Category: self promotion

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

April 10, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Wednesday, a Hump Day (“Ден на грпка” in Macedonian); it’s April 10, 2024, and National Cinnamon Roll Day, an obligatory part of a good breakfast. And the bigger the better. This one needs more icing and a larger size:

Evan-Amos, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Day, Golfer’s Day (which golfer?), Global Work from Home Day (experimental biologists, this is not for you), National Farm Animals Day, International Siblings Day, and Feast of the Third Day of the Writing of the Book of the Law (Thelema; look it up).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 10 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Briefly, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an ancient (1864) law that made all abortions, save those necessary to save the mother’s life, illegal in that state. But the court also put the decision on hold pending a lower court’s ruling on the law’s constitutionality. Both the women and doctors performing abortions could be sent to jail.  Republicans are backing away from this ridiculous ruling, and, on last night’s NBC News, the state’s top law-enforcement official said she will not enforce the law even if it goes into effect.

*These are a lot heavier sentences than I imagined for two parents of a teenager who shot to death four students in his Michigan high school. The parents were deemed partly responsible for the carnage, charged with “unintentional homicide.” Oy, the sentences (not that I think they’re undeserved):

A Michigan judge sentenced the parents of a teenager who killed four classmates at his high school to 10 to 15 years in prison each, the first parents of a school shooter to be held directly responsible for their child’s attack.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were each convicted of four counts of unintentional homicide in separate trials that ended in February and March. Their son, Ethan Crumbley, pleaded guilty to four counts of murder in the 2021 killings at Oxford High School about 40 miles north of Detroit and is serving life in prison.

Neither defendant showed a strong reaction to the decision, and both impassively signed various forms before being escorted out of the courtroom.

“These convictions were not about poor parenting,” said Judge Cheryl Matthews. “These convictions convey repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”

Prosecutors had sought 10 to 15 years each for the parents, higher than state minimum sentencing recommendations of 43 to 86 months, citing what they called a lack of remorse by the parents and threatening comments directed at the district attorney made by James Crumbley in jailhouse telephone calls.

. . . At trial, prosecutors portrayed both parents as unconcerned by their son’s deteriorating mental state, failing to take him home after a troubling meeting with school officials the day of the shooting and failing to securely store the gun used in the attack. The parents argued in their presentencing statements to the court that they were unaware of their son’s mental-health issues. James Crumbley maintained that he had taken prudent steps to secure the weapon.

Here’s the (pardon me) smoking gun that did the parents in:

Both Crumbley trials hinged on a meeting among the parents, Ethan Crumbley and two school officials the morning of the shooting. On a school math sheet, Ethan had drawn a picture of a 9mm handgun resembling the one he had received as a Christmas present, a person bleeding and the words, “blood everywhere,” “the thoughts won’t stop” and “help me.”

School officials recommended the parents seek immediate mental-health services for their son, but the parents opted to leave him in school after school officials extended the deadline to 48 hours. He opened fire in a hallway shortly after the meeting.

Crikey, what kind of parents are they? Well, they’ll have 5-10 years to think about it.

*The Jerusalem Post reports a totally asymmetrical deal proposed by, yes, the CIA, a U.S. agency, to let Israel’s hostages go. It involves a mass release of convicted Jew-killers from Israeli jails:

The CIA’s proposal for a hostage deal includes the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners, a senior Israeli source told Kan News on Tuesday.

Included in the 900 prisoners at 100 “heavy” prisoners.

The term “heavy” prisoner refers to the high-profile nature of the crime for which said inmate was imprisoned, with Palestinians imprisoned for murdering Israelis in terror attacks considered “heavier” than inmates with no blood on their hands.

The source further said that in return, Israel demanded that it retain the right of veto over some of the prisoners and that it be allowed to exile those it releases outside the precincts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

I have a sick feeling that Israel, under strong pressure to bring the hostages back, will go for this deal, which, by releasing 100 “heavy” terrorists, will simply perpetrate terrorism. Further, I’ve heard that Hamas will give up only 40 prisoners for this. (Remember, Israel once let go 1000 terrorist prisoners in return for a single kidnapped IDF soldier!)  Hamas refuses to give to either Israel or the Red Cross a list of the hostages they’re holding, and I suspect that the 130-odd that are supposed to be alive are actually mostly dead.  I can’t tell Israel what to do, but it seems to me that it’s a fair demand to let EVERY hostage go if Israel is going to release a lot of Jew-killers from its jails.

