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 a Hump Day (”’aho ‘o e hump” in Tongan), October 23, 2024, and National Boston Cream Pie Day. Actually, it is not a pie but a cake, and a good one, too. From Wikipedia:
It is said to have been created in 1856 by Armenian-French chef Mossburg Sanzian at the Parker House Hotel in Boston. A direct descendant of earlier cakes known as American pudding-cake pie and Washington pie, the dessert was referred to as chocolate cream pie, Parker House chocolate cream pie, and finally Boston cream pie on Parker House’s menus. The cake consisted of two layers of French butter sponge cake filled with thick custard and brushed with a rum syrup; its side was coated with the same custard overlaid with toasted sliced almonds, and the top coated with chocolate fondant.[5] While other custard cakes may have existed at that time, baking chocolate as a coating was a new process, making it unique and a popular choice on the menu.
A photo:
cara fealy choate, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 23 Wikipedia page.
NOTE: remember: I am off to Las Vegas for CSICon today, and posting will be light until after I return on November 1. I will report as I can; as always, I do my best.
Here’s a photo of Botany Pond early yesterday morning. The lights by the pond are illuminating the Virginia Creeper affixed to Erman Hall, and the leaves are reflected in the pond.
Da Nooz:
*More on the election and a confusing headline in the Wall Street Journal: “Republicans eat into Democrats’ early voting advantage“. What? I didn’t know any votes had been counted and thought the election was a squeaker. But of course what they mean is that Democrats were tending to vote early and now Republicans are catching up:
Democrats have a clear edge in early voting so far, but Republicans are embracing the practice of casting their ballots before Election Day more than they have in past election cycles, despite former President Donald Trump sending mixed signals on the issue.
More than 15 million Americans have voted early in-person or cast mail-in ballots, including 5.3 million in the seven swing states, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab. In the states where voters register by party, about 47% of the early votes have been cast by Democrats, while 33% have been cast by Republicans. Battleground states such as Michigan and Georgia aren’t included in the breakdown by party registrations.
Democrats also account for 49% of returned ballots compared with 31% for GOP voters. That is a smaller margin than around the same time four years ago—in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic—when Democrats made up nearly 52% of returned mail-in ballots compared with 24% for Republicans.
Many states have gradually expanded opportunities for people to vote early, and the pandemic boosted interest in the idea of voters casting their ballots by mail rather than heading to crowded polling places. In most states, early voting rules are similar to what they were in 2020, though a handful have tightened some rules.
Both presidential campaigns are scouring the data for clues about voter enthusiasm and the strength of their ground games, while warning it is too early to draw major conclusions about turnout or enthusiasm. In particular, neither side can say for sure whether the people who have cast ballots already would have done so anyway on Election Day.
Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who maintains the early voting numbers for Election Lab, said the data so far shows more of a shift in how Republicans are casting their ballot rather than an indication of how the party is performing.
McDonald said the Republicans who have voted are likely high-propensity voters who had already made up their minds and decided not to wait until Election Day this year. “This appears to be a shuffling of the furniture,” McDonald said.
I guess exit polls (or the polling places themselves) tell you which registrants voted early, though it seems somewhat unethical for polling places to disclose this information. And I guess the assumption is that the rise in early-voting Republicans means that they were eager to vote for Trump. Who knows? After reading the article, and putting up this bit, I’m not sure this is anything more than meaningless prognostication. So it goes.
The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, has raised hopes in the Biden administration that it could help pave the way for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.
But in many ways the goal of an independent Palestinian state seems further away than ever. In Gaza, there has been death and destruction on a devastating scale. There is a lack of a clear and solid Palestinian leadership. And Israel is grappling with its own trauma over the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7.
President Biden is hoping Mr. Sinwar’s death can bring about a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages, while producing a path toward negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel — the so-called two-state solution. But it is unclear who can speak for Hamas now in Gaza, or even if the group really knows where all the hostages are or how many remain alive.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to continue the war against Hamas as he prosecutes another conflict against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and also to retaliate against Iran. Since Oct. 7, he has repeatedly ruled out the possibility of a two-state solution, and the stability of his coalition government is dependent on far-right ministers who oppose a Palestinian state of any kind.
All that makes the prospect of Israel agreeing to a serious negotiation on a Palestinian state extremely unlikely, said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gazan scholar who is a visiting professor at Northwestern University.
“Netanyahu has said many times lately that a Palestinian state would endanger the security of Israel,” said Mr. Abusada. “With the radical part of Israel now in power, it’s not on their agenda.”
Actually, right now Netanyahu is right; who in their right minds would set up a Palestinian state without credible and moderate leadership? Remember, Hamas was and is quite popular in Palestine—including in the West Bank—and what state adjacent to Israel could be guaranteed not to send out terrorists? Further, the Palestinians want a two-state solution even less than do Israelis, as they’ve rejected offers of a state, and sometimes good ones, several times. I think we have to set our minds to realizing that such a “solution” is a long ways away, but I’m wondering what Israel’s interim plans are after defeating Hamas. I’m sure they’re making them, but we have no idea what they are.
*For a different take, see the solution of David Friedman, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, at the Jewish News Service: “How to end the hundred years war on Israel “. Friedman rejects the two-state solution for the reasons I note above, but proposes a ONE-state solution: a Jewish state! The article, by Andrew Pessin, describes what Friedman says in his new book, One Jewish State:
One Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” is obviously off the table for the pro-Israel side. Friedman does not consider a “binational state,” but one can speculate why: That is not a Jewish state, and his starting point is that there must be a Jewish state. That leaves, then, the “one Jewish state.” The basic idea is that Israel must exert its sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. (Gaza is a separate and difficult case, as Friedman acknowledges in a chapter devoted to it, which we shall not treat here.)
In addition to the main negative argument above, there are positive arguments for the idea. These boil down to this: Only under Israeli sovereignty will Palestinians be able to lead full lives of dignity and prosperity, ultimately producing a peaceful outcome for all. Israel is a vibrant democracy “with a track record of respecting the civil, religious and human rights of its minority population, almost all of which is Arab.” Most Arab-Israeli citizens “patriotically support living in their country,” where their standard of living, opportunities and prosperity are orders of magnitude greater than that of their Arab neighbors in surrounding countries, including in the territories administered by Palestinians themselves. The idea is to extend the same situation—i.e., Israeli sovereignty, to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
With one essential difference. Israeli Arabs are full citizens of Israel with equal rights. Palestinians in Judea and Samaria cannot be. A secure Jewish state cannot swap the security risk posed by Palestinians in Judea and Samaria for the demographic risk of making them full citizens. They may become “residents” of Israel but cannot become full citizens.
Here we reach the point at which critics will explode, “Apartheid!”
Friedman addresses this through a deep dive into the case of Puerto Rico, which he sees as a possible model for the “One Jewish State.” Roughly, Puerto Ricans stand to the United States as Palestinians in Judea and Samaria might stand to Israel. The United States has sovereignty while Puerto Ricans have extensive rights of self-government but not collective national rights to vote in U.S. elections. Why does it work? Because Puerto Ricans live better than they would if they were entirely independent. They derive political, economic and civil benefits, and enjoy all the same basic civil rights as any U.S. citizen but pay less in federal taxes in exchange for not being full citizens. With Israeli sovereignty, Palestinians would have the civil rights guaranteed by Israel’s Basic Law on Human Dignity without the collective right to self-determination; they would pay less Israeli taxes; and they would not vote in national elections.
I give this one a big NOPE. Palestinians will not look ahead to see their presumed improvement in well being, which is a phantasm, and the many who hate Jews will be even more dubious. I cant believe anybody could think this solution would work. I would prefer UAE control of Palestine, but that would work only for Gaza. As the Magic 8 Ball says, “The future looks cloudy.” Perhaps this could work, but I will have been long below ground if and when it does.
On April 24, 2007, Kamala Harris testified before Congress in support of the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007. The bill, which was introduced that year but never passed the upper chamber, would have created a student loan repayment program for state and local prosecutors, and Harris, then the district attorney of San Francisco, argued it would draw top legal talent to offices like hers.
In a written statement to the House Judiciary Committee, she described how debt-addled prosecutors often decamp to the private sector a few years into the job, lured by the prospect of higher pay that could be used to pay off law school debt. That dynamic had left many district attorneys’ offices short-staffed, she said, forcing them to put rookie attorneys on complex cases.
The statement was simple and pragmatic. But Harris wasn’t the first person to make it.
. . . Virtually her entire testimony about the bill was taken from that of another district attorney, Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois, who had testified in support of the legislation two months earlier before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both statements cite the same surveys, use the same language, and make the same points in the same order, with a paragraph added here or there. They even contain the same typos, such as missing punctuation or mistaken plurals. One error—a “who” that should have been a “whom”—was corrected in Harris’s transposition.
. . . Harris, who also testified about two other bills that day, devoted approximately 1,500 words to the John R. Justice Act. Nearly 1,200 of them—or 80 percent—were copied verbatim from the statement Logli submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 27, 2007, two months before Harris delivered her testimony.
Two examples with Harris’s copying in red (click on the original source if you have trouble reading):
But wait! There’s more!
But as California attorney general, she didn’t just copy boilerplate language without attribution. In one of the lengthier passages reviewed by Free Beacon, she lifted a fictionalized story about a victim of sex trafficking—andpresented it as a real case.
The story came from Polaris Project, a nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. By June 2012, the project had posted a series of vignettes on its website that were “representative of the types of calls” the hotline receives and “meant for informational purposes only,” according to an archived webpage. To preserve confidentiality, the project said, key details like “names, locations, and other identifying information” had been changed.
But in November 2012, Harris included one of those vignettes in a report she published on the state of human trafficking in California. Though she said that the story was “courtesy of” the hotline, she copied it verbatim and did not acknowledge that it contained fictionalized material.
The only detail she changed was the location. The Polaris Project described a young woman, “Kelly,” who had been forced to engage in prostitution and was rescued by law enforcement in Washington, D.C. But in Harris’s telling, Kelly had conveniently been found in San Francisco.
The change effectively gave Harris credit for a rescue that never occurred, at least in her state, and reflects what Skinner, the former solicitor general, said was a common perception of Harris among legal officials at the time.
Here’s that one, and there are several other examples:
But of course the MSM found a way to excuse this. It’s not malicious, but just sloppiness!
Experts who reviewed those allegations, including Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, argued that they comprised such a small portion of Harris’s work that sloppiness—not malice—seemed like the most plausible explanation for them, arguments that were quoted in the Washington PostandNew York Times.
“You’d expect these to be more apparent throughout the book if this was malicious intent to plagiarize,” Bailey told the Post. “Ultimately we’re talking about not very many words in a very long book, which to me means it’s more likely poor writing.”
I didn’t realize that you had to have malice to commit plagiarism; all you had to do was pass off somebody’s words as your own. Oh well, autres temps, autres mœurs.
*And since I’m leaving, let’s have something from the AP’s “Oddities” section. The small New Zealand airport at Dunedin has now limited the time the departing can hug their loved ones goodbye.
Emotional farewells are a common sight at airports, but travelers leaving the New Zealand city of Dunedin will have to be quick. A new three-minute time limit on goodbye hugs in the airport’s drop-off area is intended to prevent lingering cuddles from causing traffic jams.
“Max hug time three minutes,” warn signs outside the terminal, adding that those seeking “fonder farewells” should head to the airport’s parking lot instead.
The cuddle cap was imposed in September to “keep things moving smoothly” in the redesigned passenger drop-off area outside the airport, CEO Dan De Bono told The Associated Press on Tuesday. It was the airport’s way of reminding people that the zone was for “quick farewells” only.
The signs had polarized social media users, De Bono said.
“We were accused of breaching basic human rights and how dare we limit how long someone can have a hug for,” he said, adding that others had welcomed the change.
The signs were meant as an alternative to those at other airports warning of wheel clamping or fines for drivers parked in drop-off areas. Some in Britain have imposed fees for all drop-offs — however brief.
. . .Three minutes was “plenty of time to pull up, say farewell to your loved ones and move on,” he said. “The time limit is really a nicer way of saying, you know, get on with it.”
A 20-second hug is long enough to release the wellbeing-boosting hormones oxytocin and serotonin, De Bono said. Anything longer was “really awkward.”
But passengers need not worry unduly about enforcement. “We do not have hug police,” De Bono said.
Visitors might, however, be asked to move their lingering embraces to the parking lot, where they can cuddle free of charge for up to 15 minutes.
Here’s a video showing the sign. What if you want a really fond farewell?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili beefs about the American media:
A: What do you think about mainstream media?
Hili: No comment.
In Polish:
Ja: Co myślisz o mediach głównego nurtu?
Hili: Wolę nie komentować.
From Masih, showing two reporters imprisoned in Iran simply for reporting on the arrest and treatment of Mahsa Amini, killed by Iran’s morality police for wearing her hijab the “wrong” way:
As a journalist, my heart breaks for these two amazing Iranian reporters. Look at their beautiful eyes, full of life and courage.
Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi were among the first to report on Mahsa Amini’s tragic murder at the hands of the morality police, igniting the… pic.twitter.com/ypExMF2pXu
A tweet from Bill Maher, in which he beefs about Elon Musk being denied SpaceX launches in California, presumably because they don’t like Musk supporting Trump:
The right thinks that the left is in a very different place with free speech, and they’re not wrong. pic.twitter.com/CsaEwSjRRo
One from my feed (send in your tweets!), and it’s very sad (story is here; note that her family blames Israel for not helping her).
Shir’el Golan survived the Nova Festival massacre where she witnessed terrible atrocities.
She took her own life yesterday, unable to live with the trauma.
She was only 22 💔 pic.twitter.com/Kajn5obvOx
A Brown University professor responds to the group of students asking the University to divest from 10 companies in Israel. The student’s response is lame. Look at the second post, as the first is just a recording of the entire hearing.
I really enjoyed watching Professor James Kellner grill the students after their presentation. Kellner is a Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and Environment and Society. In a past life, I imagine he must have been a lawyer. He is one of the professors who… pic.twitter.com/yPxByFkeJ9
Welcome to the Cruelest day, Tuesday, October 22, 2024, and Eat a Pretzel Day. And by that, I mean a large, soft German-style pretzel, ideally dipped into mustard. (Even more ideally, accompanied by a cold liter of German beer. In fact, two cold liters of beer.) Below you learn how they make the soft ones:
Remember that tomorrow a.m. I head to Vegas to make my fortune give a talk, and posting will be light until about November 1. (November already?)
With two weeks of campaigning left before the 2024 election, Vice PresidentKamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are running nearly evenly across the seven battleground states among a critical portion of the electorate whose votes likely will determine who becomes the next president.
A Washington Post-Schar School poll of more than 5,000 registered voters, conducted in the first half of October, finds 47 percent who say they will definitely or probably support Harris while 47 percent say they will definitely or probably support Trump. Among likely voters, 49 percent support Harris and 48 percent back Trump.
Trump’s support is little changed from the 48 percent he received in aspring survey of six key states using the same methodology, but Harris’s standing is six percentage points higher than the 41-percent support registered for President Joe Biden, who was then a candidate.
Here’s a figure from the Post showing the popular vote in key states. It’s a squeaker!
In addition to swing-state voters overall, the Post-Schar School survey focuses on a sizable group of registered voters who have not been firmly committed to any candidate and whose voting record leaves open whether they will cast ballots this fall. With another part of the electorate locked down for a candidate for many months, this group of “Deciders” could make the difference in an election where the battleground states could be won or lost by the narrowest of margins.
The new results show changes among this group of voters compared with the first survey conducted last spring. About three-quarters of battleground-state voters say they will definitely vote for Harris or Trump (74 percent). That’s up from 58 percent who were committed to Biden or Trump this spring. The percentage who are uncommitted has dropped from 42 percent to 26 percent over the past five months. Among likely voters, the latest poll finds that a smaller 21 percent say they are not fully committed to Harris or Trump.
. . . Trump is strongest in Arizona, where he holds an edge of six percentage points among registered voters. That shrinks to three points among likely voters. His four-point edge in North Carolina among registered voters ticks down to three points among likely voters. That echoes aPost poll conducted last month but contrasts witha Quinnipiac poll suggesting Harris may have a slight edge. Those advantages are within the margin of error.
And here are the likely voters in swing states:
It’s enough to give somebody a stomach ache, and I know plenty of people who are sweating blood. I’m trying to exercise some Sam-Harrisian mindfulness and let the moment happen.
The Wall Street Journal found that even before the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel considered killing Sinwar, who was seen as a national-security threat, according to people involved in the plans. Israel at turns failed to find the right moment or pulled their operations when officials disagreed on the mission, the people said.
After Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250 others in October last year, there was no longer disagreement.
So began one of Israel’s biggest military and intelligence operations, led by Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, and carried out by the Israeli military with help from U.S. intelligence agencies.
Sinwar for months blunted the technological and intelligence-gathering prowess of Israel and its allies. He used rudimentary, untraceable communications and trusted only people closest to him. Sinwar also commanded miles and miles of subterranean tunnels.
Arab negotiators offered Sinwar an escape in exchange for allowing Egypt to negotiate for the release of the hostages on behalf of Hamas, but he declined. Sinwar clung to the hope that the conflict he ignited might draw in Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, setting off a regional war against Israel—a possibility that remains.
. . . In the months that followed, Israel’s military closed in on Hamas’s underground labyrinth, destroying strategic tunnel complexes. The Journal found that the tactic forced Sinwar to surface. With ever-fewer places to hide, he spent more time above ground, in the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to Israeli officials and Arab mediators communicating with Hamas.
Israel didn’t know Sinwar’s exact location but it deployed forces to hunt him there. On Oct. 16, Israel’s strategy to flush Sinwar out of the tunnels led to his killing, enabled by the skills of war and aided by chance.
This account is based on interviews with Israeli, U.S., Hamas and Arab officials, as well as documents and footage the Israeli military found in Gaza, books written by Sinwar and his communications over a year with Arab mediators and Hamas officials.
. . . Israel’s continued disruption of Hamas’s tunnel network forced Sinwar to go above ground, according to Israeli and Arab officials, making him more vulnerable to a stroke of bad luck.
According to the long article, Sinwar was convinced he didn’t have long to live, and so prepared
*Bret Stephens and Gail Collins have their weekly discussion in the NYT op-eds, and “Kamala Harris has an unexpected ally“—it happens to be Stephens, a conservative. Here’s part of their conversation.
Bret Stephens: Please don’t tell me you’re going to ask how I’m going to vote.
Gail Collins: Well, Bret, why would you imagine such a thing? Just because I keep getting stopped by people on the street, demanding to know whether you’re going to support Kamala Harris. I am not making this up.
Come on. Give us a hint.
Bret: You really want to know?
Gail: Um, yeah.
