiesz dobrze, że wegetariańska dieta mi nie odpowiada.
From Masih; are these real tears or crocodile tears?
Khamenei’s sons are weeping.
His victims’ families wept for decades. Nobody arrested them for crying. Unlike what your father did to ours.
Cry harder. It still won’t be enough.
However Mojtaba Khamenei who was appointed behind closed doors, is still invisible to the Public. pic.twitter.com/gZo0uBQQow
I’m posting a screenshot of Israel-hater Ana Kasparian’s tweet (reposted) in case she takes it down. The video is said to be AI generated, and it doesn’t ring true anyway. The two Community Notes call it out for being AI, the first saying this:
From Steve Stewart-Williams, who’s just written a new book on sex differences. I’ve read it and recommend it highly. And I think the explanation below is at least partly right:
“Because a mate’s status and wealth are more important to women than men, men may have evolved a stronger desire to achieve status and wealth… This immediately suggests an explanation for the fact that, on average, men earn more than women.”https://t.co/Lydw4XYa60pic.twitter.com/o3LOP2x4v2
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) July 4, 2026
From Luana; more antiscientific mishigas in New Zealand. I may write about this later:
Here’s an easy-read scientific submission on the bill to define women and men in NZ legislation. This group is not taking a position on the bill, but merely correcting all the unscientific nonsense flying around about the sexes.
This French Jewish girl was gassed to death as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was three years old, and would be 87 today had she lived. https://t.co/XhXRuv2KVQ
And one from Dr. Cobb. Look at the helmet on this mantis! What is it for? Is it sexually dimorphic?
A portrait of an adult female Stenophylla lobivertex, Dragon mantis, showing off the insane head crests. Horns on the eyes touch the horn on top giving the illusion that she has holes in her head. Probably the most unusually shaped mantis out there.#macro #nature #wildlife #mantis #insect #bugsky
First: hope that your power and water are restored to your home, and that your muscles and tendons are starting to recover from successfully saving the food-stores.
In the last couple of years’ readings on the Mideast, I have been introduced to “the street”…a new term for me, but even as early as in Antonious’ 1938 writings the various Arab leaders have been very sensitive to what the mood of the population (known as the street) is. Not in a democratic sense, but rather a simple fear of assassination. The street can be riled up it seems particularly by religious entreaties such as a declared jihad. The demonstrations at the funeral ceremonies in Iran do not bode well for future peace based on past history.
Oh, and I don’t often..really almost never say this, but that green salad and dressing looks WONDERFUL!
As expected, England beat Mexico, but only by one point: 3-2
Expected by whom? Pretty much nobody here in England expected England to win. The reasons are:
England haven’t played well so far in this World Cup
Mexico were playing at home in their own stadium – always an advantage.
The stadium is at an altitude of 7,000 feet. Mexico play at 7,000 feet regularly, England does not.
Points 2 and 3 together have allowed Mexico to win 87 of the 89 games they have played at the Azteca Stadium.
Here in the UK, the win is being billed as one of England’s greatest ever. See this article for example:
What I meant was “expected by me”! But yes, you are right; in fact, a soccer-loving friend of mine told me that England would lose for the very reasons you mention. Thanks for the comment.
Of course, I understand all of what you say above. My own expectation (guess) was that England would win. I also expect them to beat Norway. Should they meet Argentina in the semifinal, I don’t have a good guess. To me, that’s 50-50.
I expected Brazil to beat Japan and Norway, but lose to England.
In the meantime Trump and Infantino have taken over the show. A suspended American player is allowed to play against Belgium.
The rest of the world is not pleased.
With a sense of divine justice Belgium won easily with the added bonus of 2 of their goals being gifted by dreadful American errors. Not much even Trump can do about it.
I’ve always wondered what the founders (of the United States) thought about where the principles of governance came from. It seems to me that they thought there was a “science” of governance that they could discover through reason, or that they could at least engineer based on emerging principles of human behavior.
The Federalist Papers, for instance, have a great deal of discussion about how to enlist human nature in the task of governance, how to avoid the intrusion of human foibles, and even how to co-opt human foibles in the service of good governance. One takeaway (for me) is that a well-designed system of governance can take advantage of the self-interests of government officials (greed, desire for power, temptation to use position to accumulate wealth) by creating a system that places those self-interests into alignment with the public good. Another is that a system of checks and balances would be necessary to counter the worst impulses of selfish leaders, enabling a system that remains stable. It seems like they were attempting to incorporate known principles of human behavior and use those principles to engineer a new form of governance.
I know that all this came later than 1776, but my reading is that the founders of the republic and the authors of the Constitution thought that they were reaching toward discovering a system of government—almost like scientists of the day were discovering great truths about the natural world.
I am no student of the Revolution and would readily defer to them for the real story of our country’s founding.