*Surprise! According to FDD, the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry,” whose casualty figures are uncritically accepted by the world’s press, actually has some serious problems with its data.

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by “incomplete.” In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 — a decrease of more than 900 records.

And, of course, the Health Ministry considers as “children” anybody under 18, and a fair number of those could be Hamas members.  There is no separation, among the “civilian” deaths or injuries, of Hamas members or other combatants from real, genuine civilians. But let’s proceed.

Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from “reliable media sources.” However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media.

“The sudden shifts in the ministry’s reporting methods suggest it is scrambling to prevent exposure of its shoddy work. For months, U.S. media have taken for granted that the ministry’s top-line figure for casualties was reliable enough to include in daily updates on the war. Even President Biden has cited its numbers. Now we’re seeing that a third or more of the ministry’s data may be incomplete at best — and fictional at worst.” — David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research

“It is important to recognize that Hamas is deeply invested in shaping the narrative that emerges from Gaza, particularly regarding the number of casualties in the war. Moreover, this control of data extends beyond the statistics provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry, as there is also a deliberate effort to downplay the number of terrorists who have been killed by Israel in the war, potentially numbering more than 10,000.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

On October 16, the health ministry told global media that an Israeli airstrike was responsible for an explosion that killed 500 Palestinians at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza. U.S. media quickly reported the story even though it became clear within hours there was no evidence to support claims of an airstrike or a death toll close to 500. Soon, evidence emerged showing that a rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists was nearly certain to have caused a blast in the hospital’s parking lot. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report on October 18 said the blast likely caused between 100 to 300 deaths, and it leaned towards casualty estimates at “the low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum.”

Nevertheless, the health ministry does not identify the individuals who died as a result of errant Palestinian fire, even though the Israel Defense Forces reported that 12 percent of rockets fired during the first month of the war fell inside Gaza — more than 1,000 total misfires.

I don’t think it’s wise to uncritically report this incomplete data, or perhaps even divulge any statistics given by Hamas, especially if they’re reported as “civilian” deaths. For it is the “civilians” supposedly killed that has brought the wrath of the world down on Israel.

*The NYT reports that some colleges will cost (including all fees) over $100,000 per year! Sadly, the first one mentioned is Vanderbilt, whose Chancellor used to be our Provost (and arrested and suspended protesting students)

It was only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. This spring, we’re catching our first glimpse of it.

One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student showed an all-in price — room, board, personal expenses, a high-octane laptop — of $98,426. A student making three trips home to Los Angeles or London from the Nashville campus during the year could hit six figures.

This eye-popping sum is an anomaly. Only a tiny fraction of college-going students will pay anything close to this anytime soon, and about 35 percent of Vanderbilt students — those who get neither need-based nor merit aid — pay the full list price.

But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within a few years. Their willingness to cross it raises two questions for anyone shopping for college: How did this happen, and can it possibly be worth it?

That’s the sticker price, though, and not many people pay it:

According to the College Board, the average 2023-24 list price for tuition, fees, housing and food was $56,190 at private, nonprofit four-year schools. At four-year public colleges, in-state students saw an average $24,030 sticker price.

That’s not what many people pay, though, not even close. As of the 2019-20 school year, according to federal data that the College Board used in a 2023 report, 39 percent of in-state students attending two-year colleges full time received enough grant aid to cover all of their tuition and fees (though not their living expenses, which can make getting through school enormously difficult). At four-year public schools, 31 percent paid nothing for tuition and fees while 18 percent of students at private colleges and universities qualified for the same deal.

Those private colleges continue to provide hefty discounts for people of all sorts of incomes. A National Association of College and University Business Officers study showed private nonprofit colleges and universities lowering their tuition prices by 56 percent from the rack rate during the 2022-23 school year.

Vanderbilt provides discounts, too, and its financial aid is extraordinarily generous. This year, it announced that families with income of $150,000 or less would pay no tuition in most instances

Still, over 2,000 students there who get no need-based or merit aid will soon pay $100,000 or more. Why does Vanderbilt need all of that money?

Why? Well, Vandy says that it actually costs more than the sticker price to educate its students;

According to Vanderbilt, its spending per undergraduate is $119,000. “The gap between the price and cost of attendance is funded by our endowment and the generous philanthropy of donors and alumni,” Brett Sweet, vice chancellor for finance, said in an emailed statement.

And that is why the job the a liberal-arts private university’s administration is largely to suck in funds.

*The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) has, by unanimous vote, effectively banned transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports. Note that anybody can participate in the male division, but only natal females can participate in women’s sports. Note also that the NAIA doesn’t hold sway over most colleges. (h/t Mark; my emphasis below)

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the governing body for mostly small colleges, announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes at schools across the country, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.

According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and who have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.

NAIA programs in competitive cheer and competitive dance are open to all students. The NAIA policy notes every other sport “includes some combination of strength, speed and stamina, providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes.”

NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr said in an interview with The Associated Press he understands the policy will generate controversy but that it was deemed best for member schools for competitive reasons.

“We know there are a lot of opinions, and a lot of people have a very emotional reaction to this, and we want to be respectful of all that,” Carr said. “But we feel like our primary responsibility is fairness in competition, so we are following that path. And we’ve tried as best we could to allow for some participation by all.”

Remember, this is for all the college sports save the few exemptions like cheerleading and dance given above. And it’s a real change from last year’s policy:

The NAIA’s 2023-24 policy did not bar transgender and nonbinary athletes from competing in the division of their choice in the regular season. In the postseason, and with some exceptions for those who have had hormone therapy, athletes had to compete in the division of their birth sex.

The tide seems to be turning on this issue, and various sports are converging on the NAIA’s policy. The Biden Administration tends to conflate biological sex with “identified gender” in its proposed rules for secondary-school sports, but they’ve held back on issuing a policy unitl after the election. No wonder! But also remember that this is a small-college body, while the big one, the NCAA (the National Collegiate Athletics Association) adheres to the timorous policy of the Olympics: it allows each sport to make its own rules.  And within each sport’s rules, there is this sub-rule, which doesn’t really address the issue:

Beginning Aug. 1, 2024, participation in NCAA sports requires transgender student-athletes to provide documentation no less than twice annually (and at least once within four weeks of competition in NCAA championships) that meets the sport-specific standard (which may include testosterone levels, mitigation timelines and other aspects of sport-governing body policies) as reviewed and approved by CSMAS. More information about the specific application of Phase Three will be provided prior to implementation.

It’s the “sports-specific standard” that is the very thing at issue!

*I haven’t followed Dave Rubin for a long time, but here’s a short clip a reader sent me showing a pro-Palestinian gay activist (an oxymoron if ever there was one) trying to join a pro-Palestinian demonstration. I’ve never seen something like this, but it shows the opposition of “sanity versus stupidity”, as Rubin says (he’s gay). Note that the burka-clad demonstrator tells the gay guy, “”God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.

Here’s a comment under the video; it’s hilarious:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili meets Baby Kulka (who she hates), coming down to the veranda roof on the special ladder that Paulina made for her:

Kulka: It’s nice to see you.
Hili: I hope you are not planning to visit us.
In Polish:
Kulka: Miło cię widzieć.
Hili: Mam nadzieję, że nie wybierasz się do nas.

*******************

This song was made by webmaster Phil using AI, apparently in my honor. Phil calls this “an unheralded classic from the Sixties” and that “it might have been The Cowsills”. Indeed, though I like this a lot but like only one Cowsills song.  Click and then hit “play”.  I’m chuffed!

Here’s Ozy sleeping after his breakfast on Sunday (photo by Rosemary Alles).  I am helping support this giant pig.

From Not Another Science Cat Page:

From Maish: Iranian women students get into big trouble—for DANCING to celebrate their graduation. Such is the repressive Iranian theocracy.  (Nice video, too!)

Emma Hilton takes down every one of Peter Tatchell’s 18 examples of animals that are “trans”.  First, Tatchell’s tweet:

Screenshots from Emma. We already know why the clownfish isn’t “trans” (it fully changes biological sex from male to female, sans gender dysphoria)

And the damn hyena, which is not even able to change biological sex:

One more, and thus endeth the biology lesson:

A bear walks into a store, and gently removes a single snack:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Tweets from Proessor Cobb. Speaking of ducks, here’s the world’s most beautiful duck, the East Asian Mandarin duck (Aix galericulata), which has been imported to many places, including here:

Sound up for this weird cat, which is surely Kifness material!

Reflections on papers past: Coyne and Orr 1989

March 12, 2024 • 9:30 am

Hari Sridhar, a Fellow of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, has, with others, launched a new site called Reflections on Papers Past.  Here’s the site’s aim (read more at the link):

Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in ecology, evolution, behaviour and conservation.
The personal back-story of this project can be found here.

Allen Orr and I were honored to have one of our papers included in this pantheon (see below), which is on the site as a long interview I did with Hari a while back.

The site’s blurb and links on the front page are below:

Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Conservation based on interviews with their authors. To find out more about the project click here.

Full interviews with authors about the making of their papers and the papers’ fates after publication

INTERVIEWS

Thematic collections of quotes showcasing human stories behind scientific papers

QUOTES

Scientific papers annotated with author back-stories and reflections

ANNOTATED PAPERS

A library of photos and other visuals connected to the back-stories of scientific papers

VISUAL ARCHIVE

If you’re an organismal biologist, you might scan the list of papers (divided by field) and get the skinny on them.

I’d completely forgotten about my interview, as it took place over three years ago. It concerns what is probably my most-cited paper, Coyne and Orr 1989, which was called “Patterns of speciation in Drosophila“, appeared in Evolution, and can be found here (the pdf is here). It was an attempt, which met with some success, to figure out how species form in this genus of flies by looking at the reproductive barriers between pairs of species and correlating the strength of those barriers with the estimated divergence time taken from molecular differences.  (There was an update with new data in 1997.) This could give us an idea of how fast genetic barriers form between populations, and which barriers evolve fastest.

As I said, I believe this is my most-cited paper, but my most cited scientific publication is surely going to be the book Speciation, also written with my student Allen Orr, a terrific scion and great collaborator (he’s now a professor at the University of Rochester.)  I’m only guessing about citations here because I no longer check them.

At any rate, if you click below, you’ll see Hari’s interview with me. It’s long and may not be of interest to non-scientists.


A couple of pictures from yore of Allen and me.  The first one is when we enacted a mock squabble in Bellagio, Italy (2001), where we both received Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships to plan and start writing the book Speciation. But yes, there were disagreements, though not as violent as this.  The book came out in 2009 and I am prouder of it than any other piece of science I produced (I can’t speak for Allen).

Relaxing on Lake Como. Fellows stay at the Villa Serbelloni, a mansion now owned by the Rockefeller Foundation and open to tourists only for guided tours. (George Clooney’s mansion is nearby.)  The Foundation affords artists and scholars a month of freedom (and luxury) to work without interruption, save the lovely breakfasts and dinners and breaks for drinks. (You specify your lunch on a checklist filled out at breakfast, and they bring it to your door to enjoy while working or roaming the extensive and beautiful gardens.) Allen and I got a LOT done in that month. Our partners got to come to Italy, too, and we dedicated Speciation to them (they had projects to do as well.)

The Foundation also had two rowboats:

An aquatic jaunt during lunch. Allen shows the way, though of course he’s looking backwards

One more picture of Orr and me, taken at the Evolution meetings in Portland, Oregon in 2001. He was the outgoing President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and I was the incoming President. This was before Portland became woke and went down the drain:

Again: the 1-3 sentence rule

February 23, 2024 • 10:45 am

I have a Rule of Life, which is mine, and it goes as follows. . . . here it comes (and I’ve probably said it before):

“When engaged in conversation, you are allowed to say only 1-3 sentences before you must allow the other person to say something.”

This derives from conversations I’ve had since the pandemic began, conversations in which people yammer on forever, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they’re engaged in a DIALOGUE.  This allows two or more people to actually have a conversation instead of a monologue.

Now there are of course exceptions: if someone is telling you a joke or a story, or giving a lecture, then one’s allowed to break the limit. There are other circumstances, too, as when someone is telling you their woes. But it would be salubrious if people abided in general by the rule above.

But I always wonder whether those people who speak forever are aware of their misbehavior. And I realized that you learn a lot more by listening than by speaking. As I grow older and less reserved, I try to gently nudge people to stop long monologuing by interrupting, which I don’t like to do, or, when I’m particularly splenetic, by saying, “Get to the point.”

Here are some other of my Rules for Life, of varying importance, that I’ve suggested over the years:

Button your shirt from the bottom up; that way you won’t mis-button it. (This comes from the movie “Cheaper by the Dozen,” about an efficiency expert.)

When running water for a bath, start with the cold water and then gradually turn on the hot tap. This way you won’t burn yourself.

If two people point out the same fault in your persona, they’re probably right. Fix it!

The amount of toothpaste you need to put on your brush is less than you think: about the volume of a pea. (This is from a dental hygienist.)

If a female is telling you of their troubles, they are often looking for a sympathetic ear rather than a solution. Males, on the other hand, are often looking for a tangible solution.  When I have troubles and am looking for someone to comfort me rather than get a solution, I turn more readily to my women friends rather than to men, who often become prescriptive immediately.  (This of course is a generalization based on sex-differential behavior, and is not universal—even among my own friends.)

Here is some real wisdom that I’ve learned, and it’s a shame it took me so long:  “If you are telling someone about a behavior they have that bothers you, do not be accusatory. Simply say how that behavior makes you feel. That way they are not put on the defensive, and friendships are less likely to rupture.”

Please add your own rule(s) for life below. But don’t monologue!

 

Faith versus Fact audiobook for 75% off: only $4.25

February 15, 2024 • 1:17 pm

My audiobook publisher is running a special deal until March 15: my audio book Faith versus Fact: The Incompatibility Between Science and Religion, for a pittance: $4.25. It’s not available on Amazon, so I’d say this is a good deal.  To get it, click on the icon below, and, if you don’t want to buy into a continuing deal, click the blue “get discount” button and then check out.  If you click the orange button, you’ll buy into a continuing series and will keep getting other books.

The blurb:

In his provocative new book, evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne lays out in clear, dispassionate detail why the toolkit of science, based on reason and empirical study, is reliable, while that of religion-including faith, dogma, and revelation-leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions.

Coyne is responding to a national climate in which over half of Americans don’t believe in evolution (and congressmen deny global warming), and warns that religious prejudices and strictures in politics, education, medicine, and social policy are on the rise. Extending the bestselling works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, he demolishes the claims of religion to provide verifiable ‘truth’ by subjecting those claims to the same tests we use to establish truth in science.

Coyne irrefutably demonstrates the grave harm-to individuals and to our planet-in mistaking faith for fact in making the most important decisions about the world we live in.

Look at it this way: it’s cheaper than a Starbuck’s latte. And, as with all my books, if you send them to me with a postpaid return envelope, I’ll autograph them and even draw a cat inside.

Times Higher Ed on indigenous knowledge as science

October 25, 2023 • 1:00 pm

On October 1, I wrote about a big project in which the National Science Foundation was going to invest substantial dosh in integrating indigenous (Native American) knowledge into science.  But the “braiding” of modern science with indigenous “ways of knowing” worried me, especially when I’ve seen what it’s done to New Zealand. Here’s an excerpt of what I said in my post:

Here are two claims in the article that worry me. The first is a statement by Sonya Atalay, “an archaeologist of Anishinaabe-Ojibwe heritage at UMass Amherst and co-leader of the [Braiding] centre.”

“As Indigenous people, we have science, but we carry that science in stories,” Atalay says. “We need to think about how to do science in a different way and work differently with Indigenous communities.”

I’m not sure what it means to say “we carry that science in stories,” but stories can, like that Antarctica trope, be corrupted over years and centuries. Empirical claims in “stories” can’t be taken at face value, but have to be tested using the toolkit of modern science.  And what does it mean to say “we do science in a different say”.  Really? Even if you’re working with indigenous communities, don’t you want to ascertain truth the same way we do in modern science?

And there’s this:

Atalay is thinking about ways to measure success and communicate findings that go beyond publishing papers in peer-reviewed journals. In particular, she says, scientists will focus on finding ways to communicate their results with communities, including through the use of comic books, posters and theatre.

“You share what you’ve learned, and you do that through stories, through art, through any accessible means,” she says. “That is not a side note. It’s an integral part of the circle of doing science.”

Well, yes, if you need to tell the locals what you’ve found using comic books and plays, that’s fine. But if knowledge, whether coming from or derived from indigenous communities is to become part of modern science itself, it needs to be published, not in comic books but in peer-reviewed journals.

It’s statements like these that make me worry that the NSF is throwing piles of money (our money) at these endeavors primarily as a performative gesture showing that it cares about indigenous people.

A reporter for Times Higher Education somehow found this post and interviewed me about my views, writing about the project and giving some of my quotes from the interview in the article below (click to read, and make a judicious inquiry if you can’t access it). Forgive the self-aggrandizement, but I’m pleased that the problems with such a program are being given wider exposure.

Here’s an excerpt. Note the NSF’s response in bold. But they do say that some money will be allocated to training students, which is good.  The rest you can read at the site.

Already, there have been some early warnings that the outcome in the US could be similar. Indigenous knowledge certainly has useful applications in many fields of human activity, said Jerry Coyne, emeritus professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, but it does not contribute in significant ways to the modern scientific processes that have produced decades of major breakthroughs in critical fields such as medicine, physics and chemistry.

“The idea that indigenous knowledge is really going to push science forward seems dubious to me,” Professor Coyne said.

In their announcement of the new NSF centre, its organisers cited the example of clam gardens – rock walls built along shorelines to provide a welcoming habitat for molluscs – which indigenous people have been creating for thousands of years along the Pacific north-west coast of the US and Canada. The approach can double or quadruple clam production, according to Marco Hatch, an associate professor of marine ecology at Western Washington University who studies their use and who will receive some of the first allotment of funding from the new NSF centre.

That kind of work does seem beneficial, Professor Coyne acknowledged. But as similar cases in New Zealand have shown, the actual scientific content is thin, he said. “My response is: show me the results, show me what useful science has come out of this – and there’s very little,” he said. “It’s always in the nature of, well, we’ve learned to pick berries when this phase of the moon occurs at this time of year. Yeah, that’s useful practical knowledge, but it’s not really science in the sense that the NSF considers science.”

An NSF official insisted on the scientific value of bringing new “backgrounds and attitudes” to research work. “Scientists don’t always create good or optimal research questions and designs because they are sometimes missing critical information about culture or other aspects of human behaviour or the environment,” the official said.

A potentially more valuable outcome of such federal investment, Professor Coyne said, would be for the government to help more indigenous students become professional scientists, who could then use their ancestral backgrounds in ways that fit more directly into existing research channels. “If you want to help underserved people, bring them into modern science,” he said.

The NSF’s announcement of the new centre does indicate plans in that direction, saying that some funding would be spent on training students at school level all the way up to postdoctoral researchers and graduate research assistants, many at minority-serving institutions.

I wish, though, that the unnamed “NSF official” had given at least one example of a project that had gone forward or been improved by adding that “critical information about culture”. As I noted in the piece, those who push for the unification (and sometimes coequality) of science and “indigenous ways of knowing” often fall short when asked to give examples of how this will improve our understanding of nature.

A short Forbes magazine interview with Peter Singer

May 24, 2023 • 1:00 pm

I’m posting this clip for two reasons. First, it’s a Forbes Magazine interview with a philosopher I much admire: Peter Singer. He’s admirable because he deals with philosophy’s original purpose: to figure out how to live a good life; because he deals with tough questions (one of them here: the euthanasia of terminally suffering newborns, which he discusses at 6:45); because, even when attacked he defends his ideas with tenacity; because he walks the walk, giving a lot of his income to others; and because does a lot of charitable work. Despite calls to get him fired because of his views on infant euthanasia, he maintains his equanimity and simply proffers a defense of his stand that I, for one, find convincing. And, of course, he spends a lot of time dealing with animal welfare, which a biologist has to admire (sadly, I’m too hypocritical to give up eating meat, but Singer abjures it).

Second, because he’s one of the founders of The Journal of Controversial Ideas, I was chuffed to hear that he talks about our paper recently published there, “In defense of merit in science” (between 9:30 and 13:00). I’m not sure who the interviewer is, but she seems to push on our merit thesis because in some ways it opposes racial diversity. Singer, in response, seems dubious about the idea of equity trumping merit.

They begin by discussing Singer’s new book (an update, actually): Animal Liberation Now: The Definitive Classic Renewed, which came out on Tuesday. I read the original book  (Animal Liberation), which was when he first came to my consciousness. I also admire his book The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress., which suggests how our evolved ethical system has been extended to all humanity.

p.s. Singer has compiled a list of charities where, he thinks, you can get the most relief of suffering for your dollar. I’ve used that list, which you can find here, to decide who will get my money when I die.

My WaPo review of Jon Losos’s new book on cats

May 3, 2023 • 9:00 am

My colleague Jon Losos, an evolutionary ecologist at Washington University who works on lizards but also has three cats, has written the kind of book I’d always wanted to write: an exploration of the evolutionary roots of the housecat and an evolution-based analysis of its behaviors.  Given Losos’s line of work, it’s also imbued with ecology. The book came out today, and you can order it on Amazon by clicking on the screenshot below:

 

Knowing of the book’s existence since it is published by Viking/Penguin (my own publisher), I asked the Washington Post if they wanted me to review it. They said “yes” and the link to my review below is taken from today’s newspaper. Click on the screenshot to see it, and, if it’s paywalled, perhaps judicious inquiry will yield a copy.

I’ll just give a short excerpt since you should read it on the site. (It will be in the paper edition of the Post on Sunday.)

The review is positive, so if you want to learn about cats, you should read the book. I couldn’t resist a dig at d*gs at the outset, just to liven things up:

My view, and that of many other die-hard cat lovers, is that the internet exists primarily to circulate pictures and videos of cats. Dogs, you may be surprised to learn, can also be found on the internet but curiously tend to remain stuck in remote corners of cyberspace. Cats fuel wildly viral memes; dogs seldom get beyond that family vacation picture on Facebook (with just three likes, all from elderly relatives). Both cats and dogs — especially the younger versions of both — have fuzzy, big-eyed appeal, but dogs apparently lack what it takes to snare a global audience. As the New York Times contended, cat pictures are “that essential building block of the Internet.”

One prominent theory to explain this cat/dog disparity suggests that it’s the residual wildness of cats that makes them so special. This accounts for their infinite capacity for aloofness. Cats were domesticated rather recently — about 10,000 years ago when humans were busy inventing agriculture. And DNA tells us that the ancestor of all house cats is the African wildcat Felis silvestris lybica, which looks much like a domestic tabby.

. . . It’s appropriate, then, that an evolutionary biologist should write the definitive book on the biology, ecology and evolution of the house cat. That would be Jonathan Losos, who, although best known for his studies of lizards, also owns three cats. Those cats, he found, were every bit as interesting as his lizards but had a marked advantage over the reptiles: Losos didn’t have to leave his home to carry out field work. The result, “The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa,” is a readable and informed exploration of the wildcat that lurks within Fluffy.

. . . Many mysteries remain. Did meows (emitted only by domestic cats) really evolve, as has been seriously suggested, to resemble the cries of a distressed infant, to convert a hardwired human response — “I must take care of an unhappy baby” — into an ingenious ploy to get tuna? What is the real difference in the average life span between a cat allowed to roam outdoors and one kept inside? The traditional answer is five vs. 17 years respectively, but as Losos notes, “I have not been able to find the basis for this claim, and the discrepancy seems extreme to me.”

And we remain abysmally ignorant about my two most pressing cat questions: why they wiggle their butts right before they pounce on prey, and why they “chatter” when they see birds. All they seem to be doing in each case is alerting their potential meal to its hazardous situation, surely not a good idea. One of the lessons of the book, in fact, is that mysteries abound in cat science. One of the largest is how many times cats were domesticated in the Middle East. Did house cats evolve in a single location, or in several places around the same time? We don’t know, and the genetic data is ambiguous.

Like all good scientists, Losos admits that are many questions that will keep cat research active for years to come. Writing as a confirmed, and long-standing, cat lover, I look forward to an ever-expanding understanding of catness and to luxuriating, in quiet moments, in the joys of an infinite supply of online images, memes and videos of that most charismatic and beguiling of all domestic animals.

Coyne’s Laws of Life

March 10, 2023 • 8:15 am

Once again I’m racked with insomnia, intensified, I suppose, by jet lag. The result is that I probably get about 1-2 hours of sleep at night and can’t even fall asleep when I attempt a midday nap. We all have our burdens, and this is mine.

As the night turtles by, I’m instructed not to worry about falling asleep, which causes anxiety, so I try to think of other things. Last night I compiled a mental list of “Coyne’s Laws,” a list of observations about life that I began as a teenager. There aren’t many of them, but I bet readers have their own Laws. As I can’t brain today, I’ll give my list; I may have mentioned some of these before.

LAWS ABOUT PRACTICAL BEHAVIOR

Always button your shirts from the bottom up; that way you will never mis-button them.

When running a bath or shower, always turn the cold water on first and then the hot; this ensures that you won’t get scalded.

If a man recounts a problem to you, he wants a practical solution. If a women recounts a problem to you, she wants an empathic hearing and, unless she asks for them, does NOT want solutions. Likewise, men faced with a friend’s problem, regardless of whether the friend is male or female, will immediately try to solve it by giving advice. Women, on the other hand, will be empathic and solicitous of your situation. That’s why some of my best friends are women, and why, when faced with another’s problem, I try to act in the female-like way. (This does not apply to problems like how to make a syllabus, which explicitly require a practical solution. Also, this is a generalization, not a law. I make no claims about whether this results from evolution or socialization.)

Be sure to floss once a day to save your teeth and gums. I highly recommend Listerine Reach UltraClean Dental Floss®, which my hygienist (who put me onto the stuff) says is no longer made. Immediately order tons of it from Amazon, as it’s still for sale there. The stuff is mint-flavored, unwaxed, thin, stretchy, and does a great job. I’ve never found better.  I now have several years’ worth.

LAWS ABOUT HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Coyne’s First Law: Everyone thinks that they have a good sense of humor. (Observation: Some people have no sense of humor. Conclusion: Many people are fooling themselves.)

Coyne’s Second Law: Everyone thinks that they’re a “little bit nuts”, but always in a nice way. That is, everyone thinks they have some amusing eccentricities. (Observation: While this belief is nearly ubiquitous, some people are nuts but not in a nice way.)

Coyne’s Third Law: Nobody thinks they’re a jerk. (Observation: quite a few people are big-time jerks. Conclusion: many people have no self-awareness.)

LAWS ABOUT FOOD

All snack foods that are meant to be healthy eventually evolve into forms of confectionary. Examples: granola bars, once solidified blocks of tasteless grains, are turning into candy bars, covered with chocolate and sometimes containing raisins or even chocolate chips; thanks to Starbucks, coffee has turned into the adult equivalent of ice cream sodas; and fizzy water (known to we Jews as “seltzer” or “two cents plain?”) has acquired flavors and now is getting bit of added sugar as it inevitably gets turned into soda pop.

All ice cream manufacturers eventually shrink the size of their largest container while maintaining the price. (There are a few exceptions to this: honest companies who proudly offer the full half gallon.) My post about this last June, “The ice cream scams“, was the third most popular post I ever put on this site, tapping into a hidden vein of resentment permeating the American public.  There’s also a corollary: “All ice creams eventually become ‘frozen dairy desserts’,” which are cheaper to make. Unless you look closely, you won’t even notice. Do not be fooled.

I have begun formulating a new set of laws, which are mine. Here is the first one:

LAWS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

Any Facebook post that beings with “I am honored. . .” inevitably involves braggadocio: a description of some award or achievement that the poster wants either their friends or the whole world to know about. What “I am honored” really means is: “Look what I got!”

I’m sure you have your own rules that haven’t been codified into rules or laws, but if you have these kinds of personal generalizations, please put them into the comments.