Bret: Kicking and screaming, I’ll cast my ballot for Harris.
I really would rather have just sat out Election Day. But Jan. 6 and election denialism are unforgivable. And as my friend Richard North Patterson likes to say, “Donald Trump is literally bleeping crazy.” And what crazy brings in its wake is JD Vance, whom I find worse than Trump, because he’s just as cynical but twice as bright. And what it also brings in its wake is Tucker Carlson and the Hitler defenders he likes to platform.
Gail: OK, gonna take a little time to run up to the roof and toot a horn. Be right back.
Bret: Well …
Gail: Hear that, don’t-like-anyone people? Really, if Bret can bring himself to vote for Kamala, you can.
Bret: It’s a 99.999 percent vote against Trump and a 0.001 percent vote for Harris.
Gail: And to bolster the argument, how about a short list of the things that bother you most about your new choice for president of the United States?
Bret: If the G.O.P. had nominated Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or Doug Burgum, I’d be voting Republican. Probably even Tim Scott: That’s how reluctant I was to vote for her.
I fear that Harris is every bit as vacuous behind the scenes as she seems to be on the public stage. I fear she will be tested early by a foreign adversary and stumble badly, whether it’s in stopping Iran from building a nuclear weapon or China from blockading Taiwan or Russia from seizing a portion of a Baltic country. I fear she will capitulate too easily to her party’s left flank, especially when it comes to identity politics, economic policy or polarizing cultural issues. I fear she’ll have no domestic policy ideas that don’t involve mindlessly expanding the role of government. I fear she’ll surround herself with mediocre advisers, like her embarrassingly bad veep pick. I fear she won’t muster the political will to curb mass migration. And I fear that a failed Harris presidency will do more to turbocharge the far-right in this country than to diminish it.
Gail: That does cover a lot …
Bret: But I won’t fear that she’ll refuse to recognize the result of the next election should she lose it. And I won’t fear that Tim Walz is a cunning stooge who will always do the boss’s bidding no matter how unconstitutional it might be. And I won’t fear learning that an Arnold Palmer is now a reference to something other than lemonade and iced tea and a big golf swing.
Stephens’s views pretty much reflect mine, though I consider myself a liberal while he is a conservative. But the next-to-last statement he makes sums up how I feel about Harris: there are far better choices among Democrats than her, but we aren’t allowed to make them. Every fear Stephens has I share. I have no “joy”. But of course Trump is a bull-goose looney and better a mediocre choice than a complete disaster.
*A UN official, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, issued a report on damage to women athletes by male athletes identifying as women, and then called for banning biological men from women’s sports.
A new study revealed that trans-identified biological men competing in women’s sports has resulted in the loss of 890 medals by over 600 female athletes across 29 different sports, although experts said the numbers are likely much higher.
The shocking data comes from a recent report published by Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, who issued an official recommendation of banning men from competing in women’s sports. The report was presented to the UN General Assembly on Oct. 8, which included a plethora of written and in-person evidence. She advised that there needs to be a protected female-only category to ensure the safety of female athletes and fairness at all levels, as reported by Sex Matters.
Alsalem called on the assembly to ensure that “female categories in organized sport are exclusively accessible to persons whose biological sex is female.” She said that new sporting categories need to be created for athletes who want to compete opposite their birth sex or have the men’s category be made available to all competitors.
The UN official stated that athletes should not be forced to lower testosterone levels in order to compete in any category. She also said that sports bodies should not subject athletes to invasive sex screenings.
“In cases where the sex of an athlete is unknown or uncertain, a dignified, swift, non-invasive and accurate sex screening method (such as a cheek swab) or, where necessary for exceptional reasons, genetic testing should be applied to confirm the athlete’s sex. In non-professional sports spaces, the original birth certificates for verification may be appropriate. In some exceptional circumstances, such tests may need to be followed up by more complex tests,” the report stated.
Alsalem called out the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and said that had it followed this protocol, the 2024 Paris Olympics boxing scandal never would have happened. The IOC determines an athlete’s sporting category based on whatever sex the athlete has listed on its passport. During the Olympics, two competitors in women’s wrestling were believed to be men, though their passports said they wre female and there was no indication that they identified as trans. They were believed by some to have DSD, or differences in sexual development, though they had male XY chromosomes.
Additionally, the report revealed that men competing in women’s sports pose a serious safety threat to female athletes, increasing “violence at all levels.”
Except in sports where there is no average biological difference between men and women in ability (equesterian sports, perhaps, and maybe archery?) it’s simpy unfair to women to make them compete against biological men. I won’t repeat my reasons as I’ve given them many times before. For trans people or the rare intersex individuals, they could have their own category, or they could compete in the men’s category.
*The CBS Show “60 Minutes” released a statement after it was caught editing Kamala Harris’s answer to a question by an interviewer. The online version differed from the original in that Harris’s tendency to ramble and—let’s face it—make no sense was expunged in favor of a more succinct words. Here’s CBS’s entire statement:
Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false.
60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes. Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.
Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated.
Our long-standing invitation to former President Trump remains open. If he would like to discuss the issues facing the nation and the Harris interview, we would be happy to have him on 60 Minutes.
As the Free Press commented in their morning newsletter:
After refusing to engage with anyone asking perfectly reasonable questions about their editing decisions, 60 Minutes now says the portion of her answer on the prime time show was “more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.” But the more succinct answer was also a far better answer from the vice president’s point of view. (Watch and judge for yourself.) Plus, if time is the real consideration, why not put the unedited version online, where there is no such pressure? Sunlight is always the best disinfectant. That was true the day after the show aired. And it’s true now.
The fact that CBS had to issue this statement shows that they’re still feeling stung by the public outcry. And it’s not just Trump who is accusing them of deceitful editing (I wouldn’t use the word “deceitful,” but it really did violate the rules of journalism. How much time did they save by the editing? From what I see, about seven seconds. And, as the tweet below shows, they have in fact edited previous interviews, including a 2019 interview Attorney General Bill Barr, a 2020 interview President Trump, and they released the full transcript of a 2024 interview with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. CBS won’t even release the transcript, and in light of what they say above, that makes no sense. There is no time constraints on reading a transcript!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is becoming more cynical:
Nature highlights a new category of Social Justice crime: “seasonalism” (my name):
Stop using ‘summer’, ‘winter’ and the rest when inviting researchers to events — it’s a small step, but it’s necessary and inclusive https://t.co/6wncUmAvbV
Nobody pulls anything over on JKR. And that number, exact as it is, cracks me up. (I envision Rowling, after a day’s writing, sitting down on Twitter with an Old Fashioned and having a grand old time.
As the Scottish Endarkenment gathers pace, star signs will follow. As a Nont*, I expect all 336** astro-identities to be recognised.
* Person whose astro-identity doesn’t match the sign they were assigned at birth (NON-Twelver)
** Number may change ***
*** Upwards, obviously pic.twitter.com/454FSIMryo
Welcome to Monday, October 21, 2024, and National Apple Day, presumbly in honor of the harvest. But the only apple I really like is a crisp, tart, Granny Smith.
The author Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed and blinded in one eye two years ago by an attacker who rushed him onstage in front of hundreds of people, will testify at the man’s trial, prosecutors said on Friday.
The assailant, Hadi Matar, is charged with second-degree attempted murder and assault with a weapon in connection with the August 2022 attack, in Chautauqua County, in western New York. Prosecutors say the attack, during which Mr. Rushdie was stabbed about 10 times, was premeditated. Mr. Matar has pleaded not guilty.
The trial, which could last up to seven weeks, had been scheduled to begin on Tuesday. But on Friday, a state appeals court judge granted a defense request to delay the trial while the court considers a separate defense motion to move it out of Chautauqua County.
Nathaniel Barone, a public defender who is representing Mr. Matar, said it was important that the proceedings be moved “to preserve my client’s right to a fair trial,” which, he added, was impossible in Chautauqua County because of the publicity surrounding the case and the lack of a local Arab American community.
. . . Mr. Matar also faces federal terrorism charges, including providing “material support and resources” to Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia in Lebanon. He and his family moved from Lebanon to the United States when he was a child. He was living in New Jersey and working at a clothing store at the time of the attack.
Prosecutors said on Friday that Mr. Matar had declined to resolve the federal and state charges with a single plea agreement. Jason Schmidt, the Chautauqua County district attorney, said he was seeking to convict Mr. Matar on the top charge, second-degree attempted murder, which carries a potential sentence of 25 years to life.
. . . Mr. Rushdie had lingering injuries as a result of the attack, including losing the sight in his right eye. When he made a surprise appearance at the PEN America literary gala last year, his voice was weak and he was noticeably thinner.
There’s little doubt that Matar will be convicted, as he was mobbed and apprehended during the attack. What puzzles me is that they granted a stay to study whether there weren’t enough Arab-Americans in that area of New York. Do they think that those who aren’t Arab-American will be unfair to the defendant. And, after all, it’s the judge, not the jury, who levies the sentence after a conviction.
*Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California, has a NYT op-ed called “College officials must condemn support for campus violence” (archived here). This is a hard problem that some of us are debating on campus:
About 1,000 people attended a rally on Oct. 8 commemorating the first anniversary of the Hamas attack at the University of California, Berkeley, where I am the dean of the law school. About half appeared to be students. Many of the protest signs were explicit in their endorsement of the violence on that day a year ago: “Israel deserves 10,000 October 7ths,” one said. “Long Live Al-Aqsa Flood,” another said, using the Hamas name for the Oct. 7 attack.
At the clock tower at the center of the Berkeley campus, a large banner was hung proclaiming “Glory to the Resistance.” It displayed an inverted red triangle used by Hamas to mark Israeli targets.
Across the country at Columbia University, the group Apartheid Divest posted an essay calling the Hamas attack a “moral, military and political victory.” The group also rescinded its criticism from last spring of Khymani James, a student who had said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
Indeed, in its statement, the group declared, “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” It also said, “Where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
In Rhode Island, the Brown University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted this on Instagram: “Al-Aqsa Flood was a historic act of resistance against decades of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonial violence.”
Here’s the controversial part:
We should expect — and demand — that campus officials respond to a celebration of Hamas in the same way they would to a Klan rally praising racist violence. The speech of those celebrating Hamas is protected by the First Amendment on public university campuses, and at private universities that choose to adhere to free speech principles, because there is a right to express all ideas, even very offensive ones. But that does not mean universities can or should do nothing.
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits colleges receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. This includes prohibiting harassment, including when there is a hostile environment.
I agree that producing a climate of harassment is against the law, but violating free speech is also against the law—at least in public colleges. So what do we do when there are campus demonstrations that may create such a climate? Is one demonstration like those above enough to do it? Do they have to be in classrooms, or will multiple demonstrations in the open air produce such a climate. This is truly a slippery slope.
The Israel Defense Forces released footage Saturday evening showing now-slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar fleeing with his family and extensive supplies into a tunnel complex below his home in Khan Younis on the night before the October 7, 2023, onslaught he orchestrated, casting Sinwar as a cowardly commander who chose to hide underground in luxury conditions and prioritize his own survival throughout a year of war with Israel in Gaza.
The release of the material, which the IDF said was recovered from Gaza several months ago, came amid attempts by some supporters of Hamas to portray footage of Sinwar throwing a stick at a surveillance drone in his final moments as proof of a heroic death by a leader who fought until his last breath.
For the past year, according to the IDF’s intelligence, “Sinwar hid most of the time underground in the area between Khan Younis and Rafah, and came out only to escape, accompanied by bodyguards and with documents, certificates, weapons and money in his possession,” the military’s spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a press conference.
“Even on the eve before the brutal massacre, Sinwar was busy with his survival and the survival of his family,” Hagari said, showing the footage and speaking first in Hebrew before delivering brief remarks in English.
“A few hours before the massacre, Sinwar and his family escaped alone to the tunnel,” Hagari said.
He didn’t lose any time! Here’s the video; I wonder how the IDF got this footage. Are there cameras in the tunnel? Here’s the IDF’s spokesperson showing the declassified footage, taken one day before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Sinwar was first at Khan Younis, then moved to Rafah things got too heated. He was killed in Rafah, the place where Biden and Harris told Israel they were not allowed to go.
Note the $32,000 Hermes handbag toted by one Mrs. Sinwar. I presume that humanitarian aid intended for Gazans paid for it.
More:
He said the IDF’s offensive in Khan Younis prompted Sinwar to flee to Rafah, where he then hid in a tunnel built for Hamas VIPs in the Tel Sultan neighborhood.
“The complex had everything he needed, television, food, sofas, beds, means of communication and control. We found his DNA sample on a tissue there, with which he blew his nose,” Hagari said.
He even had a plasma television! I’m actually surprised that he didn’t manage to get out of Gaza during the war, but perhaps he wanted to sit it out, hoping that Hamas would win. Too bad for him. . .
*Speaking of Israel (yes, again), Israel is upset because somebody—probably an American—leaked Israel’s secret plans to attack Iran in reprisal for that country’s recent missile attack. From CNN:
The US is investigating a leak of highly classified US intelligence about Israel’s plans for retaliation against Iran, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of the people familiar confirmed the documents’ authenticity.
The leak is “deeply concerning,” a US official told CNN.
The documents, dated October 15 and 16, began circulating online Friday after being posted on Telegram by an account called “Middle East Spectator.”
They are marked top secret and have markings indicating they are meant to be seen only by the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
They describe preparations Israel appears to be making for a strike against Iran. One of the documents, which says it was compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says the plans involve Israel moving munitions around.
Another document says it is sourced to the National Security Agency and outlines Israeli air force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, also believed to be in preparation for a strike on Iran. CNN is not quoting directly from or showing the documents.
A US official said the investigation is examining who had access to the alleged Pentagon document. Any such leak would automatically trigger an investigation by the FBI alongside the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies. The FBI declined to comment.
The leak comes at an extremely sensitive moment in US-Israeli relations and is bound to anger the Israelis, who have been preparing to strike Iran in response to Iran’s missile barrage on October 1. One of the documents also suggests something that Israel has always declined to confirm publicly: that the country has nuclear weapons. The document says the US has not seen any indications that Israel plans to use a nuclear weapon against Iran.
At least the media has had the decency (even CNN) not to reveal what Israel’s plans actually were (if they knew them). And I wonder if Israel will now change them.
*Good lord, Elon Musk is trying to draw in voters for Trump by holding a raffle, giving a cool million per day to anyone in Pennsylvania who signs his petition:
Billionaire Elon Musk said he plans to award $1 million a day to a randomly chosen voter who has signed his petition pledging to uphold the rights to free speech and to bear arms, stepping up efforts by his America PAC to boost Donald Trump’s presidential prospects.
Musk founded America PAC to register voters in swing states and persuade them to vote for the Republican over Democrat Kamala Harris. The splashy move by the Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder stakes out uncharted territory in American politics and renewed critics’ questions about whether such tactics were legal.
Musk made the announcement at a rally Saturday night in Harrisburg, Pa., and gave the first check to an audience member. “One of the challenges we’re having is, like, how do we get people to know about this petition?” Musk said. “This news I think is going to really fly.”
America PAC said the winner will be drawn from Pennsylvania voters until Monday, and then will be open to participants in other swing states through Nov. 5. The group had previously unveiled an offer of $100 for Pennsylvania voters who signed the petition, and $47 for voters from other battleground states including Michigan and Wisconsin. The petition reads: “By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
The presidential race is centered on Pennsylvania and about a half dozen other competitive races, where polls show the candidates neck and neck. A recent Wall Street Journal survey found Harris with slim leads in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, while Trump had a narrow edge in Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
If this isn’t illegal, it’s certainly unethical, for it’s nearly the equivalent of buying votes. I don’t hate Musk as much as many on the Left do (he did, after all, prompt some great innovations), but I certainly think he made a bad misstep here, not to mention supporting Trump.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is waiting for Paulina and her child:
Hili: If the buggy is here Paulina will soon come with Julia.
Andrzej: That’s not a given.
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli tu jest wózek, to zaraz przyjdzie Paulina z Julią.
From Masih; about the more restrictive hijab laws in in Iran. For some reason I can’t embed this, but to see the video simply click on the screenshot below. There are English subtitles, and you can see a lot of Iranian women walking around unveiled, but also being harassed by nosy morons. Ceiling Cat bless the brave women of Iran!
I retweeted this noting that “Up to now campus protestors were not explicit in their admiration for Hamas. The mask has now slipped, and their hatred of Jews–for Sinwar wanted them all eliminated–is clear. Expect more of this at American universities.”
Disgusting: Overnight, multiple signs on UPenn’s campus were vandalized with “Sinwar Lives.” This comes after students and faculty posted repeatedly about Sinwar as a “hero.”
Will the Penn administration finally admit they have a problem or continue their appeasement? pic.twitter.com/n8O8AnkWPG
Even though she doesn’t see or hear so good anymore as a special birthday treat I let her move some sheep.
She was so happy ❤️ pic.twitter.com/OXcZcdEjDr
Two tweets from Herr Doktor Professor Cobb (Emeritus). He wants me to try the first one with my ducks, but I can’t play the mouth organ (sound up). The geese are mesmerized!
I’ll be traveling to the CSICon meetings in Vegas, and then on to Utah, between next Wednesday and November 1, so posting will be light then.
I’ve never had chicken and waffles, but it sounds like a good combination: crispy, gooey, savory, and sweet. Chicago is famous for them, and here’s one good place:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 20 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
Israel’s wars and situation are dominating the news: the death of Sinwar and speculations about what that means, the hostage situation, and the war in Lebanon. So we have 3 pieces related to the war today.
*I love the title of this piece by Phyllis Chesler on her Substack site, as it’s something I’ve been saying for a long time “Thomas Friedman Keeps Banging On” (subtitle “What continues to pass for wisdom at the New York Times”). Chesler is “an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the City University of New York [CUNY], and the author of 20 books.”
For a year, Friedman has been the most clueless person writing about the war in Gaza in the MSM, but I’ll let Phyllis have the floor:
The man never quits his dangerous daydreams. Just yesterday, before the IDF eliminated the evil-doer, Yahya Sinwar, Friedman suggested that Israel bow to the Obama-Biden-Harris administration’s demand that Israel declare a “cease-fire,” accept a “two-state solution, ” and allow international, UN peacekeeping forces, and “reformed West Bank Palestinian Authority (PA) to take over Gaza.”
When have international forces ever kept the peace in a war-zone? What exactly is “reformed” about the PA? What is Friedman smoking as he makes his pronouncement from the safety of his armchair? Have terrorist Jew-haters repeatedly been blowing people up on his block, stabbing or shooting people in his building, threatening to come for him? Have thousands of his relatives, friends, and neighbors been murdered and severely wounded just in the last year?
Today, 10/18, Friedman is at it again.