I may be missing your point, but to a certain extent the founding fathers DID think there was a ‘science’ of governance – and not just in the sense of airy-fairy theory, but in the sense of a real evidence-based science. The evidence was necessarily historical. But evidence from real life is the most powerful kind of evidence there is!
One of the FF (I forget which one) actually scoured the history books to prepare for assisting in writing the constitution – which is, after all, just a blueprint for a form of government. The founders were well aware that all previous attempts at democratic governance had ended in failure. They wanted to avoid those failures by incorporating provisions that would prevent the US from suffering those same failures. And, based on how long the US has been able to remain a democracy (albeit imperfectly), they were astoundingly successful.
Anyway, I learned this from a great article a read years ago. If I can find it again, I’ll add a link below. It was really quite fascinating.
I think that you did get my point. What I was trying to say was that it seems from their writings that the founding fathers had a “science” of governance in mind—that they were using evidence of history plus emerging theories of human behavior to “engineer” a form of government that would both benefit the people and be stable.
Thank you for commenting. Love to read the article you mention if you can find it.
Yea, Dirty Dancing was way over-rated. Except for Patrick Swayze!
And speaking of males that make women swoon:
“Because a mate’s status and wealth are more important to women than men, men may have evolved a stronger desire to achieve status and wealth… This immediately suggests an explanation for the fact that, on average, men earn more than women.”
I think this is undoubtedly correct. But, in addition, as history shows, the same traits that women sought in males to increase their reproductive fitness were eventually used against them by those same males to exclude them from any of the opportunities to gain wealth and status that attracted females to them in the first place.
But now that women have largely clawed back those opportunities, it’s tedious to hear academics and the people who parrot them continue to attribute the paucity of women in high positions to ‘patriarchy.’ That’s their story and they’re sticking with it. Evidence be damned.
I also wonder whether males may have shaped females via sexual selection, too–albeit in the opposite direction. That is, have males preferentially selected more docile, less ambitious females for mates? After all, it is at least possible that a female who is content with a domestic role is more ‘fit’ for raising children to adulthood than a female who is always chafing at the bit.
Anyway, I read the first chapter of A Billion Years of Sex Differences (available here), and I can’t wait to read the rest of it.
Good question.
In any event, I think that the prevailing narratives about sex and gender in much of society can literally be defined as “evidence be damned’.
Like many people participating here, I am an older fella. I am not sure if I will live to see a rebound in popular culture in which scientific evidence will prevail over narrative. It may be beginning to happen, but I am not sure if the momentum is great enough to break the inertia of stupidity.
Also, “on average, men make more than women”. I don’t believe that “on average” the best way to measure this, given differences in career and life choices between men and women. Only about 20% of the engineers in the multinational manufacturing firm that I work for are female, while less than 10% of our HR staff are male. On average, males make more money than females within this comparison, but that’s due to the job, not any sexism. The female engineers are not getting paid less than the male engineers in the same role and with the same experience and are given the same opportunities for promotion.
I was at dinner on a business trip once in Northern CA with coworkers, and one of our younger colleagues was approached by a couple of local gals who asked him his profession. He said he was an engineer, and they oohed and cooed when he said that, until they found out that he was a mechanical engineer and not a software engineer, so there’s certainly some selection going on!
I think attributing the gap to evolution is puzzling, given that for many decades, indeed centuries, women were overtly paid less than men for the same work. A tiny bit of googling yielded the following:
“When the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was passed, U.S. Department of Labor surveys showed women were earning about 19% less than men in the exact same jobs.”
When I was born, women couldn’t get credit cards or open bank accounts without a male signature. Surely that influenced their earning capabilities as well.
Yes, and the business of bearing and raising children is going to cut into earning capabilities as well. And the work of raising children is either unpaid (when done by the mother,) or relatively poorly-paid (when done by nannies.)
Meanwhile, given that a woman who wants to have and raise children needs to eat, of course a potential mate’s earning power will be a factor in her choice.
Re the movies: that list seems to me to be a perfect NYT list, especially those movies are described. Almost a parody of the elite East Coast view of America.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but why does everything have to be gritty, dark, and cynical, whether it’s a remake of an old TV show like Perry Mason, or on the grand scale of movies trying to tell an American story? Why can’t they have at least one of the movies on the list be about how our freedoms and opportunities allow our citizens to succeed in the face of adversity? Rocky, or The Pursuit of Happyness, or October Sky all show that. Or some more patriotic movies, like The Patriot, or maybe even Hacksaw Ridge (I was surprised when I first saw this war movie about a conscientious objector, but it does seem to be an “only in America” story). Gran Torino is also a good slice of America in a nutshell. But those aren’t “edgy”.
Disclosure Day tried to be come-togetherish but it was a dud for me; I left the theater with the feeling that the movie was trying to manipulate me. I wouldn’t put it even in the top 80% of Spielberg’s work, much less as in a top 10 list of what America is about.
The leaders of Iran certainly want to control the Strait of Hormuz for both political and economic reasons. However, the rest of the world is inclined to say ‘no’ The naysayers include Trump, obviously. However, Asia, Europe, Africa, S. America are also inclined to say ‘no’ (sotto voce). Iran has another problem that they probably can’t solve. Oman is on the other side of the Strait. The Strait is not a canal (for example, Suez or Panama). It is actually rather wide (the minimum is 21 miles). The marketplace thinks that Iran will fail. Today, oil is under $70 a barrel.
First: hope that your power and water are restored to your home, and that your muscles and tendons are starting to recover from successfully saving the food-stores.
In the last couple of years’ readings on the Mideast, I have been introduced to “the street”…a new term for me, but even as early as in Antonious’ 1938 writings the various Arab leaders have been very sensitive to what the mood of the population (known as the street) is. Not in a democratic sense, but rather a simple fear of assassination. The street can be riled up it seems particularly by religious entreaties such as a declared jihad. The demonstrations at the funeral ceremonies in Iran do not bode well for future peace based on past history.
Oh, and I don’t often..really almost never say this, but that green salad and dressing looks WONDERFUL!
Expected by whom? Pretty much nobody here in England expected England to win. The reasons are:
England haven’t played well so far in this World Cup
Mexico were playing at home in their own stadium – always an advantage.
The stadium is at an altitude of 7,000 feet. Mexico play at 7,000 feet regularly, England does not.
Points 2 and 3 together have allowed Mexico to win 87 of the 89 games they have played at the Azteca Stadium.
Here in the UK, the win is being billed as one of England’s greatest ever. See this article for example:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cgevv1r30w1o
What I meant was “expected by me”! But yes, you are right; in fact, a soccer-loving friend of mine told me that England would lose for the very reasons you mention. Thanks for the comment.
Of course, I understand all of what you say above. My own expectation (guess) was that England would win. I also expect them to beat Norway. Should they meet Argentina in the semifinal, I don’t have a good guess. To me, that’s 50-50.
I expected Brazil to beat Japan and Norway, but lose to England.
In the meantime Trump and Infantino have taken over the show. A suspended American player is allowed to play against Belgium.
The rest of the world is not pleased.
Yep. FIFA is horribly corrupt itself, as is Trump. So no surprises.
With a sense of divine justice Belgium won easily with the added bonus of 2 of their goals being gifted by dreadful American errors. Not much even Trump can do about it.
Not so soon! There is still time to annex Belgium before the quarterfinal. Or better, annex both Belgium and Spain. That way we (USA) can’t lose 🙂
Ooo thanks for highlighting and commenting Shermer’s piece – superb material.
I’ve always wondered what the founders (of the United States) thought about where the principles of governance came from. It seems to me that they thought there was a “science” of governance that they could discover through reason, or that they could at least engineer based on emerging principles of human behavior.
The Federalist Papers, for instance, have a great deal of discussion about how to enlist human nature in the task of governance, how to avoid the intrusion of human foibles, and even how to co-opt human foibles in the service of good governance. One takeaway (for me) is that a well-designed system of governance can take advantage of the self-interests of government officials (greed, desire for power, temptation to use position to accumulate wealth) by creating a system that places those self-interests into alignment with the public good. Another is that a system of checks and balances would be necessary to counter the worst impulses of selfish leaders, enabling a system that remains stable. It seems like they were attempting to incorporate known principles of human behavior and use those principles to engineer a new form of governance.
I know that all this came later than 1776, but my reading is that the founders of the republic and the authors of the Constitution thought that they were reaching toward discovering a system of government—almost like scientists of the day were discovering great truths about the natural world.
I am no student of the Revolution and would readily defer to them for the real story of our country’s founding.
I may be missing your point, but to a certain extent the founding fathers DID think there was a ‘science’ of governance – and not just in the sense of airy-fairy theory, but in the sense of a real evidence-based science. The evidence was necessarily historical. But evidence from real life is the most powerful kind of evidence there is!
One of the FF (I forget which one) actually scoured the history books to prepare for assisting in writing the constitution – which is, after all, just a blueprint for a form of government. The founders were well aware that all previous attempts at democratic governance had ended in failure. They wanted to avoid those failures by incorporating provisions that would prevent the US from suffering those same failures. And, based on how long the US has been able to remain a democracy (albeit imperfectly), they were astoundingly successful.
Anyway, I learned this from a great article a read years ago. If I can find it again, I’ll add a link below. It was really quite fascinating.
I think that you did get my point. What I was trying to say was that it seems from their writings that the founding fathers had a “science” of governance in mind—that they were using evidence of history plus emerging theories of human behavior to “engineer” a form of government that would both benefit the people and be stable.
Thank you for commenting. Love to read the article you mention if you can find it.
Yea, Dirty Dancing was way over-rated. Except for Patrick Swayze!
And speaking of males that make women swoon:
I think this is undoubtedly correct. But, in addition, as history shows, the same traits that women sought in males to increase their reproductive fitness were eventually used against them by those same males to exclude them from any of the opportunities to gain wealth and status that attracted females to them in the first place.
But now that women have largely clawed back those opportunities, it’s tedious to hear academics and the people who parrot them continue to attribute the paucity of women in high positions to ‘patriarchy.’ That’s their story and they’re sticking with it. Evidence be damned.
I also wonder whether males may have shaped females via sexual selection, too–albeit in the opposite direction. That is, have males preferentially selected more docile, less ambitious females for mates? After all, it is at least possible that a female who is content with a domestic role is more ‘fit’ for raising children to adulthood than a female who is always chafing at the bit.
Anyway, I read the first chapter of A Billion Years of Sex Differences (available here), and I can’t wait to read the rest of it.
Good question.
In any event, I think that the prevailing narratives about sex and gender in much of society can literally be defined as “evidence be damned’.
Like many people participating here, I am an older fella. I am not sure if I will live to see a rebound in popular culture in which scientific evidence will prevail over narrative. It may be beginning to happen, but I am not sure if the momentum is great enough to break the inertia of stupidity.
Also, “on average, men make more than women”. I don’t believe that “on average” the best way to measure this, given differences in career and life choices between men and women. Only about 20% of the engineers in the multinational manufacturing firm that I work for are female, while less than 10% of our HR staff are male. On average, males make more money than females within this comparison, but that’s due to the job, not any sexism. The female engineers are not getting paid less than the male engineers in the same role and with the same experience and are given the same opportunities for promotion.
I was at dinner on a business trip once in Northern CA with coworkers, and one of our younger colleagues was approached by a couple of local gals who asked him his profession. He said he was an engineer, and they oohed and cooed when he said that, until they found out that he was a mechanical engineer and not a software engineer, so there’s certainly some selection going on!
I think attributing the gap to evolution is puzzling, given that for many decades, indeed centuries, women were overtly paid less than men for the same work. A tiny bit of googling yielded the following:
“When the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was passed, U.S. Department of Labor surveys showed women were earning about 19% less than men in the exact same jobs.”
When I was born, women couldn’t get credit cards or open bank accounts without a male signature. Surely that influenced their earning capabilities as well.
Yes, and the business of bearing and raising children is going to cut into earning capabilities as well. And the work of raising children is either unpaid (when done by the mother,) or relatively poorly-paid (when done by nannies.)
Meanwhile, given that a woman who wants to have and raise children needs to eat, of course a potential mate’s earning power will be a factor in her choice.
Re the movies: that list seems to me to be a perfect NYT list, especially those movies are described. Almost a parody of the elite East Coast view of America.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but why does everything have to be gritty, dark, and cynical, whether it’s a remake of an old TV show like Perry Mason, or on the grand scale of movies trying to tell an American story? Why can’t they have at least one of the movies on the list be about how our freedoms and opportunities allow our citizens to succeed in the face of adversity? Rocky, or The Pursuit of Happyness, or October Sky all show that. Or some more patriotic movies, like The Patriot, or maybe even Hacksaw Ridge (I was surprised when I first saw this war movie about a conscientious objector, but it does seem to be an “only in America” story). Gran Torino is also a good slice of America in a nutshell. But those aren’t “edgy”.
Disclosure Day tried to be come-togetherish but it was a dud for me; I left the theater with the feeling that the movie was trying to manipulate me. I wouldn’t put it even in the top 80% of Spielberg’s work, much less as in a top 10 list of what America is about.
Personally I much prefer the original Close Encounters, which was fun.
The Community Notes on the odious Ana Kasparian’s post aren’t showing because they need more ratings. I posted this response:
“Folks, this is absolutely false.
There is a Community Note, but it needs more ratings before it will be posted.
Please click on the 3 black dots above Kasparian’s post, then post “Request Community Note,” then rate the note.”
The leaders of Iran certainly want to control the Strait of Hormuz for both political and economic reasons. However, the rest of the world is inclined to say ‘no’ The naysayers include Trump, obviously. However, Asia, Europe, Africa, S. America are also inclined to say ‘no’ (sotto voce). Iran has another problem that they probably can’t solve. Oman is on the other side of the Strait. The Strait is not a canal (for example, Suez or Panama). It is actually rather wide (the minimum is 21 miles). The marketplace thinks that Iran will fail. Today, oil is under $70 a barrel.