Category: Uncategorized

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 22, 2025 • 8:30 am

Ecologist Susan Harrison always manages to come through when I’m low on photos, as I am now. Today she sends us a batch of birds from Ohio. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Magee Marsh, Ohio and its many warblers (and others)

The Great Lakes are a significant obstacle for songbirds struggling north from the tropics to breed in the vast, insect-rich expanses of high latitude North America.  Abundant warblers and other small migrants congregate in mid-May in the boggy forests along the lakes’ southern shores.  There, many species tank up on bugs and await favorable winds for the long water crossing, while others settle and breed.

In turn, birdwatchers also convene for this annual avian spectacle. Mid-May at Magee Marsh, on Lake Erie east of Toledo, has become known as “The Biggest Week in American Birding”.   A friendly and festive atmosphere prevails as throngs of birders move along boardwalks peering into dense foliage and high treetops.   This year, I was fortunate to combine a work trip with seeing peak migration at Magee Marsh.

Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citraea) nesting pair:

Magnolia Warbler (Setophaga magnolia):

Blackburnian Warbler (Setophaga fusca):

Bay-breasted Warbler (Setophaga castanea):

Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica):

American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla):

Black-throated Green Warbler (Setophaga virens):

Black-throated Blue Warbler (Setophaga caerulescens):

Cape May Warbler (Setophaga tigrina):

Black-and-white Warbler (Mniotilta varia):

Warbling Vireo (Vireo gilvus):

Philadelphia Vireo (Vireo philadelphicus):

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus):

Two Israeli embassy aides, about to be engaged, murdered outside Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

May 22, 2025 • 8:00 am

I’m making this into a separate post because it pains me so much: it was the first thing I read online when I woke up this morning.  Surely as a result of worldwide Jew hatred, instigated by the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli protestors in America (indeed, throughout the world), a pair of young aides at the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot to death by, yes, a “Free, free Palestine” protestor. The murder took place right outside the Capital Jewish Museum, also in Washington. From the NYT (article archived here):

Two young Israeli Embassy aides were shot and killed outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in downtown Washington on Wednesday night by a man who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans after he was detained, according to law enforcement officials.

The close-range shooting occurred shortly after 9 p.m. on a street outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats. The area is the heart of official Washington, packed with federal buildings, embassies and museums. The Capitol, the F.B.I.’s Washington field office and the headquarters of the Justice Department are all near the museum.

The suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, was detained shortly after the shooting and there was no ongoing threat to public safety, law enforcement officials said.

Pamela A. Smith, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, told reporters at a news conference that Mr. Rodriguez exclaimed, “Free, free Palestine,” after he was in custody. He also informed the police where he had discarded the weapon used in the shooting, Chief Smith said.

Israel’s foreign ministry identified the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim. Mr. Lischinsky was a research assistant in the political department at the embassy and Ms. Milgrim organized trips to Israel, according to the ministry.

Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador, said at the news conference that the two people killed were a couple about to be engaged. “The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem,” he said.

But being the NYT, the paper couldn’t resist putting in this paragraph:

After the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli military began a campaign in Gaza has devastated the enclave. It set off a wave of pro-Palestinian protests, including at Israeli embassies and at American college and university campuses. The Israeli Embassy in Washington has been a particular focus for protesters.

Did the NYT forget that the protests against Israel and for Palestine began immediately after the October 7 attacks, and Israel did not launch its invasion into Gaza until a week later, and a full-scale invasion nearly three weeks later? But that’s irrelevant; what’s clear is that Israel was never going to get the world’s sympathy, if it attacked Hamas—except perhaps for a day or two.

A bit about the couple from the WSJ:

Nissim Otmazgin, a dean at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who taught Lischinsky, said he was gentle, hardworking and an idealist who was interested in building bridges between Israel and other countries. He spoke English, Hebrew, German and Japanese.

“He knew he wanted to be a diplomat. It was his dream,” he said. “A dream that shattered.”

Milgrim, who was American, worked at the Israeli Embassy’s department of public diplomacy and said on her LinkedIn profile that she was passionate about Israeli-Palestinian peace-building. She had worked as a Jewish educator.

“Her energy, thoughtfulness, and unwavering belief in dialogue, peace, and equality inspired everyone who had the privilege to work alongside her,” said a statement by Tech2Peace, an organization that Milgrim had worked at that brings together Palestinians and Israelis through tech.

There is no justification for murdering these young people. You can say that they worked for Israel, but they were not combatants.  I talked to Malgorzata this morning, and she thinks this murder is a harbinger of violence to come; that it somehow will justify copycat murders of Jews in other places. That is what “globalizing the intifada” really means.

I hope Malgorzata is wrong, but I wouldn’t place money on it. One thing for sure is that this killing will do nothing to “free Palestine”. What Gaza needs to be freed from is Hamas.

Here’s an uncredited picture of the murdered pair from Tom Gross’s newsletter. What makes this even sadder is that in a week Yaron would have proposed to Sarah in Jerusalem, and now they will never be a married couple.

The crime is being investigated as a hate crime, supported by the new finding that someone with the same name as the suspect left a long (900-word) anti)-Israel manifesto online. I can’t find the manifesto online, but here’s part of a summary:

The approximately 900-word statement — written in the clear language of an English major, dated May 20 and published online around the same time the shooting occurred — mentions the high death toll in Gaza and notes the ineffectiveness of nonviolent protests against Israel, including the self-immolation of US Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell. It also expresses dissatisfaction with American support for Israel.

An Israeli victim of the Nova Festival attack wins the popular vote in the Eurovision song contest

May 19, 2025 • 9:45 am

Very few Americans know anything about the Eurovision Song Contest, though it’s a much bigger deal in Europe. Wikipedia explains it:

The Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la chanson), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster submits an original song representing its country to be performed and broadcast live to all of them via the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, and then casts votes for the other countries’ songs to determine a winner.

. . . Traditionally held in the country that won the preceding year’s event, the contest provides an opportunity to promote the host country and city as a tourist destination. Thousands of spectators attend each year, along with journalists who cover all aspects of the contest, including rehearsals in venue, press conferences with the competing acts, in addition to other related events and performances in the host city. Alongside the generic Eurovision logo, a unique theme is typically developed for each event. The contest has aired in countries across all continents; it has been available online via the official Eurovision website since 2001. Eurovision ranks among the world’s most watched non-sporting events every year, with hundreds of millions of viewers globally. Performing at the contest has often provided artists with a local career boost and in some cases long-lasting international success. Several of the best-selling music artists in the world have competed in past editions, including ABBA, Celine Dion, Julio Iglesias, Cliff Richard, and Olivia Newton-John; some of the world’s best-selling singles have received their first international performance on the Eurovision stage.

The rules are complicated, but individual viewers are able to vote alongside juries made up of ordinary music industry people from individual countries (see comment by Greg Mayer below for explanation of edit). This is all new to me, so pardon any errors, and by all means correct me.

There’s a political element to the competition, too.  After October 7, 2023 and Israel’s response to Hamas, when European countries began turning against Israel, there were calls to exclude or boycott Israel, which weren’t successful. However, in 2024 the Swedish public demonstrated against Israel and its contestant, Eden Golan, singing the song “Hurricane“, written by Avi Ohayon, Keren Peles, and Stav Beger.  I remember seeing large demonstrations against Golan at the venue and in her hotel, where she was ordered by her security team to stay inside. (The protestors include Greta Thunberg, sporting a kiffiyeh.) You can see pictures of the 2024 protestors, including the benight3ed Thunberg, at the Daily Mail site.)

Golan finished fifth in the final, but the imbalance between the public vote and the jury vote was striking: “Israel placed fifth in the final, scoring 375 points; 323 points from the public televoting and 52 points from the juries.”  Out of 37 countries, Golan came first in the popular vote but 12th from the jury vote, giving her a final result of fifth place.

One might conclude from this imbalance that either Israel was stacking the popular vote (but that’s not possible because viewer-voters cannot vote for their own country), or the public was not as anti-Israel as was the jury. Remember, this is a song contest, and politics shouldn’t have much to do with it, though the results of public sentiment seem to show that jurists representing a country are less pro-Israel than the people themselves.

The year the results were similar: a big imbalance between the popular and jury vote.  Israeli singer Yuval Raphael  finished second in the overall results, winning the popular vote. The jury, however, put her in a grim 14th place, but together that allowed Raphael to finish second. It’s also amazing in light of her story:

Raphael was attending the Nova Sukkot Gathering music festival in Re’im on 7 October 2023, when Hamas militants attacked the festival. She hid inside a Death Shelter near kibbutz Be’eri with 50 other people, while sustaining shrapnel injuries from grenades thrown into the shelter. Raphael was one of 11 survivors, having hid under dead bodies for eight hours. In a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council, she described what she witnessed during the attack.

She also suffered wounds from shrapnel.

Here she is telling her story about Nova in a 14-minute video. There are several recordings of the telephone conversation between Yuval and her father as she lay in the bunker, covered with dead bodies.  It’s a very poignant account of a survivor—one who thought for sure she was going to die.

Yuval didn’t die; she remained motionless under the bodies, even as Hamas threw grenades into the shelter. Afterwards, as you see above, she started fighting back, and her testimony was one of the ways.

I suspect entering the Eurovision Song Contest was another. Here’s her performance of “New Day Will Rise” that won the public vote (the music video, incorporating themes from the Nova Festival attack) is here. Remember, this isn’t the world’s best music, but it’s still an immensely popular contest in Europe.

Comparison of votes from the public and judges (a table):

Any “stacking” of Israeli voters cannot explain this disparity. Draw your own conclusion, but one thing is sure: Ruval Raphael was fighting back through music, and she has to feel good about the results.

h/t: Malgorzata

Ghost clades: a gazillion taxa detected solely by sequencing DNA from the environment (including dolphins’ mouths)

May 15, 2025 • 10:00 am

Yesterday I posted about the discovery of a new member of the archaea that was found by sequencing DNA taken from inside a single eukaryotic dinoflagellate (there were three other species inside or associated with that cell, too). The DNA sequence I talked about belonged to what the authors named Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile. The circular genome of this microbe was unique in having the complete genetic apparatus for self replication (unlike viruses), but (unlike most other prokaryotes) had no genes for metabolism.  The authors theorize, and I agree, that it is likely some kind of parasite, commensal, or symbiont that is obligately associated with other species.  The question is whether, without the ability to metabolize—but with the ability to reproduce—whether Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile was alive.  I have no dog in that fight, but readers differed. It’s bloody hard to define “life”, though I like Richard Dawkin’s c0ncept that life is whatever can evolve via natural selection. And clearly Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile could.

At least one commenter deemed the DNA sequence of Candidatus Sukunaarchaeum mirabile as an artifact of “DNA contamination”, though I don’t understand how that could happen. Further, the assembly of the DNA into a genome was deemed artifactual, although again, given how the authors did this, and that the DNA was circular, I don’t understand that, either.

But, intrigued, I did a bit of digging. It turns out that there are a ton of organisms, mostly archaea and bacteria, that have been identified solely from their DNA sequences, and they cannot really be artifacts because they fall into a good phylogenetic tree. In addition, they used  16 ribosomal DNA genes, which tend to be clustered together on the chromosomes, and did multiple reads of all sequences to put together overlapping fragments to build coherent genomic sequences.

The object of the paper below was to sample the environment and, without isolating individual organisms, see how many were new to science simply by looking for novel DNA sequences.  The summary is in a rather old (2016) paper in Nature Microbiology, and I haven’t looked for any updates. The upshot, which you can see by clicking on the screenshot below or reading the pdf here, is that there are a gazillion new species, mostly prokaryotes (bacteria + archaea) that we didn’t know about before. Indeed, the new species, based on limited sampling, imply that we only know a smallish fraction of the organisms on the planet.

I call these groups “ghost clades” because they are known only from their DNA and not from physical appearance or other evidence.

 

The method:

The authors got DNA from a variety of locations (indented sections from the paper); bolding is mine:

This study includes 1,011 organisms from lineages for which genomes were not previously available. The organisms were present in samples collected from a shallow aquifer system, a deep subsurface research site in Japan, a salt crust in the Atacama Desert, grassland meadow soil in northern California, a CO2-rich geyser system, and two dolphin mouths. Genomes were reconstructed from metagenomes as described previously. Genomes were only included if they were estimated to be >70% complete based on presence/absence of a suite of 51 single copy genes for Bacteria and 38 single copy genes for Archaea. Genomes were additionally required to have consistent nucleotide composition and coverage across scaffolds, as determined using the ggkbase binning software (ggkbase.berkeley.edu), and to show consistent placement across both SSU rRNA and concatenated ribosomal protein phylogenies.

Note that they looked at only six sites, including, yes, two dolphin mouths.  Why the dolphins? I don’t know. At any rate, they they sequenced the hell out of DNA taken from these sites.  They didn’t do complete genomic sequencing, but did enough to identify individual species using DNA sequences coding for 16 different ribosomal proteins: well-known genes that produce proteins that are part of the ribosomes—the sites where DNA is translated into other proteins.  This was a ton of work because they had to put the separate sequences together into organisms. Here’s their rationale for using rDNA:

To render this tree of life, we aligned and concatenated a set of 16 ribosomal protein sequences from each organism. This approach yields a higher-resolution tree than is obtained from a single gene, such as the widely used 16S rRNA gene. The use of ribosomal proteins avoids artefacts that would arise from phylogenies constructed using genes with unrelated functions and subject to different evolutionary processes. Another important advantage of the chosen ribosomal proteins is that they tend to be syntenic and co-located in a small genomic region in Bacteria and Archaea, reducing binning errors that could substantially perturb the geometry of the tree. Included in this tree is one representative per genus for all genera for which high-quality draft and complete genomes exist (3,083 organisms in total).

The observation that rRNA genes tend to be near each other on the chromosome allows them to get a big chunk of genome.  After they sequenced these genes, they concatenated them: putting all 16 genes together into one big sequence. That big sequence was then subject to phylogenetic (“family tree”) analysis, and, lo and behold, below is the tree they got, taken from the paper (click to enlarge):

The groups that were previously unknown as organisms are indicated with red dots, and the top part of the graph comprises bacteria. The archaea are the smaller group of colored taxa at lower left, while the eukaryotic DNA (and organisms) are at lower right. Note that bacteria are by far the most common new taxa they found (red dots), but a lot of archaea were also new. There were, as expected, no new eukaryotes, as we know most of the sequences of their groups.  Also, although the authors say they can’t definitively resolve the placement of eukaryotes in the tripartite group, they do say that eukaryotes seem to have arisen from within archaea, and we now know that is true.

(From paper): The tree includes 92 named bacterial phyla, 26 archaeal phyla and all five of the Eukaryotic supergroups. Major lineages are assigned arbitrary colours and named, with well-characterized lineage names, in italics. Lineages lacking an isolated representative are highlighted with non-italicized names and red dots. For details on taxon sampling and tree inference, see Methods. The names Tenericutes and Thermodesulfobacteria are bracketed to indicate that these lineages branch within the Firmicutes and the Deltaproteobacteria, respectively. Eukaryotic supergroups are noted, but not otherwise delineated due to the low resolution of these lineages. The CPR phyla are assigned a single colour as they are composed entirely of organisms without isolated representatives, and are still in the process of definition at lower taxonomic levels. The complete ribosomal protein tree is available in rectangular format with full bootstrap values as Supplementary Fig. 1 and in Newick format in Supplementary Dataset 2.

What is most striking about the figure above is the huge radiation in purple at upper right, all of which are new taxa (I believe the authors consider them “phyla”). They call this group the Candidate Phyla Radiation, or CPR. It has hundreds of lineages new to science! And many of the archaea were new, too. Altogether, this shows that the diversity of life as judged from DNA sequences in the environment, is far greater than we knew.  But we expect that, don’t we? There are so many places bacteria can live, not that many people go looking for new ones, and they are small.

Here’s what you get when you put all the prokaryotic species into a conventional phylogenetic tree with branch lengths (click to enlarge). The CPR of bacteria is in purplish-blue at the bottom, all of which are new.

(From paper) The threshold for groups (coloured wedges) was an average branch length of <0.65 substitutions per site. Notably, some well-accepted phyla become single groups and others are split into multiple distinct groups. We undertook this analysis to provide perspective on the structure of the tree, and do not propose the resulting groups to have special taxonomic status. The massive scale of diversity in the CPR and the large fraction of major lineages that lack isolated representatives (red dots) are apparent from this analysis. Bootstrap support values are indicated by circles on nodes—black for support of 85% and above, grey for support from 50 to 84%. The complete ribosomal protein tree is available in rectangular format with full bootstrap values as Supplementary Fig. 1 and in Newick format in Supplementary Dataset 2.

One final remark. Further “metagenomic” analysis showed that members of the CPR are unusual in that, like the new archaea species I mentioned yesterday, they have relatively small genomes and “restricted metabolic capacities.” None of the CPRs have compete citric acid cycles and also lack respiratory  chains and little or no capacity to synthesize amino acids or nucleotides. They must get these things (vital for life) from the environment, which may include these microbes living as parasites or symbionts. (That, of course, would make them harder to detect.) It’s not clear whether this loss of genetic abilities is a secondary reduction of a formerly complete set of abilities, or an early stage of building up metabolism. (Remember that our archaea discussed yesterday had no genes for metabolism.)

Here is the authors’ conclusion:

The tree of life as we know it has dramatically expanded due to new genomic sampling of previously enigmatic or unknown microbial lineages. This depiction of the tree captures the current genomic sampling of life, illustrating the progress that has been made in the last two decades following the first published genome. What emerges from analysis of this tree is the depth of evolutionary history that is contained within the Bacteria, in part due to the CPR, which appears to subdivide the domain. Most importantly, the analysis highlights the large fraction of diversity that is currently only accessible via cultivation-independent genome-resolved approaches.

All I can say are two things. First, there is surely more information now that expands these data, but I had no time last night to read more than this single paper. We may know most of the vertebrates on the planet, but as for insects, invertebrates, and bacteria, well, we don’t know jack. But that’s good! More work needed and cool things to discover!

Second, it’s a good things dolphins don’t brush their teeth. But some of them get help:

@dentistry.everyday

Squeaky Clean 😁 Brushing dolphin’s teeth is a part of their daily husbandry, or health care. Maintaining healthy teeth and gums is just as important with dolphins as it is with humans. Fun Fact: Did you know dolphins only receive one set of teeth their entire life? . . . 📽By @dolphinsplus • • ————————————— 📥 Post your case on dentistry_everyday to get repost ————————————— Like & Follow for the love of dentistry and more such interesting content 💯. • Loved the outcome • Tag a Friend • ➖ dentistry_everyday • . dentistry dental dentist dentists dentalstudent dentalhygienist dentalart doctor doctors toothimplant dentalrestorations @dentistry.everyday dentalboards dentalradiography dentalveneers dentalclinic dentalclinicdesign dentalimplants teeth tooth dent dentallogo dentalassistant dentalcare dentalinstruments

♬ original sound – Dentistry everyday

“Free Man in Paris”

May 13, 2025 • 1:00 pm

Insomnia has rendered me nearly insensate today, but I plan a nice science post tomorrow, assuming I’ll be able to write and think. Today we get music.

“Free Man in Paris” is a song written, sung, and performed by Joni Mitchell, describing record and film producer David Geffen kvetching about busy life in the US, where many people importuned him constantly. It’s about his celebrating his freedom from that importuning in Paris. The song first appeared on Mitchell’s “Court and Spark” album in 1974.

Geffen originally signed Joni to Asylum Records (part of Atlantic), and here’s a bit more about the song from the Wikipedia links above:

Joni Mitchell and Geffen were close friends and, in the early 1970s, made a trip to Paris with Robbie Robertson and Robertson’s wife, Dominique. As a result of that trip, Mitchell wrote “Free Man in Paris“ about Geffen.

The song is about music agent/promoter David Geffen, a close friend of Mitchell in the early 1970s, and describes Geffen during a trip the two made to Paris with Robbie Robertson and Dominique Robertson. While Geffen is never mentioned by name, Mitchell describes how he works hard creating hits and launching careers but can find some peace while vacationing in Paris. Mitchell sings “I was a free man in Paris. I felt unfettered and alive. Nobody calling me up for favors. No one’s future to decide.”

I love this song, as I love Joni—at the top of singers/songwriters/musicians of our era. Here she is playing it in 1979. The sax is great, and Joni plays electric. (The recorded version is here.)

Misguided branch of British Medical Association rejects UK’s Supreme Court decision that “woman” is defined by biological sex

April 30, 2025 • 10:00 am

As I reported two weeks ago, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom voted unanimously to affirm that the term “woman” under the legal Equality Act refers only to biological women and not trans-identified men. That means that a biological male holding a gender reassignment certificate would not have the same legal status as a biological women.  I added this:

In all the stuff I was able to read this morning, I was unable to find the definition of a “biological woman”, save that it refers to one’s natal sex, though they don’t mention gametes. The ruling does refer to the binary nature of sex (see below). And the ruling implies as well that the word “man” can mean in law only a “biological man”

That would seem to settle things, at least as far as the Equality Act is concerned, and the ruling was celebrated by those who favor the existence of “women’s spaces,” including sports competition, locker rooms, and jails.

But some members of the British Medical Association (BMA), as reported by the Times of London and other venues, have taken issue with the Supreme Court’s decision, implying that rrans-identified men are also women.  The subgroup of the BMA that voted against the Supreme Court Decision was the group of “resident doctors,” previously known as “junior doctors,” and so represent younger physicians. Note that the BMA is a registered trade union and does not regulate doctors; that role is given to the General Medical Council.

Click below to see an archive of the Times report:

A précis:

Doctors at the British Medical Association have voted to condemn the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex as “scientifically illiterate” and “biologically nonsensical”.

The union’s wing of resident doctors — formerly known as junior doctors — passed a motion at a conference on Saturday criticising the ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex.

The doctors claimed that a binary divide between sex and gender “has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender-diverse people”.

The branch of the British Medical Association (BMA) — representing about 50,000 younger doctors — said it “condemns scientifically illiterate rulings from the Supreme Court, made without consulting relevant experts and stakeholders, that will cause real-world harm to the trans, non-binary and intersex communities in this country”.

The BMA’s stance is likely to raise concerns that the medical profession may seek to obstruct attempts at implementing new NHS guidance on trans patients, being drawn up after the Supreme Court ruling. It follows the union’s decision last summer to lobby against the Cass Review and to call for an end to the ban on puberty blockers for children identifying as transgender.

Lobbying against the Cass Review—a sensible report that banned the use of puberty blockers on individuals under 18 and dismantled the dysfunctional Tavistock Clinic that hustled gender-dysphoric children into “affirmative therapy”—shows where the ideology of this group lies. Although the Cass Review was widely applauded by doctors, these “resident doctors” are clearly infected with the mantra that anyone can claim to be any sex they want. As the yahoo! article below notes, “Last year, the BMA became the only medical organisation in the UK to reject the findings of the Cass Review into the provision of gender identity services for young people.”

And their ideology is clear:

The BMA motion, responding to the ruling, said: “This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term ‘woman’ with respect to the Equality Act as being based on ‘biological sex’, which they refer to as a person who was at birth of the female sex, as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical.

“We recognise as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people.”

It added that the BMA is committed to “affirming the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals to live their lives with dignity, having their identity respected”.

Of course we all respect the rights of transgender individuals–as transgender individuals. But those rights clearly clashed with the rights of other groups, most notably biological women, and the court adjudicated that clash in its definition of “woman”. Nobody of good will wants “erasure” of trans people, but we have to recognize that the claim that “trans women are women” leads to a clash of rights whose solution was taken up by the UK Court.

Note the “sex and gender are complex” assertion often used by ideologues or the benighted to claim that sex is not binary. (Yes, there are a very, very few exceptions., as I mention below, but for all practical purposes biological sex is binary.)  And, of course, it is binary in nearly all transsexual individuals, who even recognize the binary by wanting to adopt the role of their non-natal sex.

A bit more:

Sex Matters, the campaign group, accused the doctors of being an “embarrassment to their profession” and said it is “terrifying” that people who have undergone years of medical training can claim there is “no basis” for biological sex.

Indeed; for the doctors are redefining sex (and gender) as some multifactorial, “multifaceted aspect of the human condition”.  Perhaps gender roles fit that definition, but the Supreme Court was defining sex, not gender, and stayed away from gender, which is not part of the Equality Act.  This clearly shows the ideological nature of the resident doctors’ efforts and their unwarranted conflation of sex and gender.  Sex is a biological issue; gender a social one, also mixed to some degree with biology.  Don’t these doctors know that? Yes, of course they do, but pretend otherwise. If they’re not pretending, they are witless and don’t deserve to be doctors.

Yahoo News! (click below) gives the text of the resident doctors’ resolution:

Here’s the text of the resolution:

“This meeting condemns the Supreme Court ruling defining the term ‘woman’ with respect to the Equality Act as being based on ‘biological sex’, which they refer to as a person who ‘was at birth of the female sex’, as reductive, trans and intersex-exclusionary and biologically nonsensical.

“We recognize as doctors that sex and gender are complex and multifaceted aspects of the human condition and attempting to impose a rigid binary has no basis in science or medicine while being actively harmful to transgender and gender diverse people. As such this meeting:

“i: Reiterates the BMA’s position on affirming the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals to live their lives with dignity, having their identity respected.

“ii. Reminds the Supreme Court of the existence of intersex people and reaffirms their right to exist in the gender identity that matches their sense of self, regardless of whether this matches any identity assigned to them at birth.

“iii. Condemns scientifically illiterate rulings from the Supreme Court, made without consulting relevant experts and stakeholders, that will cause real-world harm to the trans, non-binary and intersex communities in this country.

“iv. Commits to strive for better access to necessary health services for trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people.”

The deeming of the Supreme Court’s ruling as “trans and intersex-exclusionary” is confusing.  Most trans people do indeed fit into the Court’s categorization of “man” or “woman.” The exception, the “true” intersex people, range in frequency from 1/5600 to 1/20,000, and so are very rare, making biological sex as binary as you can get. (In contrast, the frequency of people born with extra fingers or toes is about 1/2500 to 1/800, and yet we refer to humans as having “ten fingers and toes”.) It’s clear that this controversy is really not about the rare “true intersex” individuals, but about individuals who fit the biological definition of “man” or “woman” but identify otherwise—as either “nonbinary” or “transsexual”.

h/t: cesar, nick

Books I’ve just read or am reading (and soliciting suggestions)

April 27, 2025 • 10:00 am

Yes, the news is thin today, and I will let other people rail about Trump, as I’ve done my share in the last week or so. Instead, how about a happier topic: books?  I have just finished two books and, as I’ve said, I’m reading another.  I am glad to say I can recommend them all for your consdieration.

The first one was Walter Isaacson’s 2004 biography of Benjamin Franklin, which you can find on Amazon, with the long (586 pp.) paperback now only $6.66 (Satan’s number). Click cover to go to the site:

I don’t know how Isaacson manages to pump out these long biographies, which are packed with research and scholarship (though written very well), so quickly. But he does. I’ve read two of his before: his biographies of Steve Jobs (2011) and of Leonardo da Vinci (2018).  Both were good, but the biography of Leonardo I think is a world-class piece of writing. If you must read one of these, start with that. Isaacson clearly has a penchant for very smart men, preferably polymaths like Franklin and Leonardo. But I note that he’s also written a biography of Albert Einstein (2008); I haven’t read that one because I’ve read about three other biographies of the man.

You can get all four as a set of “The Genius Biographies” for $51, and that’s over 2000 pages of enjoyment and education.

Like Leonardo, Franklin was also a polymath: he “discovered” and worked out the properties of electricity, helped write both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, invented bifocals, set up the American postal system, and founded the University of Pennsylvania. As a superb diplomat, he helped bring an end to the Revolutionary War on favorable term for America, and also served as what then constituted the governorship of Pennsylvania. Moving back and forth between the U.S. and France, as well as throughout America, his travels equipped him well to contribute to founding documents that all our colonies were able to sign.

Further, Franklin was a humble man, dressed in ordinary garb, not foisting himself on others, largely free from arrogance, and trying to live by his famous 13 “necessary virtues” he compiled when  young.  He largely succeeded in living up to those standards, though he was a bit wobbly on “temperance”, winding up with gout as well as kidney stones. Yet despite his ill health in later life, he was the prime mover in the Treaty of Paris (1783), requiring delicate skills at negotiating simultaneously with France, the nascent U.S., and Britain. The only palpable flaw that I could detect in him was his gross neglect of his wife, whom he left for 14 of the last 17 years of his life, and was not there when she died. Franklin himself had a long life, expiring at 84.

I’d recommend this highly, especially if you know little of Franklin. You’ll be impressed at his scientific skills: though he wasn’t a theoretician, he was great at thinking up hypothesis and good at testing them. Its length makes it a good book to take on a trip, but if you haven’t read his biography of Leonardo, start with that one.

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I’ve read quite a few books on the Holocaust, but this one, byJózsef Debreczeni, may be the best, outstripping even the famous books of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel (Night and If This Is a Man) . Up until recently, however, it was obscure, and, though written in 1950, it was available only in Hungarian, and wasn’t translated into other languages, including English, until 2023. I believe a reader suggested it in an earlier “books” post on this site. Click below to find it at Amazon:

What makes this book different from those of Wiesel and Levi is, curiously, its lack of analysis and of philosophizing.  Night is also semi-fictional, so you can’t tell which episodes were made up, though it’s largely true.  In contrast, Cold Crematorium merely describes what happened to Debreczeni in the Lager: what life was like as inmate in three different concentration camps, including Auschwitz.  He was in the camps for only about a year, but that was nearly enough to do him in. From Wikipedia:

The winter of 1944–1945 was harsh, with heavy snows and extreme temperatures. [Dobreczeni] contracted diarrhea, and by January 20 he weighed 35 kg (77 lb). Thanks to a friend who brought him extra food, he survived. He subsequently contracted typhus but survived with the help of a camp doctor. Soviet forces liberated the camp in May 1945, and he recovered at a Soviet hospital.

I cannot begin to describe how grim the life in the camps was, especially at Auschwitz, but he doesn’t spare the reader the gory details. One of them: everyone constantly had diarrhea because of the diet of soup made with polluted water and almost no contents, and because the “toilet man” with the bucket didn’t come around fast enough, everything was covered with shit, which eventually piled up on the floor above the ankles. The intricate way prisoners developed a black market in food and tobacco to survive is amazing.

I like this book because, more than the other books, it’s just a graphic and un-fictional presentation of day-to-day life in a concentration camp. This shows you how horrible the Holocaust really was, and how inhumane were the people who engineered and implemented it.  It doesn’t discuss whether all of us have the potential to become Nazis, and doesn’t go into depth about how the Holocaust affected the author after he was liberated. The book simply ends with the liberation.  One trigger warning: it is very graphic and disturbing, but also the only book I know that makes you see what it was like to be an inmate.

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Finally, I am 110 pages into the book below, which I mentioned a few days ago (click cover to go to Amazon site).  I recommend it, at least what I’ve read of it so far. It’s an analysis of cancel culture by two employees of FIRE (Schlott is also a journalist). As I said the other day,

This extremism and demonization is in fact the subject of a good book I’m reading now: Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott’s The Canceling of the American Mind , which takes up Great Untruth #3 of Haidt and Lukianoff’s earlier bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). Let me remind you of all three of those Untruths whose embrace by the young is, Haidt and Lukianoff argued, responsible for a lot of turmoil, divisiveness, and rancor on and off campus:

1.) What doesn’t kill you make you weaker

2.) Always trust your feelings

3.) Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

It’s a lot like Lukianoff’s talk that I heard in Los Angeles a couple of months ago, recounting horrific tales of cancellation coming from both the Right and the Left. Right now I’m reading about those instances, and haven’t yet encountered the authors’ solutions, which come at the end of the book. We all recognize divisive nature of politics (and life!) in America, as well as the fact that for many, the validity of social/political arguments now seems to rest largely on whether the person who makes them is on your side (“good”) or not (“bad”).  I’ll give an overall assessment when I’m done.

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you’re reading or what you’ve read lately, preferably dwelling on books you’d recommend. I’ve found many good books by following readers’ suggestions, and so I hope to make this a regular feature. Put your readings in the comments!