Although Friedman admits that Iran and Sinwar’s Hamas consistently rejected a “two state solution,” as he sees it, the real problem is “Israel’s leader and governing coalition” who are not ready to “step up to the opportunity that Sinwar’s death has created.”
I find it telling that Friedman keeps describing it as Sinwar’s “death,” as opposed to Sinwar having been eliminated by IDF forces who chose not to follow Biden’s demands that they not go into Rafah at all and, once there, to withdraw from Rafah at once.
Remember the emphatic insistence of both Biden and Harris that Israel was not to go into Rafah? Nonsense. A bit more:
Nowhere does Friedman address the proverbial elephant in the room, namely, the necessity to de-program the Arabs on the West Bank, in Gaza, and for that matter, in every Arab country where Jew-hatred and infidel hatred is preached in every mosque, taught in every school, and featured in the Arab language media. Friedman-the-dreamer does not write about his plans for this.
Friedman returns, again and again, to Israel’s responsibility to accept “a pathway to Palestinian statehood.” (Again, he fails to mention that Israel offered Arabs a second Palestinian state many times before; these offers were always rejected. He also refuses to note that the Abraham Accords were underway when Trump was President. It is not a new initiative on the part of the Obama-Biden-Harris administration.
. . . This is what passes for wisdom at the still influential New York Times when it comes to the Middle East.
*But there is one clear thinker about the war at the paper, Bret Stephens. (Yes, some will ignore everything he says because he’s a conservative. I pity such people.) In a new piece, he argues that “Sinwar’s death is a tricky opportunity” (archived here).
What is the challenge now? Some analysts think the main issue is whether Sinwar’s demise can facilitate a deal that frees the hostages, ends the fighting and allows reconstruction in Gaza to begin.
Unlikely. Many Israelis, most of all the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, feel they’re finally winning the war; they will want to press the military initiative in Gaza and Lebanon despite the terrible risk to the remaining hostages. Whoever next takes charge of Hamas will not want to make a conciliatory move toward Israel as his first leadership act; it could easily be his last. And the next major scene of war will probably be Israel’s much-awaited retaliatory strike on Iran. We’ll see how that plays out.
I am beginning to think I’ll lose my bet with Lou Jost: I bet him that by early January, Hamas will have surrendered and given up the hostages. Hamas shows no signs of doing that, and seems more determined than ever, appointing Sinwar’s brother to be in charge. But what is the opportunity?
But the opportunity in Sinwar’s death and Hamas’s military evisceration is that it begins to open a space for young Gazans like Mohammed to openly and assertively reject Hamas’s brand of maximalist, fanatical, Islamist politics. Sinwar once told an Israeli intelligence officer that he would willingly lose 100,000 Palestinian civilians for the sake of freeing 100 Palestinian security prisoners. He clearly meant it and fought his side of the war accordingly. But after the last year of agony, ordinary Gazans seem less likely to be willing, if they ever were, to serve as Hamas’s human sacrifices in its quest to annihilate Israel.
. . . The trick lies in finding a way between two competing imperatives: the need to continue to destroy Hamas as a force that can rule Gaza, but to do so in a way that doesn’t justify, among many Palestinians, its status as a legitimate “resistance” movement.
This could be done in various ways. Indefinite Israeli control of Gaza’s border with Egypt will help stop Hamas from rearming and give Israelis greater assurance that the territory will not again become a mortal threat. An offer of safe passage out of Gaza for Hamas fighters and their families can thin the group’s ranks. Creating well-supplied humanitarian safe zones (perhaps administered by NATO security forces) for Gazan women, children, the elderly and men who have passed a security screening can further safeguard civilians and separate them from potential combatants.
Finally, an Arab mandate for Palestine, which I first proposed back in March, could provide a long-term answer for all sides: a credible Arab-led security force in Gaza; European-led economic reconstruction; a long-term path toward a politically moderate, economically prosperous Palestinian state; closer ties between Israel and friendly Arab states. It’s always a mistake to speak of “solutions” in the Middle East, but plausible grounds for optimism can do a lot to dissolve the allure of fanaticism.
But, as Stephens note, all of these solutions will take a while. Hamas don’t seem keen to get safe passage out of Gaza, and though I really like the idea of an Arab mandate, the Palestinians will almost certainly refuse it.
I have been haunted by the video below, taken by an IDF drone right before Sinwar was killed. What an ignominious end: a severely wounded man, apparently missing a hand, shot in the leg (you can’t see that), and covered with dust, reduced to tossing a stick at the drone. He must have known the end was imminent. The NYT details are below the video:
The stare-down lasted some 20 seconds, then the man limply but defiantly hurled a broken piece of wood toward the drone. Not long afterward, officials say, an Israeli soldier shot him in the head, and a tank shell flattened part of the building.
So ended the long hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men. It began hours after the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that Mr. Sinwar helped orchestrate, and concluded amid the destruction of a Rafah neighborhood resembling so many parts of Gaza, leveled by the Israeli military in the year since.
The manhunt involved Israeli commandos and spies, as well as a special unit established inside the headquarters of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, and at the Central Intelligence Agency. It used a sophisticated electronic surveillance dragnet and ground-penetrating radar provided by the United States.
New details about Mr. Sinwar’s movements over the past year have emerged since his death, including the fact that Israeli intelligence officers had seen mounting evidence since August that Mr. Sinwar, or possibly other top Hamas leaders, might be in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood.
They observed people there moving about with their faces covered, sometimes apparently surrounded by guards, suggesting that they were senior Hamas officials or hostages. And in September, they found Mr. Sinwar’s DNA in urine collected from a tunnel.
In the end, Mr. Sinwar was discovered and killed in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood somewhat by happenstance, by a group of troops on a routine patrol. But Israeli forces had spent weeks scouring the neighborhood based on the intelligence that senior Hamas officials were hiding there, possibly with Israeli hostages.
. . . The man hurled a stick at the drone, according to the footage. Israeli officials said a sniper then shot the man in the head, and a tank fired at the building.
The story is quite a bit longer than this, but read it for yourself; it’s archived here.
*I used to like Justin Trudeau, but haven’t followed him so much, though I know Canada has gone part way down the Woke Road to Crazytown. But I didn’t know so many Canadians were disaffected with their PM, at least as the Wall Street Journal tells it:
Justin Trudeau reinvented Canadian politics when he was elected prime minister at the age of 43 in 2015, with a brand built around his good looks and energy.
Almost a decade later, Trudeau is fighting for political survival. About two-thirds of the public disapproves of his performance. His Liberal Party is losing once-safe seats, and some members of his caucus say Trudeau needs to go. And the Trudeau brand is now stubbornly unpopular as Canadians say they are simply tired of him.
“He was youthful, sexy, and you know, Mr. Selfie,” said Andrew Perez, a strategic-communications adviser and Liberal Party supporter. “Now there’s a disdain for Trudeau, even among very progressive people.”
After nine years in the political wilderness, Canada’s opposition parties see a unique opportunity to deal Trudeau a resounding defeat, much like what Britain’s Conservatives sustained earlier this year. An election must be held by October next year but could be called sooner if Trudeau’s government loses a no-confidence vote.
“The biggest issue is voter fatigue,” said Lori Turnbull, a politics professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. “It’s kind of the benefit cost of investing the whole brand of the Liberal Party in Trudeau. Because when the person becomes unlikable, that’s it. It’s very hard to pivot.”
Trudeau’s drop in popularity was years in the making, political analysts and pollsters say, due in part to an accumulation of scandals and a failure to connect with voters on so-called kitchen table issues.
A few of the issues:
The country’s ethics watchdog ruled in 2019 that Trudeau broke conflict-of-interest laws by trying to steer the attorney general away from criminally prosecuting a Montreal company. During an election later that year, images emerged of him wearing blackface and brownface, damaging his reputation as a progressive champion of diversity. Trudeau apologized. His Liberals won re-election in 2019 and again in 2021, but each time returning with minority governments and a smaller share of the popular vote.
Trudeau’s big bet on immigration to spur economic growth has backfired, policy analysts and economists say, as it led to higher housing costs and imposed a strain on social services and infrastructure. Environics Institute, which has polled Canadians about immigration since 1977, said Thursday that nearly 60% believe the country accepts too many immigrants, or the highest share in a quarter-century. Public opinion on immigration “has effectively flipped from being acceptable, if not valuable, to problematic,” Environics said.
There were also larger forces at play. Trudeau is among the incumbents across the Western world who face angry electorates in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and its accompanying social restrictions.
I am woefully ignorant of Canadian politics, so I don’t know who would replace Trudeau, though Canadian readers have told me the Conservative PM will be dire. But I will let Canadian readers weigh in below.
*I learned of this paper about fertilization of eggs from the AP, and the results are very nice, using the new AI program AlphaFold. First from the AP:
How a sperm and an egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Here’s the Cell paper; click on title to access the text, or download the pdf here. Note that the work was done in zebrafish and mice, but if it’s the same system for those two species, it’ll be the same in humans.
The abstract:
Fertilization, the basis for sexual reproduction, culminates in the binding and fusion of sperm and egg. Although several proteins are known to be crucial for this process in vertebrates, the molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Using an AlphaFold-Multimer screen, we identified the protein Tmem81 as part of a conserved trimeric sperm complex with the essential fertilization factors Izumo1 and Spaca6. We demonstrate that Tmem81 is essential for male fertility in zebrafish and mice. In line with trimer formation, we show that Izumo1, Spaca6, and Tmem81 interact in zebrafish sperm and that the human orthologs interact in vitro. Notably, complex formation creates the binding site for the egg fertilization factor Bouncer in zebrafish. Together, our work presents a comprehensive model for fertilization across vertebrates, where a conserved sperm complex binds to divergent egg proteins—Bouncer in fish and JUNO in mammals—to mediate sperm-egg interaction.
From the paper’s short video, here’s a screenshot of the four-protein multimer involved in fertilization in three species (caption from paper); the interaction involves predictions from AlphaFole. One protein is in the egg and the other three in the sperm. Click to enlarge.
AlphaFold-Multimer-predicted structural models of the tetrameric complex linking sperm and egg membranes in zebrafish, mice, and humans, related to Figure 4 In zebrafish (left), the complex is composed of the egg factor Bouncer (light blue) and the sperm factors Izumo1 (yellow), Spaca6 (blue), and Tmem81 (red). In mice (center) and humans (right), the complex is composed of the egg factor JUNO (purple) and the sperm factors IZUMO1 (yellow), SPACA6 (blue), and TMEM81 (red). Shown are the ectodomains of the proteins lacking the transmembrane domains and signal peptide sequences.
Masih’s pinned tweet, showing her riding a bicycle with the wind in her hair. She loves her life despite being stalked by Iranian agents who want to kill her:
Good morning from a “master criminal” to all of you!
In my homeland of Iran, riding a bicycle and feeling the wind in your hair is a punishable crime for women.
As a survivor of assassination plot by the same regime on U.S. soil, I truly appreciate and embrace this freedom.… pic.twitter.com/1lExz4vPen
From Malgorzata; an IDF soldier show us Hezbollah’s tunnels in Lebanon that are not only illegal under UN restrictions, but are ignored by UN forces in that country. The UN actually wants its solders to be human shields against the IDF. Why do you think?
Here’s my friend Hempenstein about the barbecue some carcass outside of Pittsburgh. But I can’t remember what we ate! Perhaps he’ll weigh in below:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 19 Wikipedia page.
There’s an animated Google Doodle today, giving you the chance to see a dinosaur in the Santa Maria Formation in Brazil (7 slides). Click on it to go there:
Da Nooz:
*If you follow the election polls and forecasts, as I do in Nate Silver’s newsletter, you may have noticed that the betting market seems to have jumped substantially for Trump lately—far more than the popular-vote polls. But that may be misleading, for, as the WSJ reports, the betting market has been influenced by four batches of bets on Trump that amount to about $30 in cryptocurrency:
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck and neck in the polls. But in one popular betting market, the odds have skewed heavily in Trump’s favor, raising questions about a recent flurry of wagers and who is behind them.
Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 62% chance of winning on Thursday, while Harris’s chances were 38%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.
Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.
But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.
“There’s strong reason to believe they are the same entity,” said Miguel Morel, chief executive of Arkham Intelligence, a blockchain analysis firm that examined the accounts.
The big bets on Trump aren’t necessarily nefarious. Some observers have suggested that they were simply placed by a large bettor convinced that Trump will win and looking for a big payday. Others, however, see the bets as an influence campaign designed to fuel social-media buzz for the former president.
Polymarket is investigating the activity in its presidential-election markets with the assistance of outside experts, a person familiar with the matter said.
Adam Cochrane, described as a veteran crypto advisor, says this kind of skewing the betting market is “by far the most efficient political advertising one can buy,” And the article says the four bets may have been placed by the same organization or individual. They don’t name anybody, but I detect the scent of musk. . .
*Matti Friedman writes in the FP about what the death of Yahya Sinwar means (to him, of course). He’s hopeful it will help end the war in Gaza:
Sinwar was the man responsible more than any other for this war, but his death in a booby-trapped house in Rafah—he was reportedly found with a rifle, ammo, cash, a pack of Mentos, prayer beads, and a passport under someone else’s name—doesn’t mean it’s over. He’ll quickly be replaced as Hamas’s leader, probably by his brother and accomplice Mohammed. The organization is in tatters but hasn’t collapsed. His death, however, does bring the end of the fighting closer in Gaza.
Following the assassination of Sinwar’s counterpart from Hezbollah—the shrewder and more prominent Hassan Nasrallah—less than three weeks ago, it’s clear that Israel has successfully brought the war to a turning point.
. . .Will Israel seize this moment? It now has a chance to begin to orchestrate the end of the Gaza operation after a year of bloodshed; to allow the people of Gaza to start rebuilding what Sinwar, his henchmen, and their deluded supporters have destroyed; and to return the 100 hostages still held by Hamas, dozens of whom are thought to be alive.
The killing of Sinwar shows that Israel’s patience in prosecuting this war—despite the high price in the lives of our soldiers, and the constant fear of civilians under rocket fire from a half-dozen enemies—is yielding results. And so, it must be said, is Israel’s attitude toward the often hysterical and misguided advice of its allies, who have repeatedly sought to force a ceasefire that would leave Hamas and Hezbollah on their feet. We’ve heard repeatedly, from Western officials who have never fought wars, that military force is counterproductive and that Hamas is an “idea” that can’t be defeated. It was just this spring, amid a broad international pressure campaign to keep the Israeli army out of Rafah, that Vice President Kamala Harris said a major incursion into Rafah would be a “huge mistake.”
. . . It may indeed be impossible to defeat ideas. But the tank crewmen who just settled Israel’s account with this terrorist mastermind have illustrated why it’s sometimes necessary to kill the monsters who act on them.
South Korea’s spy agency said Friday that North Korea has dispatched troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine. If confirmed, the move would bring a third country into the war and intensify a standoff between North Korea and the West.
The South Korean announcement came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his government has intelligence that 10,000 troops from North Korea are being prepared to join Russian forces fighting against his country.
The National Intelligence Service said in a statement that Russian navy ships transferred 1,500 North Korean special operation forces to the Russian port city of Vladivostok from Oct. 8 to Oct. 13. It said more North Korean troops are expected to be sent to Russia soon.
The North Korean soldiers deployed in Russia have been given Russian military uniforms, weapons and forged identification documents, the NIS said. It said they are currently staying at military bases in Vladivostok and other Russian sites such as Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk, and that they will likely be deployed to battle grounds after completing their adaptation training.
. . . South Korean media, citing the NIS, reported that North Korea has decided to dispatch a total of 12,000 troops formed into four brigades to Russia. The NIS said it could not confirm the reports.
The NIS has a mixed record in finding developments in North Korea, one of the world’s most secretive countries. If confirmed, the move would be North Korea’s first major participation in a foreign war. North Korea has 1.2 million troops, one of the largest standing militaries in the world, but it hasn’t fought in large-scale conflicts following the 1950-53 Korean War.
Asked about the NIS finding, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said “At this moment, our official position is that we cannot confirm reports that North Koreans are actively now as soldiers engaged in the war effort, but that may change.”
Remember, North Korea now has nukes, so they could, if they formed alliances with Iran, post a considerable threat to the Middle East. But I’m not sure how good the North Koreans are as fighters. Remember, the sample of N = 1 DPRK soldier who defected to South Korea a while back suggests that they’re malnourished and have worms.
*As always, I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary, called this week “TGIF: Super Heavy Booster“.
→ Try not to get killed: Because if you do, tough luck. In Canada, Anthony Warren Woods, 31, randomly stabbed a senior citizen to death and then fully confessed it to the police. The judge decided against any jail time at all: “My conclusion is based on the following collective factors; Mr. Woods’s direct and indirect experiences as an Indigenous person, his significant cognitive deficits, his ADHD and to a lesser extent his state of intoxication.” So having ADHD is now just a license to kill? I never finished Crime and Punishment—does that mean I get to do a little smash and grab?
And in Nevada, a young man intentionally drove over and killed a retired police chief riding his bicycle. His friend recorded it, laughing the whole time. When the killer was arrested, he told cops: “I’ll be out in thirty days.” And: “It’s just a hit-and-run. Slap on the wrist.” Not too far off. This week, he was found unfit to stand trial and moved to a psychiatric facility.
→. . . . Meanwhile, a pro-Kamala group called “Creatives for Harris” put out a new ad meant to appeal to men who might be on the fence about voting for Kamala Harris. The actors they hired to play the men look like men, yes, well done. One is super fat and one has a beard, to indicate maleness. But the script was so clearly written by women, probably over some Sweetgreen, and it’s so bad it’s charming. Here are real lines from the guys in the ad (or what the ladies at “Creatives for Kamala” imagine men talk like):
I’m a man. I’m a man. I’m a man. I’m a man, man. I’m man enough to enjoy a barrel proof bourbon. Neat. I’m man enough to dead-lift 500 and braid the shit out of my daughter’s hair. You think I’m afraid to rebuild a carburetor? I eat carburetors for breakfast. I ain’t afraid of bears: That’s what bear hugs are for. I’m not afraid of women. A woman wants to be president? Well, I hope she has the guts to look me right in the eye and accept my full-throated endorsement. Because I’m man enough to support women. Man enough to know what kind of donuts I like. I’m man enough to raw-dog a flight. I’m man enough to be emotional in front of my wife, in front of my kids, in front of my horse.
Something about full-throated, raw-dogging, and crying in front of the horse makes me really uncomfortable. This isn’t an ad for someone who has ever met a straight man, let alone interacted with one. If it were, it would be communicated in grunts.
Here’s the video given by the FP. Yep, it’s cringey, but really, Nellie, must you diss straight men?
→ Speaking of crypto and our presidential candidates: Donald J. Trump is hawking another product this week, and it’s faker than ever. Profoundly fake. It’s a World Liberty Financial “token” that you can buy and put in your “wallet.” The tagline is: “Shape a New Era of Finance: Be DeFiant.” And: “The only DeFi platform inspired by Donald J. Trump.”
This may feel implausible eighteen days out from the election, but no matter. Here’s the Republican front-runner selling it hard with a video, standing before his American flags, that now are just his weekly scam flags.
The World Liberty Financial token cannot be used as a currency. You cannot sell it or trade it. All buying a World Liberty Financial token allows is for you to vote in World Liberty Financial matters. Even within the world of scam cryptocurrencies, this is unfathomably scammy. Because usually crypto tokens can be bought and sold. That’s kind of the whole point of them.
*I’ve written before about how Rachel Levine, Biden’s assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services and herself a man assuming the identity of a woman, urged a group of medical researchers to eliminate any minimum age for transgender surgery. This is an unconscionable decision. In this she went along with the same decision by WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health: the most influential organization dealing with doctors and therapists who provide care for gender dysphoric and trans people). WPATH is, to my mind, totally ideological and not science-oriented, having agreed with Levine’s view for both surgery and “affirmative care”, and resisted the cautious recommendations of the NHS’s Cass Review for no good reason. Now Andrew Sullivan is in a fury about this and is in fact not just calling for Levine’s resignation, but thinking about changing his presidential vote away from Kamala Harris:
I have to say that the news this week has made me reconsider voting for Kamala Harris.
What news? I’ve no doubt many of you will roll your eyes, think I’m off on another tangent, obsessed with something trivial — or, in Harris’ formulation, a “remote” issue. But the discovery from a lawsuit against the State of Alabama over its ban on the medical sex reassignment of children has left me reeling. It shows a staggering level of bad faith from the transqueer lobby, and, also, from Rachel Levine — the Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS. Read the amicus brief here. Everything in this piece is based on it.
The broad contours laid out in the brief were already known. But, with discovery, the specific details of private, internal emails make this medical scandal even more vivid. We knew that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) commissioned its own version of the Cass Review by asking a team at Johns Hopkins to conduct a systematic review of the evidence for “gender medicine” for children. But we now find the conclusion. An internal email from the Hopkins team concluded that there was “little to no evidence about children and adolescents.” Many WPATH members, we discover, also knew the studies would “reveal little or no evidence and put us in an untenable position in terms of affecting policy or winning lawsuits.”
In other words, WPATH knows full well that their transing of children has little to no medical evidence behind it. So when Johns Hopkins presented the review, WPATH instantly buried it, suppressing publication of all the studies but two. Other contributors drew on their experiences as expert witnesses to suggest removing “language such as ‘insufficient evidence,’ ‘limited data,’ etc.” that could ‘empower’ groups ‘trying to claim that gender-affirming interventions are experimental.’” SOC-8 — the latest Standards of Care from WPATH — was therefore knowingly based on concealing the truth, and written for lawsuits, not patients. Not medicine. Ideology.
And all along, this allegedly professional group, WPATH, conferred with Levine at HHS. They gave her an early embargoed version of SOC-8, with lower age limits for some treatments, and her office responded, horrified. They feared that the listing of “specific minimum ages for treatment … under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care”.
. . . Levine should resign. She intervened in a medical process for entirely political reasons, putting children at risk, destroying all safeguards for them. So should the heads of every so-called gay group that have pushed and lied about “gender-affirming care.” WPATH’s former president, Marci Bowers (she was replaced on October 1) is another matter. It seems to me that a doctor who privately doubts if her child patients can give meaningful consent and operates on them anyway is not a doctor, but a sociopath. She has violated the Hippocratic oath and admitted practicing the equivalent of FGM on children. FGM is illegal in federal law and in 41 states if the girl is under 18. “Gender-affirming” FGM, thanks to Rachel Levine, is fully legal without any lower age limits.
Levine is a bad actor who interfered in crucial health decisions in a duplicitous way. Sullivan is also angry because he sees Levine (and WPATH) as having fomented “the worst attack on gay kids since Anita Bryant.” But you don’t have to be gay to agree that Levine should resign, and, if she doesn’t she should be fired.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, we have a lovely photo of Hili as she ponders the future (Andrzej is now using Paulina’s camera):
Hili: I’m looking into the future.
A: And what do you see?
Hili: Darkness but there are lights here and there.
Here is a Sukkah booth that the Jewish organization Chabad put up on campus. They do this every year, so it’s not a political statement:
But, two days later, there is a response, and definitely a political one: a “Gaza Solidarity Sukkah”:
From Masih: Iranian women get permanently disfigured—for wearing an improper hijab!
In Iran, the real criminals make the laws.
Today marks the anniversary of the Isfahan acid attacks on these women, whose “crime” was wearing an improper hijab. Ten years later, the attackers walk free, because why arrest yourself when you hold power? Meanwhile, those who dared… pic.twitter.com/WSUrkQVNv2
From Jez: The insanity of British law enforcement:
On the same day Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months for a FB post: a policeman who sexually assaulted 2 women, a registered sex offender who asked children for naked pics online & a pervert voyeur who secretly filmed women on the toilet because he was “horny”, all walked free pic.twitter.com/Wq97veyRC0
The butt end of the week has arrived: it’s Friday, October 18, 2024, and cool fall weather has finally hit Chicago.
National Chocolate Cupcake Day, which is a good flavor if you must pay the inflated prices for cupcakes they charge these days (compared to real cakes, that is, like the famous “Tuxedo Cake” from Costco—read the review—highly recommended for parties or private gluttony). Here’s the Tuxedo Cake, which, at about $16, is not cheap for Costco, but it is a true gourmet cake and well worth buying. I imagine it will serve about eight people at a party. Eschew the pricey cupcakes!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the October 18 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The big news is that the world’s most wanted terrorist is dead. Yes, Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, has been killed by the IDF. Here’s the headline from the NYT (click to read; article archived here):
The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Yahya Sinwar, the powerful and elusive militant leader who has been the No. 1 target for Israel since the beginning of the war, had been killed in battle.
Mr. Sinwar was viewed as the architect of the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the 13-month war that has plunged the Gaza Strip into a humanitarian crisis and began a wider conflict that now includes the fighting in Lebanon.
After a firefight in Gaza on Wednesday with Hamas forces, Israeli soldiers retrieved a body that appeared to be that of Mr. Sinwar. On Thursday, after “completing the process of identifying the body,” the military said that Mr. Sinwar, who was in his early 60s, had been “eliminated.”
Since launching the assault on Hamas in Gaza last October in retaliation for Hamas’s cross-border raids, in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 abducted, Israeli officials have repeatedly said that their goal was nothing less than the destruction of the militant group.
But no target loomed larger for Israel than Mr. Sinwar himself. Over his past year in hiding in the devastated enclave, he was believed to still be closely overseeing Hamas military operations.
Mr. Sinwar’s death raises hopes for an end to a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Gazans and plunged many more into a humanitarian crisis.
Here’s an IDF video of what purports to be Sinwar’s last moments. Covered with dust, sitting in a chair, and missing a hand, the man throws a stick at the drone that’s looking at him. Then, according to the IDF, it was lights out:
In a comment yesterday, someone said that this could turn out badly for the hostages, and it could: Hamas could just decide to slaughter the 30 that supposedly remain alive. But then they are dooming themselves, as there is no reason for Israel to make a peace deal. I hope to Ceiling Cat that the hostages will be okay. There is some trepidation on the part of the hostages’ families:
For the families and supporters of the scores of hostages remaining in Gaza, the elimination of Yahya Sinwar, their chief captor, brought both a moment of satisfaction and deep trepidation for the fate of the captives.
“We’ve closed the account with the archmurderer Sinwar,” said Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker and one of the most vocal and prominent campaigners for a hostage deal, in a video statement. “But now, more than ever, the lives of my son Matan and the other hostages are in tangible danger.”
Remember also that both Biden and Harris (the latter vociferously) told Israel that they could not go into the area around Rafah, and that is precisely where Sinwar was killed (it was thought he was in the area). This is one reason why we shouldnt let the U.S. direct Israeli wara strategy.
I don’t like being joyful over anyone’s death, even someone as evil as Sinwar. But life in an Israeli prison without parole would not solve the problem, for he would continue to run Hamas and plot terror from jail. So let’s just say that I’m not sad that he’s dead. And fingers crossed for peace and a hostage return!
Here’s a 12-minute video with Tom Gross on Spectator TV about the significance of Sinwar’s death:
*Kamala Harris finally agreed to a non-softball interview—with Fox News! I haven’t seen it yet [UPDATE: I did ant it’s below.]. The NYT reports, and of course they criticize the reporter for cutting Harris off, even though she takes forever to answer questions (and rarely answers them), frequently beginning with an anecdote from her childhood. From the NYT:
Vice President Kamala Harris may not get another debate with former President Donald J. Trump, but on Wednesday, she got one with Bret Baier.
In an interview that turned contentious almost the instant it began, Mr. Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, repeatedly pressed the Democratic presidential nominee on illegal immigration, taxpayer support for gender-transition surgery and other areas that closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s regular attacks against her.
At one point, Mr. Baier wondered if the vice president considered Mr. Trump’s supporters “stupid.” (“I would never say that about the American people,” she replied.) At another point, he asked if she would apologize to the mother of a murdered 12-year-old Texas girl whose death is frequently invoked by Mr. Trump because two recent Venezuelan migrants were charged with the crime.
Mr. Baier’s aggressive demeanor was consistent with the kind of tough coverage of Ms. Harris that blankets Fox News’s daily programming. Lots of viewers were surely eager to hear how she would respond when confronted head-on.
Frequently, however, Mr. Baier did not give viewers that chance. Instead, looking frustrated, he cut off several of Ms. Harris’s answers aft
May I please finish responding?” Ms. Harris asked at one point. “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re making, and I’d like to finish.”
Well, maybe if she’d answer questions straightforwardly without rambling (her way of avoiding giving answers), she would have been cut off less. I wish other interviewers had pressed her to give straight answers. The WSJ gives several examples of her answers:
Asked when she first noticed that Biden’s mental faculties were diminishing, Harris didn’t directly answer: “I have watched him from the Oval Office to the situation room, and he has the judgment and the…experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people.” Asked about Biden again, she changed the topic to Trump’s fitness.
. . . . Harris reiterated her plan to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and create a bipartisan panel to advise her on policies. “The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump,” she said. “And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.”
, , , In her testy interview with Bret Baier, marked by frequent interruptions, Harris more clearly separated herself from Biden than she had previously. “Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” Harris said. “I represent a new generation of leadership. I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington, D.C.”
That is not an answer, nor did she give one; she needs to say not that she’s a “new generation”, but how her policies would differ from those of Biden. But of course she did not answer that, because it would alienate some Democrats. And how is that “separating herself from Biden,” except that she’s not younger?
But heres the whole interview; judge for yourself:
*John McWhoter’s latest column in the NYT, “Ta-Nehisi Coates and the myth of black fragility“, defends those people who were criticized for saying, “Yes, it’s okay that CBS asked Ta-Nehisi Coates tough questions.” An excerpt (there’s a lot more):
The debate revolves around Ta-Nehisi Coates, who went on the “CBS Mornings” program to promote his provocative new book, “The Message,” and was greeted with a series of tough questions from the co-host Tony Dokoupil. As you have already heard, some of Dokoupil’s colleagues complained that his interview had gone too far and he had pushed too hard, and he was summoned to a meeting with the standards team and something called the Race and Culture Unit, which is assigned to monitor “context, tone and intention.” Executives later announced that the interview had not met the network’s editorial standards.
Since then there’s been no end of discussion about journalistic ethics and personal bias. But the outrage and concern generated on Coates’s behalf doesn’t help him. It brutally condescends to him.
The idea that Coates should not have been asked such tough questions reflects a pernicious image of Black people, and Black men in particular, that first gained traction in 2020 and 2021, when antiracist virtue signaling too often transmogrified into an extreme grotesque. In a new book, the scholars Craig Frisby and Robert Maranto describe it as part of a worldview in which “whites are inherently oppressive, and African Americans (and by extension all ‘people of color,’ or POCs) serve only as victims around whom whites must walk on eggshells to avoid triggering deep emotional pain.”
. . . If only the CBS employees and their managers had had the same kind of faith in Coates. If it had been a white author in the hot seat that day, I find it impossible to imagine that anyone would have sounded any internal alarms. Certainly no one would have summoned the Race and Culture Unit. But why does the mere fact that the host is white make the interview a racial incident?
As depressing as all this may be, there’s reason for optimism — and evidence that we really have left the era of “peak woke.” The CBS correspondent Jan Crawford had the guts to speak up in defense of Dokoupil, arguing he had done nothing wrong. Shari Redstone, head of CBS’s parent company, said Dokoupil’s censure was a mistake. Even Coates has said that he can take care of himself.
That’s as it should be. Acting as though Black people can’t hold their own in a challenging discussion — as though they can’t speak up for themselves and therefore need others to speak up for them — isn’t antiracist, it’s demeaning. Blackness is not weakness. We need to stop coddling sane, self-sufficient Black people — like Coates — and move on.
I agree totally with McWhorter on this one. The defense of Coates—not his views on Israel, but on the fact that he was grilled too hard—is deeply condescending to African-Americans. Yes, it may smack of hero worship of Coates, but if a Presidential candidate should be allowed to field tough questions, why not Coates. I think a lot of it is, as McWhorter notes, attributable to Coates’s ethnicity. Even if you believe in affirmative action, and that kind of differential treatment of races, it’s just not right to go easy on someone as famous and accomplished as Coates when he writes something controversial.
Botany Pond, a beloved campus landmark and a popular and peaceful oasis for the University of Chicago community, has reopened following an extensive restoration designed to maintain its historical character and keep it flourishing for future generations.
Originally envisioned by renowned botanist John Merle Coulter as an outdoor research laboratory more than a century ago, Botany Pond is now a more sustainable habitat for both wildlife and visitors following the project. Work over the past year has improved the landscaping surrounding the pond to provide for universal access and views of the water, while native plantings have been mixed in with exotic historical specimens that date to the turn of the 20th century.
“The students, faculty, staff and visitors who return to Botany Pond will be able to marvel at new views of the changing Midwestern seasons, and see science and sustainability reflected in this restoration,” said Katie Martin Peck, UChicago’s associate director for campus environment.
Yet some of the biggest enhancements are under the pond’s surface. UChicago faculty consulted with sustainability and wildlife experts on an innovative, natural filtration system that uses microorganisms and layers of rocks to provide a better habitat for the aquatic life, mitigate the long-term buildup of sediment and ensure water clarity. The system is more energy-efficient, requires less maintenance and provides multiple ecological benefits as well.
Prof. Emeritus Michael LaBarbera, one of six UChicago faculty members who advised the project, is helping lead the establishment of a balanced ecosystem. Previously, water leakage and sediment build-up had affected the pond’s ability to support fish and other aquatic life.
“One of the most difficult aspects of this restoration is the necessity to recreate a functional ecosystem from scratch,” said LaBarbera, a renowned UChicago evolutionary biologist. “In natural systems, components of this ecosystem arrive over the course of several years via water inflow and by hitchhiking on migratory animals. Since this wasn’t possible for Botany Pond, I volunteered to stand in to restock the pond’s diversity.”
LaBarbera said the next steps will include adding mud and zooplankton—free-swimming, microscopic animals like rotifers, water fleas and copepods—to establish the next levels of the ecosystem.
“By next spring, we have high hopes that Botany Pond will again be both an aesthetic gem in the center of campus and a fully functional ecosystem,” he said.
and. .
Next year, larger pond inhabitants like native fish and turtles, which have been locally fostered, will be introduced. Martin Peck also said they anticipate ducks will return to the pond as part of their annual migration patterns.
The new layout provides spaces designed for ducks, turtles and other wildlife, including boulders and plantings to provide refuge; stepped boulders for access in and out of the water, which is particularly important for ducklings; and fish habitat and terrestrial areas strategically located with specific plantings.
Of course the ducks will return, though perhaps not Honey. . . . 🙁 I went over the duckling egress steps with the contractor yesterday, a very nice lady, and we talked about some tweaks to the pond to allow access to ducks and ducklings. And we have some herpetologists who inspected the turtle-worthiness of the pond and will make some recommendations to allow sunning, egress, and hibernation. I am hoping for a good season and some ducklings—but not too many! Kudos to Facilities, Mike LaBarbera, and to the contractor and her team, who redesigned the pond despite some annoying difficulties, like leakage. There will no longer be incoming and outgoing water, but recycled water.
Here’s Honey eating from my hand:
*From the AP “Oddities section”, a ONE-TON pumpkin, weighing nearly as much as a female hippo!
A Minnesota horticulture teacher remained the reigning champion Monday of an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Northern California where his massive gourds have won the top prize four years in a row.
Travis Gienger, of Anoka, Minnesota, beat his closest competitor by 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms) to clinch the victory at the 51st World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.
His winning gourd came in at 2,471 pounds (1,121 kilograms), falling short of the world record he set last year with a pumpkin weighing 2,749 pounds (1,247 kilograms).
Gienger, 44, said that as he has done in the past, he focused on having healthy soil and well-fed plants but that a cold fall with record-breaking rain likely impacted his pumpkin’s growth.
“We had really, really tough weather and somehow, some way, I kept on working,” Gienger said. “I had to work for this one, and we got it done at the end, but it wasn’t by much.”
Gienger and his family drove his gargantuan gourd for 35 hours to California.
You can see a photo at the link; it is HUGE. I wonder what they’ll do with it since it’s not a pie pumpkin. Carve it for Halloween?
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili won’t let Andrzej sit in his computer chair. After all, Hili is The Editor:
A: May I sit down here?
Hili: Take a stool. This is a chair on which I shoulder all the burden of responsibility.
In Polish:
Ja: Czy mogę tu usiąść?
Hili: Weź stołek, to jest fotel, w którym dźwigam cały ciężar odpowiedzialności.
Yahya Sinwar, the man behind planning October 7th, is reported dead. Let’s not forget that October 7th was a coordinated attack on civilians by the Islamic Republic, and @khamenei_ir recently praised it as “legal and logical.”
From Barry, who calls this “The Balrog of Meowgoth”:
From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak, I fought him, the Balrog of Meowgoth. Until at last, I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the meowntainside. pic.twitter.com/Szjm5sguZH
Matthew says, “Carter: his vote counts in Georgia even if he dies!” And it’s true, though I don’t know how he could vote; I thought he was in a coma before Harris became a candidate. At any rate, Georgia is of course a swing state:
If your spirits are down, lift them with this thought:
