Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
We have one batch of photos left besides today’s, so this feature will become sporadic as of tomorrow. You know what to do!
But John Avise has come through again with some bird photos from California. John’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
The July Doldrums
Here in Southern California, mid-summer is not the most ideal time for avian photography. The excitement of the spring migration in April and May is but a distant memory, and the start of autumn migration in late August is still more than a month away. Most of the ducks have long since departed for far more northerly climes for nesting, and the few remaining resident ducks are in their dull eclipse plumage. About the only avian excitement here in the hot weather is the welcome appearance of chicks representing the next generation for resident species. This week’s post shows chicks (and their parents) of several bird species that do nest locally. All of these pictures were taken near my home in July.
Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats, and it’s also Bastille Day: July 14, 2024 as well as National Mac and Cheese Day. Everybody loves it, even if it’s not found in France.
Texasfoodgawker, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 14 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The big nooz is that yesterday there was an assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Apparently a bullet nicked or pierced his ear, but he will be all right. That’s not the case for one spectator who was killed and two others who were wounded. A sniper killed the assassin (see his photo below). He appears to be a person from the Right.
The authorities were racing on Sunday to understand how and why a would-be assassin shot at former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, days before his anticipated nomination as the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
The shocking attack in Butler, Pa., on Saturday killed one spectator at the scene and left two others critically injured, officials said. Mr. Trump had blood on his face as he was escorted from the stage, raising his fist in defiance.
He later said on social media that a bullet had pierced his right ear. Mr. Trump was rushed to a hospital from the rally, but walked off his plane unaided when it landed in New Jersey early Sunday.
Here’s what we know:
The gunman: The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified the shooter as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pa. He fired multiple shots toward the stage during Mr. Trump’s rally before he was killed by the Secret Service, officials said. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, a common tool for mass shooters, was recovered from the scene. The authorities did not address his motive.
Firsthand accounts: New York Times journalists were at the rally when shots rang out. A reporter and a photographer each described their experience. One image by the photographer, Doug Mills, appeared to capture a bullet streaking past Mr. Trump’s head.
Trump supporters: Some prominent Trump backers, including Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, said that inflammatory language by Democrats was to blame for the violence. A few of the former president’s supporters gathered at Trump Tower in Manhattan overnight to show support.
On his public FB page, D. J. Grothe posted some info and a picture of the shooter:
This attempt to murder is reprehensible and horrifying. Blaming it on the Democrats’ “inflammatory language” is also reprehensible: we have no idea what motivated the shooter, but it doesn’t appear he was a Left winter. We have a climate of hatred in America that will lead to things like this, whether the target be Democrat, Republican, or random people. And there are too many guns. We will know more in the coming days.
Here’s a 5-minute video of the melée. Also look at this picture of the bullet going by Trump’s head; it’s a remarkable photo.
Ruth Westheimer, a child survivor of the Holocaust who became known to millions as Dr. Ruth, the perky sex therapist whose frankness on her long-running radio and television call-in shows made her a go-to guide for tips on the art and science of lovemaking, died July 12 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.
Her death was confirmed by Pierre Lehu, a publicist and her co-author on several books, but no cause was noted.
Described as the first superstar sex therapist, Dr. Westheimer was over 50 when she debuted in 1980 on New York’s WYNY with “Sexually Speaking.” The radio program initially aired in 15-minute installments and was later syndicated and extended to two hours to accommodate the onslaught of queries she received from callers. More than a few listeners professed that she had saved their marriages.
Cable television viewers knew her as the prim, matronly host in the 1980s of “Good Sex With Dr. Ruth Westheimer” and as a frequent guest on late-night talk shows. At 4-foot-7, she often was seen perched on a seat, bedecked in pearls, cheerfully dispensing advice on best practices in the sack.
Dr. Westheimer’s old-world accent, at times seemingly incongruous with her discussion of intimate anatomy and its usage, was one of the few traces of her life before she came to the United States. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Germany, she survived the Holocaust at a Swiss orphanage where her parents sent her before they perished.
“I was left with a feeling that because I was not killed by the Nazis — because I survived — I had an obligation to make a dent in the world,” Dr. Westheimer once told an interviewer. What she did not know, she added, was that the dent would entail her “talking about sex from morning to night.”
After the war, she went to Israel, where she joined the Haganah paramilitary group fighting for Jewish statehood (and where, she said, she lost her virginity in a hayloft). Later moves took her to France and to New York, where she learned English before studying counseling.
Here’s a short trailer advertising a documentary about Dr. Ruth:
The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.
The campaign involves a powerful network of Republican lawyers and activist groups, working loosely in concert with the Republican National Committee. Many of the key players were active in Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
But unlike the chaotic and improvised challenge four years ago, the new drive includes a systematic search for any vulnerability in the nation’s patchwork election system.
Mr. Trump’s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious — and legally dubious — attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power.
At the heart of the strategy is a drive to convince voters that the election is about to be stolen, even without evidence. Democrats use mail voting, drop boxes and voter registration drives to swing elections, they have argued. And Mr. Trump’s indictments and criminal conviction are a Biden administration gambit to interfere with the election, they claim.
It is THIS bad:
“As things stand right now, there’s zero chance of a free and fair election,” Mike Howell, a project director at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said at an event this week. “I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”
The efforts named include restricting voting by mail (a favorite of Democrats) and making the certification of election more difficult. But you know what? I’d prefer that Trump loses and the Republicans do their dastardly deeds over a scenario where this strategy doesn’t have to be used.
President Biden has long held a Harry Houdini-like ability to escape political jeopardy. But even as he clings to his re-election bid, the president is now a severely wounded candidate leading a divided party.
Biden ended the most politically challenging two weeks of his presidency with a Friday rally in Detroit, where he heard chants of “Don’t you quit” and he later reassured the crowd, “I’m not going anywhere.”
It was the latest sign that the embattled president has fended off—for now—public pleas from fellow Democrats to end his re-election campaign in the aftermath of a disastrous debate. His performance in a high-profile news conference Thursday helped him calm some jittery Democrats.
But nearly 20 Democrats in the House and Senate have gone public with their concerns that the 81-year-old Biden can’t defeat Donald Trump and have urged him to stand down, taking a toll on the incumbent’s public image as he seeks re-election. That has also fueled concerns that his place at the top of the ticket will depress voter enthusiasm and hurt House and Senate candidates down-ballot.
Polls show Biden facing glaring weaknesses among Black, Latino and young voters and that his path to victory has narrowed. Some previous swing states look out of reach, and more states are coming onto the battleground map, giving Trump an opening in once reliably blue states such as Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico. The Biden campaign argues that the fundamentals of the race haven’t changed and briefed senators Thursday on their pathway to victory, most likely through the blue wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The bad news:
An aggregate of polls by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds that a largely static race—with the candidates essentially tied at 46% each in national surveys—shifted after the June 27 debate to give Trump a 2.5-point lead, about 47% to 44.5%. Among Black voters, a crucial Democratic constituency, three straight Wall Street Journal polls this year have found Biden with 68% support to about 20% for Trump—a 48-point advantage that is far slimmer than the 83-point margin he won in 2020.
If those narrowed margins held through Election Day, “then Biden’s chances of winning Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan would be about the same chances that a human could survive on Mars for 24 hours,” said David Wasserman, a Cook Political Report analyst. “The lifeblood of the Democratic Party is winning enormous margins among Black voters, and voters of color as a whole, in these battleground states.”
The longer Biden waits to leave (or if he doesn’t leave), the greater the chances Trump will win. It’s hard to imagine that a pathological narcissist of his deranged stripe could be chosen to lead America. And I’ve been told by several of my European friends that they’re scared that Trump will win because who leads America also has a huge effect on Europe (and, of course, the rest of the world).
I will do all that I can to see that President Biden is re-elected. Why? Despite my disagreements with him on particular issues, he has been the most effective president in the modern history of our country and is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump — a demagogue and pathological liar. It’s time to learn a lesson from the progressive and centrist forces in France who, despite profound political differences, came together this week to soundly defeat right-wing extremism.
I strongly disagree with Mr. Biden on the question of U.S. support for Israel’s horrific war against the Palestinian people. The United States should not provide Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government with another nickel as it continues to create one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history.
I strongly disagree with the president’s belief that the Affordable Care Act, as useful as it has been, will ever address America’s health care crisis. Our health care system is broken, dysfunctional and wildly expensive and needs to be replaced with a “Medicare for all” single-payer system. Health care is a human right.
And those are not my only disagreements with Mr. Biden.
But for over two weeks now, the corporate media has obsessively focused on the June presidential debate and the cognitive capabilities of a man who has, perhaps, the most difficult and stressful job in the world. The media has frantically searched for every living human being who no longer supports the president or any neurologist who wants to appear on TV. Unfortunately, too many Democrats have joined that circular firing squad.
Yes. I know: Mr. Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump. But this I also know: A presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate.’
. . . Enough! Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate. And with an effective campaign that speaks to the needs of working families, he will not only defeat Mr. Trump but beat him badly. It’s time for Democrats to stop the bickering and nit-picking.
Well, Bernie is old, too, but he didn’t lose because he acted somewhat addled; he lost because he was too “progressive” for most people. (Bernie is also a Jew who hates Israel.) Enough indeed! If Biden persists with his scary behavior, he is not going to beat Trump badly. In fact, he won’t beat him at all. Bernie should just take his mittens and go home.
Delta Air Lines is changing its employee uniform policy following a turbulent ride through a social media storm started by a passenger’s outrage over two flight attendants photographed wearing Palestinian pins.
The uproar over the July 10 post, which described the Palestinian pins as “Hamas badges,” led Delta to ban its employees from wearing pins representing any country or nationality besides the U.S. The rule will take effect Monday.
“We are proud of our diverse base of employees and customers and the foundation of our brand, which is to connect the world and provide a premium experience,” the Atlanta-based airline said in a statement “We are taking this step to help ensure a safe, comfortable and welcoming environment for all.”
Delta’s policy shift reflects the ongoing tensions surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, which has triggered high-profile protests that, among other things, have roiled college campuses.
Both attendants captured in the post objecting to the Palestinian pins were in compliance with Delta’s previous policy giving employees more flexibility with uniform accessories.
Before Delta announced its new policy, one of its employees escalated the flag pin flap by posting a reply asserting the attendants wearing the Palestinian pins were violating company rules and sympathized with passengers who might be “terrified” by it. That post has since been deleted but was captured in a screenshot shared by the American Muslim rights group CAIR National.
Delta said the employee responsible for that post had been removed from handling its social media communications in a post that also included an apology.
Here’s a tweet I found just to show the attendant with the pin; I don’t know what the rest is about.
So the person posting racist replies can keep his job but the flight attendant who stands for humanity gets fired for a Palestine pin?
I think Delta made the right decision: there should be no political or ideological pins worn by employees on the job, as it could rile up or intimidate passengers. That goes for Stars of David, and maybe even American flags (I don’t know about that one). There’s no freedom of speech for corporate clothing like this, though I think the application of the First Amendment varies depending on conditions. (For example, I think schoolkids can wear political slogans on their shirts so long as they’re not obscene, but teachers don’t have the same right.) But this is just a guess; I hope a lawyer will weigh in. I do know that Delta is within its rights to do this, and it did the right thing. Note that the employees have not been fired, and keeping them on with a warning was also the right decision.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is looking over the garden:
Hili: This lily fell over.
A: It wasn’t the first and it will not be the last.
In Polish:
Hili: Ta lilja upadła.
Ja: Nie ona pierwsza i nie ostatnia.
Shhhhh! Szaron is sleeping.
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From Cat Memes:
From Science Humor (I have no idea if this is true):
From Masih: a courageous woman under another oppressive theocratic and misogynistic regime, Afghanistan:
I received this video from a courageous woman in Afghanistan, standing up to the Taliban despite the risk to her life. Meanwhile, powerful Western female politicians wearing hijab in meetings with the Taliban on Western soil legitimize our oppressors. Join us in Iran and… pic.twitter.com/yk1bcypaGp
From my feed. The “community notes” say, correctly, that this is a FATHER’S love, for in jacanas it is the males who incubate the eggs. It all goes to show that behavior is not what defines sex. The reason we know that male jacanas incubate eggs is because we know these are males. And how do we know that? Because they produce sperm.
From Malcolm, a Pallas cat successfully rehabbed and returned to the wild. This is my favorite species of wild cat; enlarge the pictures to see why:
Rangers of Dauria reserve had v challenging task raising Dasha the orphaned Pallas’s kit. They had to play a role of mother cat, thus half-domesticating Dasha & decreasing her chances to survive in the wild. Latest news from reserve is that looks like Dasha made it back 2 nature pic.twitter.com/5YKe5qYCID
Here’s Bill Maher’s 10-minutes Real Time segment that constitutes his video “op-ed”. This is one of the best such segments I’ve seen.
As the title indicates, Maher thinks that Biden should make a hasty exit. The bad news is that he’s quite enthusiastic about Kamala Harris as his replacement, a choice that I don’t agree with. But the good news is that he also think she’s too unpopular to win. He also likes Gavin Newsom, despite his “slickness” (Maher even suggests a slogan: “I’m havin’ Gavin”). Further, he’s a fan of Gretchen Whitmer (my favorite candidate) and Mayor Pete (my former favorite candidate). He also suggests five governors who are younger and liberal but not “crazy woke”.
If you’ve followed this website regularly, you’ll know that the UK’s Cass Review, which evaluated and criticized the NHS’s treatment of gender dysphoria, has been widely accepted in the UK, causing the country to slow down on “affirmative care”, following the lead of other European countries. No longer will the NHS run a conveyer belt from childhood gender dysphoria to universal acceptance by therapists that a dysphoric child needs to transition, and from there on to puberty blockers, other hormones, and then, perhaps, surgery. (See here, and here, for example.)
Despite the realization of European doctors and therapists that unbridled “affirmative care” is not only dangerous, but isn’t very effective, the United States has resolutely ignored Cass’s review, persisting in offering affirmative care despite the paucity of evidence that it works. Even the Biden Administration, with its increasing wokeness, has been lax about dealing with gender issues.
This is all discussed in a new article by NYT op-ed writer Pamela Paul—a thorough and sensible piece of reporting that will nevertheless infuriate gender ideologues and all the “progressive” NYT writers who beef on the paper’s Slack channel.
Gender issues are one thing that the Biden administration has fouled up, and here’s one example from Paul. (WPATH is The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which isn’t very attuned to what the rest of the world is doing, but obstinately fights for affirmative care, no matter what):
The Biden administration has essentially ceded the issue to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, incorporating gender-affirming protocols into Department of Health and Human Services policy. Moreover, recently revealed emails indicate that President Biden’s assistant secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine, a pediatrician and transgender woman, successfully pushed WPATH to remove age requirements from its guidelines for gender medicine before their publication, because — mixing political and public health concerns — she thought supporters of gender treatment bans might cite them to show that the procedures are harmful. (WPATH’s draft guidelines had originally recommended age minimums of 14 for cross-sex hormones, 15 for mastectomies, 16 for breast augmentation or facial surgery and 17 for genital surgeries or hysterectomies.)
Now there are no guidelines! Surgery and hormones at any age!
Paul is heterodox and brave, but her piece is now the third I’ve seen where the NYT reports objectively and sometimes critically on affirmative care. The progressive staffers, of course, got in a tizzy about the previous pieces, and Paul’s will increase their ire even more. But the fact that a Left-leaning paper is willing to publish stuff like this—it’s well referenced, too—may signal a sea change in the attitudes of “progressivists” towards affirmative care in the US. Click to read; you can also find the piece archived here archived here:
I’ve written about nearly all of what Paul says, but if you haven’t followed the controversy, her piece is the place to start. As I’ve said, I think that in a decade or two Americans will look back at the dosing and mutilating of American adolescents and ask, “What were we thinking?” Of course many people are happy with their medical transitioning, but remember that many cases of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents who aren’t treated with affirmative therapy tend to “resolve,” often with the young people becoming gay. If you can cure dysphoria that way rather than by permanently changing bodies with hormones and surgery, then that’s surely a route worth investigating.
Here’s a long quotation from Paul’s piece, which is itself long:
Imagine a comprehensive review of research on a treatment for children found “remarkably weak evidence” that it was effective. Now imagine the medical establishment shrugged off the conclusions and continued providing the same unproven and life-altering treatment to its young patients.
This is where we are with gender medicine in the United States.
It’s been three months since the release of the Cass Review, an independent assessment of gender treatment for youths commissioned by England’s National Health Service. The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, one of Britain’s top pediatricians, found no definitive proof that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by what advocates call gender-affirming care, in which a young person’s declared “gender identity” is affirmed and supported with social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Nor, she said, is there clear evidence that transitioning kids decreases the likelihood that gender dysphoric youths will turn to suicide, as adherents of gender-affirming care claim. These findings backed up what critics of this approach have been saying for years.
“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” Cass concluded. Instead, she wrote, mental health providers and pediatricians should provide holistic psychological care and psychosocial support for young people without defaulting to gender reassignment treatments until further research is conducted.
After the release of Cass’s findings, the British government issued an emergency ban on puberty blockers for people under 18. Medical societies, government officials and legislative panels in Germany, France, Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium have proposed moving away from a medical approach to gender issues, in some cases directly acknowledging the Cass Review. Scandinavian countries have been moving away from the gender-affirming model for the past few years. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called the review’s recommendations “seminal” and said that policies on gender treatments have “breached fundamental principles” of children’s human rights, with “devastating consequences.”
But in the United States, federal agencies and professional associations that have staunchly supported the gender-affirming care model greeted the Cass Review with silence or utter disregard.
When I reached out to H.H.S. officials, they declined to speak on the record. The A.M.A. referred me to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society. The Endocrine Society, the primary professional organization of endocrinologists, told me, “the Cass Review does not contain any new research that would contradict the recommendations made in” the society’s own guidelines. (Cass’s mandate was to assess the quality and importance of existing research.)
Who is to blame for the situation in America? Ideologues—and those include WPATH, the many doctors and therapists who push affirmative therapy onto young people, and, of course, the Biden administration, especially Rachel Levine. It is worth considering that it may have been unwise to put the issue of age limits (i.e., none) on affirmative care and surgery into the hands of a transgender woman.
Why is this happening in the U.S. while Europe has taken a more cautious and sensible attitude towards this type of therapy? Paul gives several reasons, which includes more pervasive “progressive” ideology in the U.S., the fact that centralized medical care like that in Europe makes it harder to “give patients what they ask for” (and no, not all kids who ask for gender transitioning should automatically get it), and the litigious climate of the U.S., which make doctors hesitant to change course because they could get sued for admitting they were wrong.
I’m a big fan of Paul, not because she’s “antiwoke,” but because she’s sensible and has the courage to speak truths that will get her demonized in the fraternity of NYT “progressives”. And, of course, because we tend to have confluent opinions. We also agree on how gender dysphoric young people should be treated, and I’ll finish with Paul’s take, which agrees with the conclusions of The Cass Review:
The Cass Review recommends a more holistic approach to treating gender dysphoria in kids. This involves untangling gender discomfort from common pre-existing conditions like autism spectrum disorder and A.D.H.D. and treating it alongside frequent comorbidities, which include anxiety, self-harm and eating disorders. A mental health counselor can help children with any difficulties during puberty and in coming to terms with their sexual orientation — without pathologizing either.
The goal throughout is to help. This includes working with kids to understand the causes of their gender dysphoria, relieve its symptoms, help resolve it or, in a case that proves persistent, consistent and insistent, help kids understand the pros and cons of pursuing gender reassignment for when they enter adulthood.
Once again we see ideology not only impeding science, but screwing up people’s lives.
A new beautiful coat color has appeared in cats, as detailed in this Popular Mechanics article; and they know the exact changes in the DNA that are responsible. Click to read:
You’ve probably heard of spooky black cats, chaotic orange cats, and distinguished-looking tuxedo cats. If you’re really into cats, you might have even lesser-known color variants like seal point and ticked tabby. But there’s officially a new cat color in town— salmiak, or ‘salty liquorice.’
The pretty black, white, and grey shade—named for a popular snack food in Finland, where this coat color has been making itself known—is thanks to a fur strand that starts off black near the root, but grows whiter and whiter out towards the tip. The coat was first spotted in 2007, and in 2019, it was brought to the attention of a group of cat experts lead by feline geneticist Heidi Anderson. Since then, the group has been trying to figure out exactly what causes this shade to express itself, and recently, they finally figured it out. A paper on the discovery has been published in the journal Animal Genetics.
When you’re digging into cat colors—or expressions of genetic traits in general, honestly—you start with the obvious and work your way out. So, the researchers naturally started by assuming that this new variant was just a fun way for the white-making ‘dilution’ gene to make itself known.
. . .But after digging through all the known genetic variations that control the expression of that dilution gene in coat color, the team came up empty. So, they took the next step—sequencing the entire genome of two of these special felines and digging through the whole mess of genetic data to find what was causing these new coats to appear.
It turns out that the answer was in what wasn’t there. “There was a huge chunk of sequence missing downstream from the KIT gene,” Anderson told New Scientist, referencing a gene known to affect white patterns in the coats of animals. And these cats were just… missing a piece of DNA right nearby.
After testing 181 cats to make sure they knew what they were seeing, the team was able to confirm that the missing sequence was in fact responsible for the salmiak coat color. And the mutation was recessive—the cat would only express this color if it inherited the mutation from both parents, which explains why this coloration isn’t a common one.
. . . Now that they’ve solved the mystery, the team is happy to sit back and admire their pretty kitties along with the rest of the world. “These coats have aroused a lot of admiration for years,” Anderson told New Scientist. “It’s really exciting that we now have some genetic explanation for it.”
What do they look like? Here’s the Animal Genetics paper (click to read) that found the genetic mutation responsible for the color, with some salmiak mutations shown below:
From the paper (click to enlarge). These all have the mutation, but in combination with other color genes as well. (f) has it with tortoiseshell coloring:
(from the paper): Salmiak coloring in cats. Prominent features of the coloring are: “tuxedo” (a.k.a. bicolor) white spotting in the absence of white spotting alleles (Ws, g), and additional gradation of the pigment within hairs of primary color toward no pigmentation at the tips in the body, legs and tail. Additionally, there is primary colored spotting in the white areas of the front legs and chest, more intense coloring in the scapular region, and a very pale tip of the tail. (a) Salmiak solid black cat (aa/wsalwsal), (b) salmiak solid blue cat (diluted black, aa/dd/wsalwsal), (c) salmiak brown mackerel tabby (wsalwsal) (right) and his normal-colored brother heterozygous for salmiak (wsalw), (d) salmiak phenotype on a long-haired solid black cat (not genotyped), (e) salmiak solid black cat (aa/wsalwsal) and (f) salmiak phenotype on a tortoiseshell cat (not genotyped). Cat a was sequenced, and cats b, c and e were genotyped for salmiak. Photo credits: (a) Ari Kankainen and (b–e) courtesy of the cat owners.
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The BBC has an article with cats having various jobs. I’ll put one example of each jog:
Post Office Cats:
In 1868 three cats were formally employed as mousers at the Money Order Office in London. They were “paid” a wage of one shilling a week – which went towards their upkeep – and were given a six-month probationary period.
They obviously did their job efficiently as in 1873 they were awarded an increase of 6d a week. The official use of cats soon spread to other post offices.
According to the Postal Museum, the most popular cat of all was Tibs. Born in November 1950, at his biggest he weighed 23lbs (10.4kg) and lived in the Post Office headquarters’ refreshment club in the basement of the building in central London. During his 14 years’ service he kept the building rodent-free.
The last Post Office HQ cat, Blackie, died in June 1984, and since then there have been no further felines employed there.
Tibs’s obituary from Post Office Magazine:
Police Cat:
Dogs have long been part of the police force, but cats rarely got a look-in – unless they were being arrested for burglary. But in the summer of 2016, Durham Constabulary recruited Mittens.
The appointment stemmed from a letter written by five-year-old Eliza Adamson-Hopper, who suggested the force add a puss to its plods. [JAC: be sure to click on the link.]
“A police cat would be good as they have good ears and can listen out for danger. Cats are good at finding their way home and could show policemen the way,” she said.
Mittens is not the only police cat. Oscar lives at Holmfirth Police Station in Huddersfield, where his job involves being “a therapeutic source of support for my officers”, and Smokey is a volunteer welfare officer at Skegness Police Station.
As a spokesman from the station said, “being a police officer can be very fast-paced and stressful job so when we need to take a break or grab some air now, many of us pop outside a spend a few minutes with Smokey”.
Whether it’s showing off in feature films, flogging luxury pet food to besotted owners, or chilling out on the set of Blue Peter, there has long been a place for cats in front of the camera.
Arthur was the furry face of Spillers cat food for nearly 10 years from 1966, scooping Kattomeat from the tin into his mouth. He was such a star the brand was later renamed Arthur’s in his honour. There were rumours that Arthur was made to use his paw to eat because advertisers removed his teeth – but the allegation proved to be untrue. He was just a natural paw-dipper.
. . .Blue Peter’s Jason, a seal point Siamese, was the first in a long line of presenter pusses on the popular BBC children’s programme. Others included Jack and Jill, who became known as the disappearing cats, because of their habit of leaping out of whichever lap they were in whenever they appeared on screen, and Willow, who was the first Blue Peter cat to be neutered or spayed.
Two red Persians played the role of Crookshanks in the Harry Potter film franchise – Crackerjack was a male and Pumpkin a female – while Mrs Norris was played by three Maine Coons named Maximus, Alanis and Cornilus – each was trained to perform a specific act, such as jumping on to actors’ shoulders or lying still.
Here’s a Spiller’s commercial showing Arthur eating Kattomeat!
Military cats:
By World War Two, nearly every vessel had at least one ship’s cat.
One of them, Simon, became the only cat to be awarded the Dickin Medal – the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross – for helping to save the lives of naval officers during the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
While the ship was under siege for 101 days, he was credited with saving the lives of the crew by protecting the ship’s stores from an infestation of rats.
The brave chap suffered severe shrapnel wounds when the ship came under fire and was given a hero’s welcome when it eventually returned to dock in Plymouth. Simon lived long enough to get back to England, but died in quarantine three weeks later. He was buried in Ilford, Essex, with full military honours.
Here’s the valorous Simon:
And one more:
Another wartime hero was Crimean Tom, also known as Sevastopol Tom, who saved British and French troops from starvation during the Crimean War in 1854.
The regiments were occupying the port of Sevastopol and could not find food. Tom could. He led them to hidden caches of supplies stored by Russian soldiers and civilians.
Tom, who was taken back to England when the war was over, died in 1856, whereupon he was stuffed. He is now a permanent part of the National Army Museum in London.
Yes, here’s Crimean Tom, stuffed and mounted (oy!):
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From the wordorigins.com newsletter, we learn about the source of various words and phrases involving cats. Click on the headline to read, and I’ll give a few explanations (more at the site):
Here’s the source of the common American phrase “the cat’s pajamas”, meaning “someone who is swell or admirable”; but it can also mean “something that’s very good”. Bolding below (showing first usage) is mine:
The phrase the cat’s pajamas (also cat’s whiskers or cat’s meow), meaning something superlative or excellent, is indelibly associated with the 1920s and the jazz age. The phrase is often credited to cartoonist Thomas Aloysius “Tad” Dorgan, but while he did use the cat’s meow (and perhaps other variants), Dorgan was not the originator.
These three are only the most popular and long-lasting in a series of animal phrases constructed with the definite article the, such as the antelope’s tonsils, bullfrog’s beard, canary’s tusks, caterpillar’s camisole/kimono/spats, clam’s cuticle/garters, crocodile’s adenoids, duck’s quack, elephant’s tonsils, frog’s eyebrows, kipper’s knickers, kitten’s vest, lion’s bathrobe, oyster’s eyetooth, pig’s scream/whiskers, sandfly garters, snake’s eyebrows, and sparrow’s chirp. Not to mention other items belong to cats, such as cuffs, knee-knuckles, lingerie, nightgown, tonsillitis, and vest. And of course, there is the bee’s knees. It’s easy to see how the idea of such rare or impossible things could give rise to a phrase denoting something that is exceptional or especially noteworthy.
The earliest use of the cat’s pajamas that I have found is in the unit newspaper of the US Army’s 21st General Hospital in Denver, Colorado of 17 July 1919. The phrase appears in an announcement that the army baseball team will play the team from the local Armour meat company:
“Say Medina,” said he, “this ball team of mine needs a lotta practice; so I’d like to have ’em come out here to the Coop every Thursday evening and stage a game with the soldiers boys. When we come out, we’ll bring something for the boys every time—some Armour food product you know. We’ll also bring along a couplea [sic] stoves on which we can cook the stuff and serve the hot wienies, fried ham sandwiches and such delectable food. Whad’ye say?”
Well, what else could O’Brien’s Helper say but that he thought it would be the cat’s pajamas to have feed like that dished up to the fellows every Thursday.
A year later in his syndicated column of 5 July 1920, Damon Runyan “records” this fictional conversation between two delegates to a political convention:
Second Delegate (angrily)—I tell you I ain’t been nowhere! I’m out here for business, and all I want now is to get somebody nominated, such as McAdoo, and go back to Springfield. I’m sick of this delay. It’s daffy people like you who are holding us back by runnin’ around town, and not being at the convention on time.
First Delegate (astounded)—Well, now, that’s sure the cats pajamas! Of course, I don’t get to the convention much, but everybody knows I’m for Jimmy Cox and they vote me that way whether I’m there or not.
This is passage is also notable in that it’s an early use of Springfield as a non-specific anytown, ala The Simpsons. (Contrary to popular belief, a town called Springfield does not exist in every state but only in thirty-four of them. Riverside, appearing in forty-six states, takes the prize.)
There’s more, even for this phrase, so go over and have a look.
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Lagniappe: A 100-pound German Shepherd befriends a one-pound kitten (video is 1½ minutes):
Well, we have three batches of photos left, and that leaves two after this post. Don’t make me beg!
Today we have some lovely bird photos, including DUCKS, from Damon Williford in Bay City, Texas. Damon’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Here are several bird photos that I captured at a local park back, Resoft County Park, in April. Resoft County Park is located in the southern portion of the Houston Metropolitan area of Texas. It’s a nice place for photography due to the presence of several ponds, an active heron rookery, and the fact that most of the birds are accustomed to humans.
A pair of Black-bellied Whistling-ducks (Dendrocygna autumnalis). This is a Neotropical species that has undergone rapid expansion within Texas since the 1980s:
The Egyptian Goose (Alopochen aegyptiaca) is a non-native species that has become established in several cities and towns in Texas:
A pair of Egyptian geese:
An adult Egyptian goose with goslings:
The park hosts both wild and domestic Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos). The bird pictured might be a drake of the wild type. I’m not good at differentiating wild mallards from wild-domestic hybrids or the breeds that are closer to the wild type:
Greetings on CaturSaturday, July 13, 2024, and National Beans ‘n’ Franks Day, an easy last-minute dish (sometimes called Beanie Weenies) that isn’t too bad. Wikipedia even has an article on the dish, complete with this photo, which seems to show a dearth of weenies:
President Biden fought back on Friday against escalating pressure from Democrats questioning his viability as a candidate, publicly and privately defending his decision to continue running as rank-and-file lawmakers continued to call on him to end his re-election bid.
. . . But at the rally in a high school gymnasium in Detroit, Mr. Biden was dug in, telling a raucous throng of supporters, “I’m not going anywhere.” What he saw there was unlikely to change his mind. An adoring crowd chanted “Don’t you quit!” as Mr. Biden delivered a fiery message, at times poking fun at former President Donald J. Trump as he drew a sharp contrast with his predecessor.
Perhaps Dr. Jill should have a quiet word with him. The problem is that she is all in, too.
Some major Democratic donors have told the largest pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward, that roughly $90 million in pledged donations is now on hold if President Biden remains atop the ticket, according to two people who have been briefed on the conversations.
The frozen contributions come as he had hoped to turn the page on a weekslong crisis within his party following a nearly hourlong news conference on Thursday evening. That appearance — in which he delivered a few gaffes but also demonstrated a command of foreign policy — did not immediately seem to worsen Democrats’ fears about his viability, but it also did not silence the calls for him to drop out. After he was done speaking, three more House members joined the ranks of elected Democrats calling for Mr. Biden to end his campaign.
. . . and a bit more news:
Democrats divided: Reactions to Mr. Biden’s high-profile news conference were mixed. The president delivered a competent presentation, and his performance in the unscripted setting heartened some of his supporters. One of his key allies, Representative James E. Clyburn, said on Friday that the party should stop talking about whether the president is fit to run and respect his decision to stay in the race. If he stepped aside, Mr. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, said he would “absolutely” endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee.
*Andrew Sullivan weighs in with the kind of Democratic candidate he wants to see (for sure he’s not voting for Trump): the title is “Wanted: An American Starmer“. He’s of course referring to Britain’s new Prime Minister, the Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer. He begins by referring to the genteel and uncontested transfer of power from Tory to Labour:
No one claimed fraud. No one derided the lopsided unfairness of the parliamentary results, where Labour got 34 percent of the vote and a whopping 63 percent of the seats, and where the new rightist Reform Party won 14 percent of the vote and got only 5 seats. Those were the rules ahead of the game, and they were the rules everyone had agreed to.
There is one reason and one reason only why this kind of conciliatory exchange cannot happen any time soon in America, and that is Donald J. Trump. With a mind warped by pathological and malignant narcissism, incapable of generosity or grace or fairness, Trump has dominated this country’s politics for almost a decade now. He has systematically corroded every democratic norm and institution: the rule of law, the process of elections, the integrity of the Supreme Court, the independence of the Justice Department, the peaceful nature of the transfer of power, and the reliability of our alliances around the world. And none of this damage has been done to advance any broad policy or meaningful agenda, but merely and solely to advance the narcissism and corruption of the president himself.
No, Trump is not going to become a dictator. It’s far too much work. The system held for four years; it can hold for another four (even with presidential immunity powers). And it’s worth noting in this respect that even when the president of the United States has the entire Congress in his camp, and the Supreme Court on his side, he still doesn’t have the equivalent power of a British prime minister with a super-majority in parliament that my old classmate Keir Starmer now has. That’s an elected dictatorship.
But we do know for a fact that Trump is criminally inclined, driven by vengeance and rage, and has now been granted vague and unprecedented immunity powers by SCOTUS whose limits he will doubtless exploit. We know he will delegitimize any institution that gets in his way; and we know that electing a convicted felon who has already once tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power will be a watershed for a purported republic.
And we also know that, right now, Trump is almost certain to win an Electoral College landslide in November, for the simple reason that he doesn’t have a credible or capable opponent.. . .
. . .And the way to win against Trump is, it seems to me, similar: get a generic centrist Dem from a critical swing state, make sure he or she is competent and can make a good case and seems normal, and make them 20 years younger than Trump. Bingo. There’s a reason, I suspect, why many on the Democratic left have oddly rallied behind Biden: they know their interest groups control the addled dotard’s entire social and cultural agenda; and they know that a re-elected Trump would give their extremism more legitimacy. A more moderate Democratic governor or senator would not be so pliable, and might even help to de-polarize the country. God knows and the polls all show that the American public want someone — anyone — who isn’t Trump or Biden. Why not listen to them for a change?
Beshear. Fetterman — partly because he has been so vocal in supporting Biden thus far, partly because he has seemed to master a populist style, and partly because he could carry Pennsylvania, which is looking increasingly essential. Whitmer. Shapiro. Brown. Klobuchar. Manchin. Polis. Buttigieg. I could go on. The talent has been building up as the entitled dinosaurs of Hillary and Joe kept the next generation from power for decades. Of course, Harris should compete too — and be given a shot to prove her mettle, unburdened, as it were, by her cringe-inducing past. (She’s a worse politician than Hillary, though. If selected, I have no doubt she’d lose in a landslide.)
Fetterman: no chance. Whitmer and Klobuchar are my favorites here, and I don’t think the Dems will go for Manchin. I used to favor Buttigieg, but he hasn’t done a lot as Secretary of Transportation. And I don’t want Harris to compete, precisely because of her “cringe-inducing past.” She shouldn’t automatically be in the running just because she was VP. Whitmer or Klobuchar could klobber her. Sullivan wants an “old-style convention,” and that’s fine for me, too. The problem is that it’s getting late, and you have to introduce the new Democratic candidate to America. From Labor Day to Election Day is about nine weeks.
*The Washington Post gives you the chance to take a short cognitive abilities test, similar to the ones given by real doctors. There are six questions, and I got five of them, but the one I missed is, I think, a trick question (you’ll know which one I’m talking about), and the explanation for the “right” answer is dubious. So I consider myself compos mentis, and you don’t have to worry about Professor Ceiling Cat.
*As usual, I include three items from the Free Press‘s weekly news summary, this week written not by Nellie ( 🙁 ), but by Suzy Weiss, Bari’s sister. It’s called “TGIF: President Putin and Vice President Trump edition.” Disregarding nepotism, it’s still not the same without Nellie:
→ It’s been a busy week for AOC: She introduced articles of impeachment against two Supreme Court justices, accusing Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito of high crimes and misdemeanors for, among other things, failing to disclose gifts they had received. She said there was a “corruption crisis” on the court that had “spiraled into a constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large.” (Who among us hasn’t accepted a few fishing trips and hitched a ride home on a jet?) Also this week: the Democratic Socialists of America announced that they are dropping their endorsement of AOC. Why? Because she hosted a panel about combating antisemitism in which she dared to affirm Israel’s right to exist. The DSA statement complained that the panel she was on conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism, which is sort of like conflating Honeycrisps and apples. Unforgivable.
For those who had missed the DSA’s drift into anti-Israel insanity, this is a useful marker. AOC thinks Israel is committing genocide, boycotts Israeli leaders when they come to Washington, and opposes U.S. financial support for Israel’s Iron Dome defense, the main means by which Israeli civilians are protected from rocket attacks. And the DSA says: Zio scumbag.
Here’s the statement of the DSA withdrawing support for AOC. But her ambition to be a Senator is stronger than her desire to court the DSA, so she won’t care.
→ Just don’t do it again, promise? Remember those kids who got suspended from Harvard after setting up encampments on the lawn and then harassing other students? Well, the Harvard College Administrative Board has reversed the decision, a win for the “student intifada,” which I thought was slanderous but is actually just what they call themselves. And then over at Columbia, the administrators who texted each other vomit emojis during a panel discussing a rabbi’s op-ed about his fears for Jews on campus—they were fired, right? Well, actually they were just put on leave and will be assigned to different jobs later. And remember the Columbia students who were arrested after they occupied a campus building? Most of their charges were dropped. There’s something way creepier about punishing people in the moment only to reverse it as soon as the zeitgeist moves on to the next thing versus not punishing them at all.
→ If you’ve gotten this far: It’s safe to assume that you’re not feeling great about our choices come November. Thankfully, there is another option. He’s ripped. He’s a birding enthusiast. He loves nature. He comes from a great big family. He wants to break up the two-party duopoly. RFK all the way! Oh, wait. He has a “take” on 9/11.
WHAAAAT? Won’t take a side on 9/11? Oy gewalt! But I miss Nellie terribly; there is no substitute for her.
*The NYT touts the release of a new “adult” movie, Fly Me to the Moon, which is neither a sequel nor a superhero movie—the usual fare of summer and, in fact, all year around. The theme of the article is whether a movie directed as adults can even survive in today’s film climate. The plot:
The story is a period piece and completely original: In 1968, a government operative (Woody Harrelson) hires a marketing virtuoso (Scarlett Johansson) to convince the public — and Congress — that a troubled NASA can pull off its scheduled Apollo 11 moon landing. Stylish and devious, she clashes with the rigid launch director (Channing Tatum) and secretly — as a backup, to be used only in an emergency — arranges for a fake landing to be filmed on a soundstage. What’s the harm?
. . .Hollywood marketers will tell you that ticket buyers eschew movies that mash together genres. And “Fly Me to the Moon” is part drama, part comedic caper, part romance, part fiction and part true story. Particularly in the summer, studios prefer to serve up mindless popcorn movies aimed at teenagers. “Fly Me to the Moon” is entertainment for thinking adults, the kind that Mike Nichols (“Working Girl”) and James L. Brooks (“Broadcast News”) made in the 1980s.
So the question must be asked: How on earth did “Fly Me to the Moon” manage to score a wide release in theaters at the height of blockbuster season? The film rolls into 3,300 theaters in the United States and Canada on Friday.
Shouldn’t it be going straight to streaming?
In many ways, the film’s unexpected journey to multiplexes reflects the degree to which Hollywood runs on the vagaries of chance. “Fly Me to the Moon,” written by the newcomer Rose Gilroy, started out as a streaming movie — full stop. Apple TV+ paid an estimated $100 million for the project in March 2022, and the contract called for no theatrical release of any kind.
But then Greg Berlanti got involved. [Johannson is the producer.]
. . .Mr. Berlanti delivered “Fly Me to the Moon” to executives at Apple in the spring of last year. Next came a test screening in Colorado. “It scored very well with male and female, young and old, which came as a bit of a surprise,” Mr. Berlanti said. (Apple declined to comment for this article.)
Maybe the response was a fluke? Another audience test was conducted in California. “Same response, in fact even better,” Mr. Berlanti said. Still another was ordered up in Texas. “Everywhere we went, people responded by saying it was the kind of movie they missed in theaters — original with big movie stars,” he said.
The film’s producers, led by Ms. Johansson, pushed Apple to give “Fly Me to the Moon” a chance in theaters. Apple agreed. “It was both exciting and terrifying,” Mr. Berlanti said, break
Unfortunately, as of this writing the movie gets just a 65% rating from top critics and 38% from all critics on Rotten Tomatoes. But I’m gonna see it anyway.
At the graduation ceremony of New York University Abu Dhabi this May, a student wearing the traditional Palestinian black-and-white keffiyeh scarf shouted “Free Palestine!” as he crossed the stage to receive his diploma, witnesses say. Days later, he reportedly was deported from the United Arab Emirates.
The incident at the graduation comes as the UAE tries to balance its diplomatic recognition of Israel with the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that’s devastated the Gaza Strip. While offering aid to the Palestinians, there have been none of the mass demonstrations that swept the Arab world here in the UAE, a federation of seven emirates that tightly controls speech and where political parties are illegal.
That’s stretched into academic life at NYU Abu Dhabi, where students say activities over the war have been barred, and into cultural events in the country’s capital as well where those wearing the keffiyeh have been stopped from entering.
. . .Responding to questions from The Associated Press, NYU Abu Dhabi said it has been “guaranteed academic authority” on campus but that “in none of our locations … are members of the NYU community immune from local law.”
“NYU has no authority over any nation’s immigration or law enforcement actions or decisions,” the school said. It added it advised students “clearly and repeatedly about expectations, obligations, and boundaries, including the protocols for the NYU Abu Dhabi graduation.”
Well, I can’t say I didn’t get a frisson of pleasure from reading this, but my better angels took over and I knew that suchy demonstrations constituted freedom of speech and should not be banned.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there was a terrible hailstorm a few days ago that ruined nearly all the cherry crop. It was a disaster! And the storms continue: as Malgorzata wrote this morning, “Both cats came home wet in the evening. We toweled them dry and both demanded to go out again. It was still raining (but less hard). Both slept on the verandah and came in this morning. Now both are sleeping at home.”
Andrzej and Hili engage in deep conversation:
Hili: How often are we mistaken?
A: Every day, but luckily about different things and to a different degree.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak często jesteśmy w błędzie?
Ja: Codziennie, na szczęście w różnych sprawach i w różnym stopniu.
Masih argues with her co-panelist at the Aspen Ideas festival about how nefarious the Iranian regime is. I wouldn’t want to go up against her!
At the Aspen Ideas Festival, I challenged my male panelist on whether the Islamic Republic of Iran should be banned from international organizations. I also asked the audience if they would attend sports stadiums when their sisters, daughters, mothers, and girlfriends are banned… pic.twitter.com/PK4RsIBTIf
Radiating ripples in spacetime caused by a paddling mallard keeping otherwise still in a slow-moving creek. Enlarge and center on the duck. pic.twitter.com/TNVQ3Y0pXF
From Malgorzata. This guy puts the lie to the already-ridiculous “Gays for Palestine” movement. He’s not only gay, but an Israeli Arab who says he’s never experienced any “apartheid”:
Meet Yamen Lawrence, a 20 year old Queer Arab Muslim Israeli. He explains that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where he is safe to express his full identity. Loud, proud, and fabulous. pic.twitter.com/OUPb6fJ9R3
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. The “lunar terminator” is the border between night and day on the Moon:
Here’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever captured: the moment the international space station transited the lunar terminator, captured in broad daylight using a 14” scope.
These shots require precise planning and a bit of luck to pull off, and I still can’t believe it’s real! pic.twitter.com/pRiEFo61he
A pair of Wood Ducks:
