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.
Although Maher is always accused of being a right-winger, that’s not true at all; he’s more or less a left-centrist, like me. Here he defines “ick” with some graphic examples, and says that Trump has a bad case of it, and that’s the best thing Democrats have going for them. But. . . . he then says that the extreme Left aren’t immune to it, using as an example of the extreme Left going after Cheryl Hines, married to RFK Jr., for not divorcing him.
He says this, “You want to know why I have a bug up my ass about the Left more than I used to? It’s shit like this: there’s an ugliness they never used to have. The liberals I grew up respecting–none of them are like this. Going after the wife? Even the Mafia doesn’t do that!” He then shows a clip of Barack Obama at the latest DNC criticizing everyone across the political spectrum for thinking the worst of those on other side, and thinking that “the only way to win this is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side.”
The YouTube notes:
Donald Trump is stained with “the ick,” but liberals who scold and shame those who don’t share their worldview risk being tainted by it, too.
I’m not sure that Bill Maher qualifies as an expert on marriage given that he’s never been married and vowed he never will be. But, as usual, he’s funny, and the message not to fully demonize one’s political opponents is always worth pondering. Maher ends up by criticizing the Republican politicians as “far worse” than the Democratic ones, but adds tjat “the kind of people who are always howling on social media are the ones who give people the ‘ick’ when they hear the word ‘liberal.'”
It was good to hear Obama again: I’d missed his convention speech.
Katie Herzog is still doing the TGIF columns at the Free Press, which, when Nellie Bowles wrote them, was one of the best reasons to subscribe (Bowles is the Bill Maher of print journalism). Since Bowles has taken maternity leave, the column has been written by others, including nepo baby Suzy Weiss and, this week, Katie Herzog again. The replacements have been good, but Nellie is The Queen, and nobody can really replace her. We’re told she’ll be back in two weeks.
Anyway, since I can’t do a proper Hili column when I’m traveling, here at least are three article stolen from Herzog’s latest column, called “TGIF: Foreign Interference.” Click below to read the whole thing:
→ Iranian writer sentenced to prison over dot: Hossein Shanbehzadeh, an Iranian writer and activist, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison by the Tehran Revolutionary Court after he tweeted a period at the Supreme Leader. Officially, NPR reports, “Shanbehzadeh was sentenced to five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda.” Suspicious. . . this was my exact penalty in college for attending Shabbat services.
Shanbehzadeh’s one-character tweet, which was in response to a photo posted by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of himself with the national volleyball team, received more likes than the Ayatollah’s post. He basically got 12 years for ratioing. Which, if that’s a crime, I guess I’ll be going in for twenty to life any day now.
→ Now, maybe you’re telling yourself:This could never happen in the U.S. Thank Allah and the Founding Fathers for the First Amendment! And you’re probably right: Tweeting a period at President Harris and/or Trump is unlikely to get you thrown in jail, and American citizens enjoy more speech protections than probably any other people on Earth. But don’t let your Bill of Rights throw pillow woo you into complacency. I mean, we’re not some tyrannical shit hole like the UK, where people are being charged for mean tweets, but government censorship does exist here. The last few years has seen huge surges in book banning and protest crackdowns, and just last week, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Meta caved to Biden administration pressure to censor content posted by users on Facebook.
This week, Reason reported on the case of a “citizen journalist” who goes by the name Lagordiloca, or “the fat, crazy lady” (catchy), who was arrested by police in Laredo, Texas, after she broke stories obtained by a confidential source from within that same department. And vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz said in a recently resurfaced interview that misinformation and hate speech aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Now, he’s wrong about that, which you’d think a former high school social studies teacher would know (you actually are allowed to be a prick and a liar in America, thank God), but it’s a troubling statement from someone who could soon occupy the little closet down the hall from the Oval Office where they stow the VP.
→ Arrest-Me-Not: The darling of Sweden, Greta Thunberg, was arrested at Copenhagen University while protesting the school’s connection to Israel, namely that they have an exchange program where Israeli students come to study there. Thunberg sent a dispatch via Instagram from the front lines of her battle against. . . climate? Israel? At this point I can’t tell. She wrote: “Students Against the Occupation and I are at the University of Copenhagen’s administration building. Police have been called, violently entered the building with a ram wearing assault rifles. They are evicting everyone as we speak.” I love the new use of eviction where it’s just when someone tells you to leave the place that you aren’t allowed to be in. I swear I’ve been evicted from many pools in my neighborhood by people who don’t know me, and dozens of Denny’s parking lots after closing. . . it’s honestly a travesty. Meanwhile, a bunch of people were arrested outside of Citibank headquarters in New York while protesting fossil fuels, a throwback to a sweet time when environmental activists organized around the environment.
Whatever happened to Greta? Although I’ve always found her somewhat irritating, I also was on her side in the climate-change controversy. But I guess she’s found herself a new cause, BDS:
To end a rough week on a high note, here is “Crazy Opossum Lady” showing you how to massage your marsupial.
Reader Rosemary sent me this video made by M. E. Pearl. It’s hilarious! She does this tongue in cheek, of course, but her devotion to these lovely creatures is genuine, and she has many funny videos on possums, always emphasizing that they are harmless (indeed, helpful) and should not be killed. There are dozens of possum videos on her website.
The Virginia opossum has a maximal lifespan in the wild of only about two years. Even in captivity, opossums live only about four years. The rapid senescence of opossums is thought to reflect the fact that they have few defenses against predators; given that they would have little prospect of living very long regardless, they are not under selective pressure to develop biochemical mechanisms to enable a long lifespan.
Of course, there might be selection to increase the lifespan by evolving antipredator defenses, but given that reproductive senescence may have already evolved, so they lose their ability to reproduce by a certain age (viz,. menopause in human females), those defenses might not include a longer life.
This is one compliant possum. I hope it enjoyed the massage!
Being deplatformed in Amsterdam seems to have induced some kind of malaise in my brain, so that it’s become a lot harder to write on this site. I can’t think of any reason beyond the deplatforming, which hit me hard and even induced me to stay in bed most of the next day, but the day after that I bounced back. I think I’m getting back to normal, but I still have to clean my plate before the site resumes its normal tenor. I was, for example, just writing a post about what kinds of free speech are used (and needed) on private college campuses, and I gave up and said, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” (Ye shall have it then.) So let’s have some comedy instead.
In last week’s monologue segment of Real Time, Bill Maher first reveals that his new book comes out this week. In fact it came out two days ago, and is doing very well (click below to go to the Amazon link). Note that the book deliberately looks like social-media clickbait:
The Amazon summary:
The book was inspired by the “editorial” Bill delivers at the end of each episode of Real Time. These editorials are direct-to-camera sermons about culture, politics, and what’s happening in the world. To put this book together, Maher reviewed more than a decade of his editorials, rewriting, reimagining, and updating them, and adding new material to speak exactly to the moment we’re in. Free speech, cops, drugs, race, religion, the generations, cancel culture, the parties, the media, show biz, romance, health—Maher covers it all. The result is a hugely entertaining work of commentary about American culture in the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and H. L. Mencken.
That’s a bit hyperbolic given the competition and the fact that the delivery of Twain and Mencken, the two best, was written rather than verbal, but it is true that for many of us, Maher is not just a comedian but a verbal and humerous deliverer of opinions. I can no longer listen to my old favorite, Jon Stewart, who’s become chronically woke to the extent that his opinions have gone wonky and his humor has gone south.
The Free Press has an excerpt from Maher’s new book called “American kids are way too confident“. It’s okay but seems like a comedy segment simply put into prose, which for some me doesn’t constitute absorbing reading. It’s like a meal consisting solely of desserts.
At any rate, Maher’s theme last week is how crazy historians of the future will see today’s divisive-ridden world. Intriguingly, one of the examples Maher gives of our craziness is the insupportable idea that there are more than two sexes in humans, and that “women” should be replaced with phrases like “bodies with vaginas” (see below). Maher takes the mickey out of both Left and Right, including pro-Palestinian student protesters and Trump’s crazy supporters who wear “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat” tee-shirts. Really? Would they?
It isn’t as funny as Maher’s usual bits, but the humor is still there, but replaced with a more serious message.
Oh, and here’s the famous Lancet cover; it was not a joke:
In his latest Real Time monologue, Bill Maher discusses pedophilia, how it’s exacerbated by the media (including Disney), celebrated by parents who dress up little kids as adults, and even excused by progressives. His take on “Drag Queen Story Hour” is pretty funny.
Money quote: “I’ve said it before wokeness is not an extension of liberalism any more it’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite.”
He then goes on to gender, suggesting that teaching six-year-old kids about gender is a form of “entrapment,” making them do something they otherwise wouldn’t. He’s gonna get in big trouble for that one!
This has its funny bits, but it’s one of Maher’s more serious pieces, bearing on the possible indoctrination of kids into “nonbinary” roles by peers and teachers.
Bill Maher’s latest monologue, “Stuck on stupid,” takes out after what he sees as overreactions to the covid pandemic (including closing schools and denying flatly that the virus came from a Wuhan lab), I remember disinfecting groceries with alcohol and staying a long distance away from people, and, seriously I don’t think that Maher is correct to say that those behaviors were simply stupid. After all, remember that people were dying of a virus that we didn’t understand, and a lot of people hadn’t yet been vaccinated.
So I think here Maher is being snarky with the wisdom of hindsight. He even seems to diss vaccinations!
And yes, we have learned some stuff: how to make RNA vaccines, that those vaccines work, and that, right now, we don’t really need to have our sixth booster unless we’re immunocompromised.
This ain’t one of Maher’s better efforts. I didn’t follow his opinions at the beginning of the pandemic, but I know some reader did, so please weigh in below.
Today we’re really stretching the definition of “wildlife”, which now includes the language of Homo sapiens. Athayde Tonhasca Júnior had a biology contribution in the queue, but, as you see below, urged me to post this first because it’s relevant to one of my recent posts about the spread of logorrhea in our species.
Hi Jerry. I sent you a contribution a short while ago but consider the attached first, which was inspired by your timely post on people babbling way too much. It’s a curse, I tell you…
And so we have this post about language. Athayde’s words are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Everything that can be said, can be said clearly (Ludwig Wittgenstein).
People are talking too much, and not talking (or writing) too well.
For Orwell, the corruption of language in public life threatened the intelligent discourse on which democracy depends. (…) We need to feel safe in the assumption that words mean what they are commonly understood to mean. Deliberate ambiguities, slides of meaning, obscure, incomprehensible or meaningless words poison the democratic process by leaving people less able to make informed or rational decisions. They erode trust. Don Watson, ‘Gobbledygook’.
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope’s-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.
A metaphor is both detour and destination, a digression that gets to the point. James Geary.
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer, he has mastered everything except language; as a novelist, he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist, he is everything except articulate. Oscar Wilde on George Meredith.
There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. Oscar Wilde.
You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you’ve got something to say. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
That’s not writing – that’ typing. Truman Capote, on Jack Kerouac (Attrib.).
The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is. August Wilson.
The old repeat themselves and the youth have nothing to say. The boredom is mutual. Jacques Bainville.
To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation. Francois de La Rochefoucauld.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. George Orwell.
Good prose is like a window pane. George Orwell.
If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now. Woodrow Wilson.
Good things, when short, are twice as good. Gracian.
The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible. George Burns.
A good sermon should be like a woman’s skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials. Ronald Knox.
Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance. Robert Quillen.
PCC(E): The next one is the most relevant to what I wrote:
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. Margaret Millar.
Where in this small-talking world can I find / A longitude with no platitude? Christopher Fry, The Lady’s not for Burning.
The first ingredient in conversation is truth: the next good sense; the third, good humour; and the fourth wit. William Temple.
The honourable member’s speech reminds me of Columbus. When he set out, he didn’t know where he was going, when he got there he didn’t know where he was and when he returned home he didn’t know where he’d been. Winston Churchill.
MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought. Winston Churchill.
Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence. Robert Heinlein.
Vacuity, obscurity, ambiguity and pomposity are not much less difficult than their opposites. Winston Churchill.
Blessed is he who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving evidence of that fact. George Eliot.
A man is known by the silence he keeps. Oliver Herford.
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Robert Benchley (Attrib.)
In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present. Tony Petito.
His speeches leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst until it died of servitude and overwork. William McAdoo about Warren G. Harding.
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. Voltaire.
EPSON scanner image
Abuses of Speech: First, when men register their thoughts wrong by the inconstancy of the signification of their words; by which they register for their conceptions that which they never conceived, and so deceive themselves. Secondly, when they use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for, and thereby deceive others. Thirdly, when by words they declare that to be their will which is not. Fourthly, when they use them to grieve one another. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech. George Bernard Shaw.
Though he tortures the English language, he has never yet succeeded in forcing it to reveal its meaning. J.B. Morton.
We want to create a sort of linguistic Lourdes, where evil and misfortune are dispelled by a dip in the waters of euphemism. Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint.
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. Samuel Johnson.
Meditation is a gift confined to unknown philosophers and cows. Others don’t begin to think till they begin to talk or write. Finley Peter Dunne.
The cliché is the handrail of the crippled mind. Spike Milligan.
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. H. L. Mencken on US President Warren G. Harding.
PCC(E): Yay for this next guy!
[Captain Hook] is not wholly evil: he has a Thesaurus in his cabin. J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan.
I take the view, and always have done, that if you cannot say what you have to say in twenty minutes, you should go away and write a book about it. Lord Brabazon.
OOAQICI82QB4IP. Graffiti in a ladies’ toilet.
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them. Philip K. Dick.
Obscurity often brings safety. Aesop’s Fables: The Tree and the Reed.
Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well intentioned letter, anguish of a traveller expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. E. B. White in his revision of the 1935 classic “The Elements of Style”, by William Strunk.
When the meaning is unclear there is no meaning. Marty Rubin.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk Jr.
Postmodernists have achieved the ability to write about their thoughts in a uniquely impenetrable manner. Their neo-baroque prose style with its inner clauses, bracketed syllables, metaphors and metonyms, verbal pirouettes, curlicues and figures is not a mere epiphenomenon; rather, it is a mocking rejoinder to anyone who would try to write simple intelligible sentences in the modernist tradition. Marvin Harris, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times.
