UPDATE:  Carole Hooven called my attention to a paper in Hormones and Behavior, on which Maney is co-author, which is far more explicit about the author’s motivation to depose the hegemony of binary sex.  Carole also tweeted about Maney’s paper:

“This species challenges the practice of flattening nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female.” White-throated Sparrows are indeed fascinating, challenging stereotypes about sex differences. I learned lots from your explanation of how that works.

But sex…

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) February 26, 2025

I had hoped and expected, after the departure of woke editor Laura Helmuth from Scientific American, that the magazine would go back to what it was good at and famous for: presenting solid articles on popular science actually written by scientists. The ideology-imbued science, I thought, would disappear, as readers were canceling their subscriptions.

Sadly, it appears that the magazine may well be creeping back to “progressive science,” at least as judged by the latest biology article I read, as well as a similar critique of binary sex and, as lagniappe, an op-ed promoting gender activism and “affirmative care”.

The good news is that the biology article presents some solid and interesting data on the white-throated sparrow, a bird with a unique system of genetics and mating behavior. The bad news is that the author, neuroscientist Donna Maney of Emory University, couches all her results, and those of her colleagues, as casting aspersions on the binary nature of sex. It’s the usual argument that “things are complicated here, and if we are blinded by the idea that sex is binary, we miss the complicated and interesting stuff.”  In other words, the biology presented is used partly to do down the sex binary.

Click to read (the article is archived here).

The article is long and complex (perhaps too complex for the non-biologist reader), but the phenomenon is quite interesting.  Here are the salient facts (wording is mine):

a.) The North American white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) comes in four varieties. There are two sexes (something the author admits but doesn’t emphasize), and each sex has two varieties that differ in color and behavior.

b.) Both males and females come in two flavors, and each sex has roughly 50% of each. Each morph behaves and looks the same whether it’s in males or females.  The “white” morph, shown on the left below, has a white stripe on its head, and, in both males and females, is more aggressive, defending its breeding territories more vigorously than do individuals of the tan morph (right below), which has a tan stripe and spends more of its time bringing food to the offspring.  The diagram below is from a paper by Romanov et al. in BMC Genomics.

c.) The genes for striping differences, as well as for the behavioral differences between morphs, reside on the birds’ second chromosome, and within an inverted section of that chromosome, where the chromosome has broken multiple times and been rearranged.  The white morphs have one copy of the rearranged chromosome and one of the “normal” chromosome, while the tan morphs have two copies of the “normal” chromosome. You can see the difference in the chromosome-2 photo at the bottom left above: in the white morph, the  copies of chromosome 2 are of different configuration because of the rearrangements.

d.) What happens if you get two copies of the rearranged chromosome containing the genes for aggression and white head color? Well, that doesn’t happen, and that’s the interesting part of the story. It turns out that white males will mate only with tan females, and tan males will mate only with white females.  Because of this, the white chromosome can occur only in a single copy.

Note also that, as far as the sexes are concerned, males have two copies of the “sex chromosome” and are ZZ, while females have unlike sex chromosomes and are ZW; this differs from the way sex is determined in humans and many other mammals. The Z and W chromosomes are, like our Xs and Ys, members of a pair, but they are not the second chromosome, which carries the genes for color and behavior. It is not unusual for genes involved in producing sex-specific traits to reside on chromosomes different from the sex chromosomes. Each male in humans, for example, carries genes for other sex-related traits like breasts and vaginas, but they aren’t expressed because they aren’t activated. Even genes involved in producing the human male vs. female reproductive system, like SOX9, DMRT1, NR5A1, and DHH, are spread throughout the genome.  We’ve long known this, and it’s not unexpected, but the author appears to think that this is an unexpected finding.

e.) Because there are two morphs of each sex, and each morph mates with a member of the opposite sex that has the opposite pattern and behavior, the system is stably maintained in this species.  How it evolved is another question, and the author implies it’s a mystery.  I can’t find any speculation about how the system arose in this species, but perhaps those speculations exists somewhere, and perhaps a reader/bird expert can help.  All I can say is now is that this system of sex-morph variability can maintain itself, and, also, the fact that there is an inversion on the second chromosome prevents gene exchange (that normally occurs during gamete formation) between the “normal” and “inverted” chromosomes. Crossing-over between inverted chromosomes, which leads to gene mixing between the two copies of each chromosome, leads to wonky chromosomes that cannot function. This prevention of gene mixing allows the two versions of the second chromosome to diverge evolutionarily and accumulate different genes, explaining why the color and behavioral differences we see reside largely on that chromosome.

There’s a lot more stuff in the article, and some good biology, but the data relevant to this post is above. The system is fascinating and somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle, though Maney and her colleagues are working out which genes are involved in color and behavioral differences, and how they result in differences between the morphs.

Note that there are only two sexes here, not four. Some benighted authors have said that this species has four sexes, but they are deluded. We have a case of two sexes and “polymorphism” (different behaviors and appearances) within each sex.  The author recognizes this, but, as you can see from the big-print heading below, she wants us to know that this system detracts from the importance of the sex binary:

The point is the usual one: “things are complicated here, and can’t be fully understood simply by recognizing that there are just two sexes.”  And that’s true, but nobody thinks that recognizing two sexes brings a stop to further research on any biological system. After all, work on this sparrow had to begin by recognizing that there are two sexes, and then realizing that each of the two sexes comes in two forms.  First, here are quotes showing that the author recognizes that there are two sexes. Bold headings are mine; the indented bits are quotes from Maney’s article:

Recognizing that there are two sexes, not four. Maney adopts the consensus definition of sex: males produce sperm in their testes and females eggs in their ovaries:

This interesting and complex situation has earned this species the nickname “the bird with four sexes.” But to be clear, White-throated Sparrows do not have four different types of gonads. As in other birds, each individual typically has either two testes that produce sperm or a single ovary that produces eggs.

, , , The sex chromosomes, which in birds are known as Z and W, influence whether primordial gonads develop as ovaries or testes. Birds with both the Z and the W typically develop an ovary, whereas birds with two copies of the Z develop testes.

. . . . Although color morphs in White-throated Sparrows are not technically sexes, the standard and supergene-bearing versions of chromosome 2 share features with the human sex chromosomes X and Y, respectively.

. . . . In White-throated Sparrows, we see “masculine” and “feminine” traits distributing themselves in a manner clearly orthogonal to gonadal sex. White-striped birds with ovaries behave in a way that is more masculine than we expect for female songbirds, and tan-striped birds with testes look and behave in a relatively feminine way.

So yes, the author admits that there are two sexes, with each having two varieties.

But despite that, she says that admitting the binary nature of sex somehow inhibits us from studying this system; it “flattens” the diversity.  So throughout her paper there are attempts to show that recognizing that there are two sexes somehow either inhibits research or stifles our interest in how this system evolves.  It does neither; this is pure ideologically-based attempts to do down the palpable fact, which the author recognizes, that there are only two sexes.  As I said, that recognition is the very beginning of an attempt to understand the multi-morph system, and I know of no biologist who would say, “Yes, there are two sexes here. That’s the truth, and we needn’t study anything else or ask further questions. And so we get to this:

Dissing of the sex binary. A few quotes from the author:

Nevertheless, as recent research has shown, this species has much to teach us about the nature of sex variability—the way in which sex-related behaviors are influenced by genes, the complex structure of sex-associated chromosomes and the evolution of sexual reproduction itself. Importantly, this species challenges the practice of flattening nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female.

Um. . .  well, the wondrous diversity is flattened into four categories: white males, white females, tan males, and tan females. But let’s pass on to more binary-dissing:

Even genes involved in gonadal development and hormone synthesis can be found on most any chromosome, mapping to locations throughout the genome that freely recombine. Each individual inherits a new combination of genetic and epigenetic material, resulting in diversity that defies binary categories.

We’ve known for years that sex-specific genes producing intraspecific or intra-sex variability don’t need to be on the sex chromosomes. There is no “defying binary categories” here.

A few more disses:

In most sexually reproducing species, making an embryo requires two gametes: one egg and one sperm. That binary is clear. But the egg-sperm binary does not apply to the eventual development of that embryo into a sexed body with sex-related behaviors. That development is conceptually separate and decidedly nonbinary in many ways.

This is the “development in sex is complicated, implying that the sex binary is simplistic” argument. Finally, there’s a Big Finish:

The development of sex-related traits is astonishingly diverse not only across species but within them. Every individual, sparrow or human, has masculine and feminine characteristics. That diversity is obscured when we lump individuals into two categories and consider each as a homogeneous group. When we compare the categories “female” and “male,” we often report a “sex difference”—a binary outcome made inevitable by a binary approach. This approach fails to acknowledge the profound overlap between sexes on almost any measure.

White-throated Sparrows help us see past the sex binary by forcing us to acknowledge sources of variability other than sex, which is, in reality, only a small contributor to variability for many species. Diversity and plasticity of phenotypic expression is the norm, particularly for traits that correlate with sex. Sex-related traits are simply not hardwired. Evolutionary biologists believe that this plasticity—like the dazzling diversity of sex-determining molecular pathways—may be adaptive in changing environments. Individuals retaining maximal flexibility in the expression of sex-related traits are better able to adapt quickly to changing environments or, in some cases, may even be able to change their sex.

I’m not sure what the author means by saying “every individual, sparrow or human, has masculine and feminine characteristics”.  Males and females do of course share common traits, like having (usually) five fingers and two legs, but inspection of myself this morning revealed neither a vagina nor breasts.  At any rate, the author is attacking a straw man here and throughout her paper. NOBODY argues that recognizing that there are two sexes in all plants and animals either stifles research or “flattens diversity”.

Once again, the recognition that there are just two sexes is the beginning of research to explain diversity.  This recognition, as Darwin realized, for example, gave rise to his explanation of why there is sexual dimorphism (differences in temperament, behavior and ornamentation between males and females). Hie explanation was sexual selection (Darwin saw two varieties, “combat” and “preference for beauty”). And sexual selection that is the direct result of females investing more in offspring than do males, something that starts with the different gametes.  Note that differences between animal sexes, which involve weapons like antlers, behavior like building bowers, or plumage and display traits, need not reside on the sex chromosome, and in fact cannot because there are simply too many differences between the sexes. The important part, though, is that this inter-sex and interspecific diversity can be understood ONLY as a result of the sex binary, which involves the ability to produce either high-investment eggs or lower-investment sperm.

I won’t go on except to say that perhaps we need a name for the tactic of doing down the sex binary (or pretending it doesn’t exist), by emphasizing both diversity of nature and the complication of sex determination and expression of sex-related traits. I will call it “The Argument from Complication” which says something like this:

“Nature, including the determination and expression of biological sex, is complicated and diverse.
Therefore the sex binary is relatively unimportant, because by itself it can’t explain everything.” 

I’m not sure why the author flaunted this straw man, and I have no idea who the new editor of the journal is. But what is clear is that either the author or the editor, or both, decided to slant what is otherwise an informative article towards criticizing the very important fact that there are two sexes in all plants and animals, and that the defining traits of those two sexes, involving gametes, is both universal and explanatory. If you want to read more about this, see this free article by Richard Dawkins.

Two additional notes. First, this article appears on the website, published yesterday (click to read; I just saw it and haven’t yet); it’s by our old friend Agustín Fuentes, who is making a living attacking the sex binary:

And there is this one, reporting a new study that seems to lack a control (click to read):

An excerpt from the Santora piece:

Suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth jumped by as much as 72 percent from 2018 to 2022 in states that had recently passed laws to curtail their rights. And President Donald Trump took this onslaught to the federal level last month when he signed an executive order to cut federal medical care support for trans people aged 19 and younger, which two federal judges have since temporarily blocked. These political actions affect a set of young people who already had much higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide attempts than their nontransgender peers. Many of the recent state laws ban gender-affirming care—which a 2022 study suggests is a lifeline for many trans youth. In the study, those who received gender-affirming care had 60 percent lower odds of depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up than those who did not.

A growing body of evidence supports the mental health benefits of gender-affirming care for trans youth—including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and, in very rare cases, surgery. Now a new study adds to this evidence: it’s the first of its kind to show that hormone therapy improves overall emotional health among trans youth.

For the new study, published in January in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers tracked the emotional health of 315 trans youth aged 12 to 20 for two years after they began using hormone therapy (testosterone or estrogen). Emotional health is a component of mental health that concerns feelings; it shapes how we act in relationships, react to struggles and generally behave in everyday life. The study also tracked appearance congruence, a measure of how much a person’s physical presentation matches their gender identity.

Two points about it.  First, the “new study” doesn’t seem to have a control, so (and I just scanned it) the improvements in emotional health can’t be ascribed to hormone therapy. This is what controls are for! We know that gender dysphoria generally resolves and disappears in 80% of untreated children, so those controls are essential.

Second, the article does not mention the contradictory results in the literature, nor does it mention the famous but unpublished study of Johanna Olson-Kennedy that, over a period of two years (same as above) found contradictory results (the Olson-Kennedy study remains unpublished because the results weren’t ideologically acceptable!). From the NYT:

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

My conclusion from all this: Scientific American is, after a short hiatus, going woke again. Keep your eye on it.

h/t: Robert

Welcome to a Hump Day (“ཧམཔ་ཉིན། ” in Dzongkha): Wednesday, February 12, 2025, and Darwin Day, celebrating his birth on this day in 1809.  Here’s a photo of the great man with the caption, “Darwin aged 46 in 1855, by then working towards publication of his theory of natural selection. He wrote to Joseph Hooker about this portrait, “if I really have as bad an expression, as my photograph gives me, how I can have one single friend is surprising.”

I would love to hear his voice but of course there are no recordings.  The next post will have some Darwin photos, drawings, and caricatures.

It’s also National Plum Pudding Day, celebrating a good British dessert (but not as good as sticky toffee pudding). I did not know that they were dried out for a long time before Christmas. This photo from Wikipedia is captioned, “Christmas puddings are often dried out on hooks for weeks prior to serving in order to enhance the flavour. This pudding has been prepared with a traditional cloth rather than a basin.”  Note that it normally does not contains plums.

It’s also Hug Day, National Freedom to Marry Day, Lincoln’s birthday (he and Darwin were both born on February 12, 1809!), and NAACP Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The cease-fire in Gaza may come to an end on Saturday unless Hamas returns its promised allotment of hostages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned Hamas on Tuesday that if hostages were not released by noon on Saturday, the cease-fire in the war in the Gaza Strip would end and Israeli troops would resume “intense fighting.”

Mr. Netanyahu said that Hamas’s threat on Monday to postpone the next round of hostage releases amounted to a “decision to violate the agreement.” While the threat was clear, Mr. Netanyahu did not specify how many hostages would have to be freed to stop a renewed war.

The prime minister’s office, when asked to clarify, did not confirm how many hostages Mr. Netanyahu was referring to.

His statements nearly echoed President Trump’s ultimatum on Monday evening to Hamas that said if all Israeli hostages were not released from Gaza by 12 o’clock on Saturday, then the cease-fire agreement with Israel should be canceled and “all hell is going to break out.”

Originally, three hostages were set to be freed on Saturday under the first phase of the cease-fire.

In a video posted after a four-hour meeting with his security cabinet, Mr. Netanyahu said that he and his top advisers had been shocked by the emaciated appearances of three Israeli men who were freed last Saturday, in the latest hostage-for-prisoner exchange required under the cease-fire deal.

“The decision I passed in the cabinet, unanimously, is this: If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the cease-fire will end, and the I.D.F. will resume intense fighting until Hamas is decisively defeated,” Mr. Netanyahu said in the video, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

I have no idea what will happen, and if Hamas were smart, they’d turn over the hostages.  Israel is already moving more IDF troops south to the Gaza border, and this time I don’t think Israel will make any more concessions.

*Given his position as a government official (presumably unpaid) and a private entrepreneur, it would seem important that Elon Musk disclose his finances to the public. Well, he’s going to disclose them, but they will remain confidential. As the NYT reports:

Elon Musk plans to file a financial disclosure report to the White House, but it will remain confidential, a White House official said Tuesday.

There has never been a White House staffer with the vast potential for conflicts like Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person and the head of leading companies in electric vehicles, space exploration and artificial intelligence.

But Mr. Musk is serving President Trump as an unpaid “special government employee,” which means his financial disclosure is not required to be made public.

Mr. Musk received an ethics training this week, the official said, and Mr. Musk’s staff as part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is in the process of receiving their own training, said the White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Special government employees, like all federal employees except the president and vice president, are prohibited under federal criminal law from taking actions that directly benefit themselves or their families, unless they have an ethics waiver.

Mr. Musk’s companies have billions of dollars in federal contracts and are the subject of more than a dozen pending federal regulatory investigations or lawsuits, so he will almost certainly need an ethics waiver, several former White House lawyers said.

The White House has not responded to a request from The New York Times for a copy of the waiver, a document that is required under federal law to be released. Ethics waivers are typically drafted based on conflicts identified through a financial disclosure filing, so it is possible that no waiver has been prepared yet.

Now the NYT is dead set against anything Trump will do, but they are right here.  Musk faces serious conflict of interest issues, and the public and press need to know what’s going on. Keeping his finances confidential will not allow that. He has to either disclose them, or resign his honorary Presidency.

*On his Substack column, virologist Paul Offit takes out after the likely new HHS Secretary in a piece called “Understanding RFK Jr.,” with the subtitle, “If you want to know why RFK Jr. believes so many weird things, just read his book, The Real Anthony Fauci. Four pages explain everything.” (h/t Bat).

In 1876, Robert Koch proved that a specific bacterium (Bacillus anthracis) caused anthrax. The germ theory was born. Understanding that specific bacteria and viruses caused specific diseases led to treatments like antibiotics and preventives like vaccines, which has caused us to live 40 years longer than we did in the late-1800s.

Nonetheless, in a section in his book titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory,” RFK Jr. continues to embrace the miasma theory, writing the following statements:

“The ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccinations are only two of the many indicators of the dominating ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public health policy. A $1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology…The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune responses.” If you want to avoid infection, according to RFK Jr., all you need to do is maintain a healthy immune system. This explains why he has said that no vaccine is beneficial, that the polio vaccine killed more people than it saved, that young parents shouldn’t vaccinate their children, that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV is not spread from one person to another, and that the anti-AIDS drug AZT was an example of “mass murder”. It also explains why he drinks raw, unpasteurized milk.

“Anthony Fauci [said that] vaccines have already saved millions and millions of lives. Most Americans accept the claim as dogma. It will therefore come as a surprise to learn that it is simply untrue.” This explains why RFK Jr. has claimed that improvements in sanitation, as promoted by miasmists, not vaccines, have accounted for a decrease in infections. In the late 1970s, when I was a pediatric resident, every year a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB) accounted for about 25,000 cases of bloodstream infections, pneumonia, meningitis, epiglottitis, and cellulitis in young children. A vaccine to prevent HiB, which was introduced in 1987, has virtually eliminated the disease in the United States. Hib wasn’t eliminated because of a dramatic improvement in sanitation. It was eliminated because of the Hib vaccine.

“When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (aka virologists) blame the virus.” This explains why, when RFK Jr. visited Samoa, which was in the midst of a measles outbreak that caused 5,600 cases and 83 deaths, primarily in young children, he urged vitamin A treatments, not a measles vaccine. Indeed, he said that the outbreak wasn’t caused by measles virus, which would have meant he would have had to embrace the germ theory. He made this claim well after a wild-type measles virus strain had been identified as the cause of the outbreak.

“Imperialist ideologues find natural affinity with the germ theory.” This explains why he has said that scientists who promote vaccines, like Anthony Fauci, should be put in jail.

This is not a man who should be leading the largest public health agency in the United States.

*According to the Bowdoin Orient, the un-PC named student newspaper of Bowdoin college, their “encampment” in a University building, has ended. And although the protest, organized by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), failed to achieve its ends (see below), the students called it “an immense success.” But of course they would. From the B.O.:

Just before 6 p.m. on Monday, the final Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) protestors remaining in the Smith Union encampment walked out to a large, cheering crowd gathered on Dudley Coe Quad after reaching an agreement with College administrators. The encampment lasted for a total of four days, beginning on Thursday evening.

At this time, the details of the final terms reached between the SJP protesters and the administration remain unclear. However, according to protesters familiar with the negotiations, conversations between the two groups on Monday centered around the disciplinary process for students in the encampment, responsibility for shutting down Smith Union and discussions about violations of Title VI policies.

Students inside Smith Union communicated to the crowd outside the building that the negotiation did not result in the College agreeing to the terms of Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum, the chief aim of the encampment.

“[College administrators] have agreed to understand a context of good faith for the students who have engaged in this action,” lead encampment organizer Olivia Kenney ’25 told protesters Monday night. “The College has finally come and agreed to work with us in good faith toward a conclusion to this action.”

President Safa Zaki emailed members of the College just before 9 p.m. Monday to notify them of the encampment being cleared and stated that involved students will face the College disciplinary process.

“These past few days have been stressful and unsettling. We heard from some members of our community that these events have left them feeling vulnerable,” she wrote. “We take these concerns very seriously as a community that is devoted to a safe and welcoming environment for all.”

Protesters were notified late Sunday night that they would receive temporary suspensions if they did not clear the space by 8:30 a.m. Monday. Those who remained in the encampment past this deadline received a letter from Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Jim Hoppe informing them that they had been temporarily suspended and that remaining past 5 p.m. would result in “further disciplinary action.”

The solidarity referendum, which failed to get administrative approval, can be found here; it includes the usual requirements for divestment and a condemnation of Israeli “scholasticide” in Gaza.  The only “immense success” that I can see in this endeavor is that not all the students got suspended after the warning.  As usual, colleges don’t follow through with these warnings, and, as the article notes, the SJP will return:

“We want to acknowledge that the space that we have opened up on this campus for speech on Palestine … has broken down doors in the context of our campus community,” Kenney said. “This is not the end.”

I think there was always space for speech on Palestine!

*The Free Press reports that in light of Trump’s orders to eliminate DEI in public institutions, PBS has just fired its DEI department, which consists of two people. But it’s unclear if they really were fired:

Just before 5 p.m. on Monday afternoon, PBS CEO Paula Kerger sent a staff-wide email announcing the departure of the company’s two DEI executives: “To ensure that we are complying with the President’s Executive Order we have closed our DEI office, and Cecilia Loving and Gina Leow are leaving PBS. I know you join me in wishing them well in their future endeavors.”

The message announcing the departure of Loving, the senior VP of DEI, and Leow, the director of DEI, continued: “I know that this will raise many questions for people across the organization and look forward to discussing this in more depth at the upcoming All Staff meeting on Wednesday.”

But the timing of the announcement raised several eyebrows in our newsroom. That’s because earlier this morning, we wrote to PBS asking them about a tip we received from a high-ranking executive at the network. The tipster had told us that PBS was planning to move both Loving and Leow to the network’s station services department in order to skirt Trump’s executive order calling for the elimination of DEI-focused positions and grants from government-funded institutions.

“The employee population at PBS loves DEI,” the high-ranking source told The Free Press. “They’re unwilling to change; they’re unwilling to adjust; they’re unwilling to make concessions in order to protect the sustainability of PBS. Instead, they were trying to play chicken and move things around and try different things to circumvent the executive order.”

. . . Originally, PBS had planned to move the two execs into a “wellness department” before dismissing that idea in favor of placing them in the station services department, the source told The Free Press. PBS’s station services department oversees communications between its national headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, and its local affiliates.

My guess is that they’ll still be employed at PBS.  Although I’m a Democrat and think I’m a liberal, I am pretty appalled when I turn on PBS (the only station I listen to in my car), and hear only the progressive side of issues. Since part of the station is funded by taxpayers, I’d think that they have an obligation to present various points of view. (Perhaps they’re presented late at night when nobody hears them!).  Well, at least Krista Tippett is gone. . . .

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili avoids the paparazzi (Andrzej)

Hili: Somebody is following me.

A: You have delusions.

Hili: Yes, and it’s a coincidence that you have this camera.

Hili: Ktoś za mną chodzi.

Ja: Masz złudzenia.

Hili: Tak, a ten aparat to przypadkiem masz ze sobą.

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

From Things with Faces; a concerned pepper:

From My Cat is an Asshole:

From Stuart, who says “Google has capitulated.” And it’s true; go here to see it on Google Maps!

Posted by Masih. The translation is “Another video of slogans against Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic in Ekbatan town, Tehran”. The first post has no video but shows vociferous opposition to the Iranian theocracy:

ویدیوی دیگری از شعارها علیه علی خامنه‌ای و جمهوری اسلامی در شهرک اکباتان تهران pic.twitter.com/ZR8UxSUTXc

— Vahid Online (@Vahid) February 9, 2025

From J. K. Rowling, and it seems accurate:

#IStandWithSandiePeggie
H/T @5uffragette pic.twitter.com/xsasu9uf6R

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 11, 2025

From Malcolm, who says, “Not just cats have fun with these.”

Little rascal.. 😅

Sound on pic.twitter.com/ycEWBhOe0I

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) January 24, 2025

Yvonne Ridley is on the right here, and she says the hostages were treated with “kindness”. Ridley is unbelievably stupid or blind. Julia Hartley-Brewer pushes back big time:

Journalist Yvonne Ridley tries telling @JuliaHB1 that the hostages were treated “well”. What follows is the most entertaining WTF moment of the year.

Jaw dropping madness! pic.twitter.com/TY9DoZBlrU

— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) February 11, 2025

From my feed, the Beatles’s first concert in the U.S. It’s 35 minutes long, and you can hear it:

Today in 1964, The Beatles played for the first time in the United States.

Here’s the complete concert.

Enjoy this masterpiece. pic.twitter.com/d6C0J1EObP

— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) February 11, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Dutch mother and two-year old baby girl, both likely gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-12T11:04:39.510Z

Two tweets from Matthew. He calls this first one, “More beautiful grimness.”

Whip spider (Paraphrynus laevifrons) covered with chloropid fly puparia. The parasitoid fly attacks the eggs carried by the female. When done, the maggots climb on the "childless" mom's back and pupate. She protects them during this period thanks to her motherly instincts.

— Gil Wizen (@wizentrop.bsky.social) 2025-02-06T17:13:24.292Z

Matthew said he spotted 17 crabs. I didn’t even try:

How many Broad-clawed porcelain crabs (Porcellana platycheles) can you spot?County Clare, Ireland.

— Cormac McGinley (@cormacscoast.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T17:14:51.557Z

A new week has begun: welcome to Monday, February 10, 2025, and Oatmeal Monday. Here’s a lovely bowl of oatmeal I had at the inn where I was staying for the Kent Presents meetings in August of 2018: Look at all the nuts, fresh and dried fruits, maple syrup, and a pitcher of cream.

Superb Owl News: (h/t Barry). First, Google “Superbowl” and see what you get.

It was indeed a rout: The Philadelphia Eagles stopped the Kansas City Chiefs cold in the Superbowl, crushing the Chiefs 40-22:

A more fragile team would have folded. It wouldn’t have made it back here, because it wouldn’t have been able to weather the series of storms this Philadelphia Eagles franchise faced along the way.

And it wouldn’t have halted history on the sport’s biggest stage.

Certainly not like that.

But these Eagles were different — defiant, even. And on Sunday night in Super Bowl LIX, they were utterly dominant. Their reward is the franchise’s second Super Bowl win, a stunning 40-22 rout of the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, a resounding victory that avenges a gutting, last-second Super Bowl loss two years ago to these same Chiefs and returns the city of Brotherly Love to the top of the football world.

This time, the Philly Special wasn’t needed.

This time, the Eagles’ defense was so devastating that Patrick Mahomes — already a three-time Super Bowl MVP before the age of 30 — staggered through one of the worst games of his seven-year NFL career.

This time, Jalen Hurts left no doubt.

Mahomes, under heavy duress throughout, was sacked six times and hit 11 times. He finished 21-for-32 for 257 yards, three touchdowns, two interceptions and a lost fumble, though most of Mahomes’ production came well after the game had been decided. The Eagles led 34-0 before the Chiefs even crossed midfield.

You can see the game highlights (turn off ad blockers) here; Philadelphia did some great passing and field-goal kicking. Taylor Swift will be sad and may write a song about the debacle.

From Cats Without Gods:

It’s also National “Have a Brownie” Day (why the scare quotes? are we supposed to only pretend we had a brownie?), National Cream Cheese Brownie Day, National Poop Day (the day you excrete the remains of the food you ate during yesterday’s Superbowl), National Flannel Day, International Cribbage Day, and Teddy Day, the day you give your beloved a teddy bear (it’s part of Valentine’s Day Week).  My parents gave me my Teddy, who is named Toasty and still resides in my office. Here he shows his age and his severe depilation:

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

Da Nooz:

*It looks like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr., both of whose nominations were endangered (for Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Health and Human Services, respectively), now look as if they’ll squeak through Congress. That depends on Republicans voting as a bloc, of course:

Republican skepticism in the Senate of President Donald Trump’sCabinet nominees has been worn down, putting his unconventional choices for some of the most powerful positions in the federal government on the verge of confirmation.

Floor votes are expected this week on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in line to be the nation’s health secretary, and Tulsi Gabbard, the choice for director of national intelligence. Both are from outside traditional Republican circles and espoused views in the confirmation process that alarmed GOP senators at times. Still, their nominations have advanced to the full Senate after crucial committee votes.

One by one, Republicans have acquiesced to Trump’s picks, even those whose personal history, lack of experience and unorthodox views would have once made them hardly imaginable for a Cabinet.

It’s a striking demonstration of how GOP lawmakers are standing by as Trump, in a show of force, disrupts the federal government and installs loyalists to lead key departments. Republican leaders in the Senate, eager to show Trump their worth, have chalked up confirmations at a rapid clip.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, just a month into the role, has lined up a vote on Gabbard as the first order of business, followed by Kennedy later in the week. Already on the job is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who faced allegations over drinking and aggressive behavior toward women. And Republicans appear ready to soon install Kash Patel as FBI director.

. . . . The collapse of resistance has set a new tone in the Republican-controlled government and shown how even the most independent-minded lawmaker would rather work with Trump than risk crossing him. Trump himself has refrained from the threats to GOP skeptics that defined his first term and relied on Vance, a former Ohio senator, to quietly walk some of his former colleagues through their concerns.

“You can’t think of this just as a normal president coming into office for the first time,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who was involved in the effort to get Trump’s nominees across the finish line. “Everybody I was dealing with was truly undecided trying to get to yes, and so it was just a process.”

Ceiling Cat help us, everyone!  RFK Jr. scares me the most because of his potential to actually kill people through stupidity.

*This WSJ article may explain why black and Hispanic voters, who went more for Republicans than expected in the last election,

Some of President Trump’s Black and Latino supporters say they are pleased with his immediate efforts to dismantle federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to interviews conducted by The Wall Street Journal, though they were uneasy about the way he talked about race and some worried he might spark a rise in discrimination.

Ending so-called DEI programs—which include efforts to foster a more diverse workforce—was a frequent promise by Trump during the campaign, during which he broadly picked up a higher share of support from nonwhite voters than in his 2020 and 2016 bids.

Since taking office, Trump has made slashing DEI programs a priority, signing executive orders to eliminate programs within the federal government and ordering up lists of federal employees involved in those efforts. He also revoked a six-decade-old executive order that requires government contractors to proactively root out discrimination on the basis of race and sex.

While Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won nonwhite voters in both the 2020 and 2024 elections, Trump in 2024 saw an 8 percentage point increase with Black and Latino voters, as well as a 5 percentage point jump in support from Asian voters, according to the election survey AP VoteCast.

Nonwhite voters made up nearly a quarter of the national electorate during last year’s election, according to AP VoteCast, and more in some battleground states.

While Trump cannot run for re-election in 2028, Republicans are eager to keep these voters to hold their majorities in the House and Senate during the 2026 midterm elections and the White House two years later.

Here’s a graph from the AP showing the increase in minority voters who supported Trump in the last two elections (he lost in 2020, of course).  And it shows how wokeness helps the Democrats lose elections.

*The NYT “Trilobites” column, this time by Sara Novak, reports on a remarkable fossil finding: fossilized bones and soft tissue of plesiosaurs (large marine reptiles), all described in an article in Current Biology. 

With serpentine necks, flippers and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, plesiosaurs have captured imaginations since paleontologists uncovered the first specimen more than two centuries ago. Their skeletal anatomy is well documented, but their external appearance has largely remained a mystery.

Now researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of plesiosaur soft tissue, offering a more complete look at what these real-life sea monsters might have looked like when they lived from 215 million to 66 million years ago.

Published Thursday in Current Biology, the findings suggest that some plesiosaurs had humanlike skin on their tail regions and fishy scales on their flippers, similar to the features of some living sea turtle species. The research highlights an evolutionary detour that runs counter to other ancient marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs, which evolved away from scales in favor of skin, or much smaller scales, to allow them to move more efficiently through their marine habitats.

“These are iconic animals, and the way we reconstruct them hasn’t changed for nearly 200 years, so this is a big update,” said Miguel Marx, a doctoral student at Lund University in Sweden and lead author of the paper. “It changes our perspective on their evolutionary history and how they adapted to life in the ocean.”

Mr. Marx and colleagues analyzed three soft-tissue skin samples, each about the size of a fingernail, from a flipper and the tail of a 183 million-year-old long-necked plesiosaur specimen. The species is to be named in a future peer-reviewed paper. But the samples came from the Posidonia Shale in Germany, where the ocean chemistry preserved soft tissues. That left it frozen in time. Some of the tissue remains were so flawlessly fossilized that researchers could see skin cell nuclei under the microscope.

. . .While it’s difficult to know for sure how extinct animals would have maneuvered through their environments, Mr. Marx said that the scales observed on the plesiosaur had probably stiffened the trailing edge of the flipper, allowing for enhanced propulsion through the water, another feature shared with today’s sea turtles.

Plesiosaurs may also have used scales on their flippers for traction and protection as they sifted through sand and vegetation on the ocean floor for food. Previous research suggests that preserved marine trackways found near Ancona, Italy, came from plesiosaurs, another indication that they might have spent time feeding at the bottom of the ocean.

Here are some fossilized scales from a flipper (caption from paper):

*We have the first pro-Palestinian encampment of the season, this time at Bowdoin College, a prestigious private liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine.

Student protestors with Bowdoin Students For Justice in Palestine have set up an encampment inside the college’s student union building and are now facing disciplinary action from the school.

The organization announced the protest Thursday as the college’s board of trustees was meeting. According to the release, the event was planned as a response to the administration’s lack of action on the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum, a student initiative that passed with broad support in May that called on Bowdoin to, among other things, disclose investments in arms manufacturing and commit to not investing in defense industry funds in the future.

“Today, we launch this encampment, demanding that Bowdoin immediately commit to fully realizing all four demands of our referendum,” the announcement read.

“Trump has vowed his unequivocal support for Israel’s genocide, most recently calling for the United States to ethnically cleanse and ‘take over’ Gaza,” the Bowdin SJP announcement read. “Today, we act for our peers in Gaza and the West Bank, heeding the calls of Birzeit University professors and staff: “Gaza is not for sale. Palestine is not a real estate project.’”

Around midnight, Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs Katie Toro-Ferrari told students they had to leave the encampment before 1 a.m. or face consequences.

“I want to make sure students understand that this could put them on the path where they are jeopardizing their ability to remain as Bowdoin students,” she told the Orient.

The paper reported that around 1 a.m., college security staff began collecting student IDs, but at least 50 protestors remained. On Friday morning, college security officers blocked access to the building wadsfjkith protestors still inside. Vice President of Student Affairs Jim Hoppe addressed the encampment in an 8 a.m. email to students.

Students began receiving notices about disciplinary hearings, according to posts on the Bowdoin Students For Justice in Palestine Instagram account. At around noon on Friday, the Orient reported that about 20 additional students broke past a line of security officers to enter the building.

In a Friday afternoon statement to the Press Herald, organizers of Bowdoin SJP said they would stay encamped for “as long as it takes” to convince the college to divest from weapons industries.

What do you think will happen to the students? Do you think any will suffer disciplinary sanctions? I’m guessing a big NO here, but stay tuned. Wait! There’s an update from the Bowdoin Orient:

Late on Sunday evening, a crowd gathered in front of the south entrance of Smith Union after receiving notice from protesters inside that the College would potentially act to remove the encampment. Protesters expected this removal after reportedly rejecting an ultimatum from the administration to clear out of Smith Union by 10 p.m. or face harsher consequences.

Around 11:15 p.m., students in the SJP encampment addressed the crowd from the second-floor window of Smith, saying that they received word from the administration that they will face immediate suspension if they do not leave the building by 8:30 a.m. on Monday, February 10. According to the same announcement, administrators also informed students that they must leave Smith by 5 p.m. the same day, with SJP organizers noting the potential for forcible removal or arrests. Many students remain in the encampment for a fourth consecutive night.

They could be suspended in less than two hours!

*Below is an ad that you saw yesterday if you watch the Superbowl. And people are objecting to it, rightly.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili resembles a hungry bird:

A: You look like an owl.

Hili: I look like somebody who is waiting too long to be served at the table.

Ja: Wyglądasz jak sowa.

Hili: Wyglądam jak ktoś, kto zbyt długo czeka na podanie do stołu.

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

From Stacy:

From: 2025 Darwin Awards!!/Epic Fails!!

From: Meow,  a demonstration of cat genetics:

Masih retweeted a personal experience from Gad Saad that he recounts here for the first time:

I’ve never shared this story publicly but let me do so now. When my parents were kidnapped by Fatah, they separated my parents. When they were mistreating them and forcing them to confess to insane things, my mother said to her torturers: “Go ask my husband if you don’t… https://t.co/WX5PTc0EXf

— Gad Saad (@GadSaad) February 9, 2025

From Malgorzata. It never ends. . .

The only Jewish school in New Zealand has been graffitied with “Genocide High School” and “God Hates You”. pic.twitter.com/IkeEjvu7PO

— Jane (@DrJaneNorton) February 6, 2025

Another from Malgorzata. If you thought Hamas was evil, well, this will buttress that view:

Hamas forced Eli Sharabi to announce that he was excited to be reunited with his wife and daughters this morning, fully aware that they had murdered his family on October 7th.

The Jewish people will never forget or forgive Hamas’ utter depravity and crimes. pic.twitter.com/OFS5obtvJA

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) February 8, 2025

This is from a Republican member of the New York City Council who resigned from the Women’s Caucus:

🚨 On Friday I OFFICIALLY left @WomensCaucusNYC because I can’t reasonably stay part of a body that purports to stand up for women, but refuses to condemn the RAPE, MURDER, and CAPTIVITY of Jewish women by jihadi terrorists without adding “context”.

This makes them as useless… pic.twitter.com/Jf4CeFPOs0

— Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (@InnaVernikov) February 9, 2025

From Malcolm; beautifully athletic cats:

Gotcha!
📹First cat of volcano pic.twitter.com/0ARcXuWKBL

— Mulan Chun-Li (@chunlimulan) January 23, 2025

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A 12-year-old German Jewish girl gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-10T11:12:29.970Z

Two posts from Doctor Cobb. First, Jack Lemmon’s amusing gravestone:

How did this gator get the hat, and how did it put it on its head?

In a sentence never before uttered by humans, I am delighted to share that an alligator stole my conservation instructor’s hat by jauntily walking into the water while wearing it 🐊

— Samantha Maich (@samanthamaich.bsky.social) 2025-02-08T00:20:36.536Z

All of us who have taken heterodox positions on even a single issue are liable to be tarred using accusations of guilt by association. Because I think that trans-identifying men should not be allowed to compete in sports against (biological) women, and that such trans people therefore don’t have exactly the same unlimited “rights” as  biological women, I am therefore often called a “transphobe”, allied with those nutjobs who don’t want trans people to have any rights—or even allied with Nazis. This of course is not an argument, but a simple slur that avoids the ethical issues, and it’s thoughtless, though such arguments do convince some of the witless. (If you want to see a site whose whole method is to go after people—especially Steve Pinker—by showing who they’ve met or are otherwise associated with, go here. The author of that site appears to know nothing of science, but uses association with hereditarians as a sign of being an overall horrible person: a “ghoul” or a “grifter.” LOL.)

Alan Sokal has pointed out the stupidity of guilt-by-association arguments in a short piece in The Critic (click below, or find it archived here):

Sokal’s introductory story is about a 12-year-old boy demonized by his teacher because he made a comment that reminded her of Margaret Thatcher. And that’s how it goes: back then, being like Thatcher in even one misconstrued way was enough to damn you to hell. Sokal then segues, unsurprisingly, into the demonizing regularly practiced by sex and gender extremists:

I’m no fan of Margaret Thatcher — to put it mildly — but should it really be a surprise that on some issues she might have the same ideas as pinko me? Is it truly so difficult for us lefties to concede that the conservatives might occasionally — OK, very occasionally — be right? (And of course vice versa.) Have we all now become so politically tribal that we are unable — or simply unwilling — to evaluate ideas on their merits?

[Philosopher Arianne] Shahvisi’s recounting of this story did not, of course, come out of the blue. The context was an essay of hers in which she accused “gender critical feminists” (the scare quotes are hers) of “fairy-tale fear-mongering that puts them in league with the far right”. One reader objected to “yet another article belittling gender critical feminists in your pages”:

Many who consider themselves left-leaning progressives are branded as being ‘in league with the far right’ for their opposition to an ideology which they regard as a dangerously regressive move by patriarchal capitalism to seize control of, and profit from, the bodies of children (increasingly young girls) and women.

— adding, astutely, that “it is telling that trans men are relatively invisible in all this: no one is chanting ‘Trans men are men’”. Unfazed by this exposure of her conflation of two radically different ideologies, Shahvisi doubled down on guilt-by-association, using her childhood story as “evidence”.

Sokal shouldn’t need to point out the obvious, but this tactic is ubiquitous these days, and we shouldn’t even engage in argument with people who judge people’s views solely by who those people associate with, or what magazines they sometimes read:

There is, in reality, nothing surprising or objectionable about the fact that people who disagree on issues X, Y and Z might nevertheless find themselves in agreement on issue W. Indeed, it is the contrary — unanimity of views within each tribe, with no overlap between them — that ought to be surprising and disconcerting.

But serious ethical and pragmatic questions nevertheless arise whenever one finds that people with whom one is ordinarily in disagreement — and whose ultimate goals differ radically from one’s own — may be on the same side as oneself on one or more discrete questions of public policy. Should one cooperate with “the other side” on those particular issues? And if so, to what extent?

Well, I regularly find myself tucked in bed with extreme conservatives, but that, to me, is not a problem, I just give my own views, and work on my own, not really “cooperating” with anybody. That’s one way to at least mitigate the tarring by association. I’ll quote Sokal at length when he extends Shahvisi’s argument:

So let’s follow Shahvisi’s example, but first set the facts straight by specifying more accurately what each tribe believes. Gender-critical feminists want to abolish, or at least to weaken, prescriptive gender norms: they want to liberate people of both sexes to pursue their own interests and talents and to follow their predilections, without regard to sex-based stereotypes or statistics. Social conservatives want to strengthen prescriptive gender norms: to reestablish a world in which men are masculine and women are feminine, in the traditional senses of the words, and everyone is at least publicly heterosexual. (These are, it goes without saying, broad-strokes generalizations; there are of course many differences of emphasis and detail within each camp.) The two philosophies are thus diametrically opposed[1].

But, despite this deep overall conflict, can there sometimes exist small points of agreement between the two tribes? Yes, there can; and this gives rise to serious dilemmas.

Should gender-critical feminists cooperate with social conservatives to ensure that post-pubescent people engaged in competitive sports should play in the category of their biological sex, not their self-declared “gender identity”? Or to ensure that puberty blockers should not ordinarily be prescribed to minors as a treatment for gender dysphoria outside of registered clinical trials?

To me the answer is obvious, at least for myself: you cannot cooperate with extreme social conservatives without giving at least some credibility to their other views—views with which you don’t agree (I would note my pro-choice stands and lifelong affiliation as a Democrat).  I will say what I think about puberty blockers (they shouldn’t be used till age 18 or so), and if conservatives want to quote me, fine. But I am not a member of any conservative organization that takes this stand, though I am friends with a group of like-minded liberals who have some gender-critical views.

Sokal winds up with the right conclusion, though: argue about policies and facts, not about associations.  Since I’m somewhat hermitic by nature, I don’t really cooperate with many organizations, and those I cooperate with, like Heterodox Academy or FIRE, have views I largely agree with.

The answer to these questions is far from obvious. But worrying about guilt by association — and worrying, above all, about the opprobrium emanating from those who, like Shahvisi and Judith Butler[2], wield it as a political weapon — mislocates the problem. Instead, what is needed is level-headed political analysis. The first and primary question is: What are the merits and demerits of the proposed policy? And if it appears that the merits outweigh the demerits, then the second question is: Do the short-term gains from tactical cooperation with “the opposition” outweigh the potential long-term liabilities? The pros and cons need to be assessed and argued carefully, not assumed a priori. People who conclude in good faith that the balance falls on the “pro” side (or, for that matter, on the “con” side) may of course be wrong — and it is perfectly fair to criticise their conclusion and their reasoning — but they should not be tarred as traitors, sell-outs or worse.

By contrast, the whole point of invoking guilt by association is precisely to circumvent this discussion — not only to circumvent the second step, but above all to circumvent the first: to denigrate the proposed policy, and render it anathema to all fair-minded people, without having to address its merits and demerits. That approach — need this really be said? — ought to be repugnant to anyone who advocates a thoughtful politics.

h/t: Jez