Tuesday: Hili dialogue

July 9, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, July 9, 2024, and National Sugar Cookie Day, the simplest of all cookies but not the worst. This photo, from Wikipedia, suggests to me that they should be dunked in coffee:

AceDragonfly, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Martyrdom of the Báb, Cow Appreciation Day, National No Bra Day (this was the norm when I was in college), Fashion Day, Constitution Day in Australia and Nunavut Day (in Nunavut, of course).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 9 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The French elections were a surprise with the right-wing Rally Party not winning. Actually, nobody won. From the BBC:

Nobody expected this. High drama, for sure, but this was a shock.

When the graphics flashed up on all the big French channels, it was not the far right of Marine Le Pen and her young prime minister-in-waiting Jordan Bardella who were on course for victory.

It was the left who had clinched it, and Emmanuel Macron’s centrists – the Ensemble alliance – had staged an unexpected comeback, pushing the far-right National Rally (RN) into third.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran left-wing firebrand seen by his critics as an extremist, wasted no time in proclaiming victory.

“The president must call on the New Popular Front to govern,” he told supporters in Stalingrad square, insisting Mr Macron had to recognise that he and his coalition had lost.

His alliance, drawn up in a hurry for President Macron’s surprise election, includes his own radical France Unbowed, along with Greens, Socialists and Communists and even Trotskyists. But their victory is nowhere big enough to govern.

Here’s Matthew’s take on it, posted with permission:

It’s all rather complicated.

France has a two-round system. In the first round, if a candidate gets >50%, they are elected straight away (this is relatively rare). If no one gets a majority in the first round, all candidates with >12.5% of the vote can go through to the second round, which is straight first-past-the-post.

In the first round, the Rassemblement National (National Rally – ex-Front National) was the largest single party, but did not win any seats outright. The evident threat was that they would go on and win a parliamentary majority in the second round. In the run-up to the election, the left parties – Unbowed France, Socialist Party, Communist Party, Greens, and some small groups – came together as the New Popular Front (a reference to the Popular Front of 1936) put forward a common programme and a single candidate in each constituency. As soon as the results of the first round were known, the NPF said they would stand down their candidates in the second round where they came third, behind a right-wing candidate, in order to beat the FN. The right-wing parties were much less prepared to reciprocate, and in many cases maintained their candidacy, even when they had come a poor third.

In the week or so before the election, although the pollsters and pundits were predicting an RN absolute majority, the racist and anti-semitic nature of some of their candidates was revealed; together with the mobilisation of the left parties, this was sufficient to ensure that the RN were pushed into third place, with the NPF getting the largest number of seats. This was a huge relief to many people – hence the joyous scenes in many cities around France. In the cases where right-wingers stood as a third candidate, they were all defeated.

However, no party, and no group of parties on the same political wavelength, has a majority. This is a hung parliament. Whoever is the future prime minister (the current PM, from Macron’s party, has offered his resignation but has been asked to stay on for a while) will have to negotiate legislation on a case-by-case basis. This is not new – Macron’s party has been a minority government for the last two years.

Macron called the early elections because he wanted to lance the boil of the RN, which had done remarkably well in the European elections. He obviously really wanted his party to gain a majority (the only reason he was elected – twice – is because he was standing against the leader of the RN, Marine Le Pen, and he clearly hoped that might happen again, at a parliamentary scale). Things didn’t work out quite as he hoped – he now has to deal with the legitimate claim of the NPF that it should form the new government. There will be a lot of horse-trading in the coming weeks. If the NPF does form a government, one of its key measures would be to halt the attacks on pensions that have been a key part of Macron’s policies and which have provoked enormous discontent. While this policy would be opposed by the traditional parties of the right, it did feature in the RN”s manifesto, so could technically pass in parliament…

*Biden is holding very firm about remaining the Democratic candidate for President, and he even wrote a letter to Congressional Democrats saying he’s committed to staying in the race:

President Biden issued defiant responses on Monday to high-ranking lawmakers calling for him to step aside, challenging Democrats to run against him and telling congressional Democrats in a letter that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race.”

Calling into “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Mr. Biden said he didn’t care about any of the “big names” urging him to drop out of the race, his voice rising considerably as he spoke.

“If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me,” he said. “Go ahead, announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”

Less than an hour earlier, Mr. Biden’s campaign released a letter to congressional Democrats in which he wrote that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race.”

His pledge to remain in the race kicks off what could be the most crucial week of his presidency, as he faces crumbling support from Democratic lawmakers and mounting fears of a rout by former President Donald J. Trump and his followers in November’s races for the White House and Congress.

Here’s an excerpt from his letter:

Let’s have a poll. Will he stay or will he go?

Will Biden drop out of the race before the Democratic National Convention?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

*The descriptions of negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been confusing, but yesterday Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a list of  four “nonnegotiable demands” that, he says, he’ll stick to during the negotiations. From the Times of Israel:

Ahead of the Israeli negotiating team’s departure for further hostage deal talks in Cairo and Doha later this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a list on Sunday evening of what he said were four nonnegotiable Israeli demands, including a guarantee that Israel could resume fighting, which would need to be met in any hostage release and ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Netanyahu’s statement, at a crucial phase ahead of the resumption of talks, sparked anger, both in Israel and among mediators, with some accusing him of attempting to sabotage hard-won progress.

The renewed negotiations in both Egypt and Qatar come after the Hamas terror group said on Saturday that it was ready to discuss a hostage deal and an end to the war in Gaza without an upfront commitment by Israel to a “complete and permanent ceasefire.” That statement constitutes a shift in the position Hamas has held in all previous negotiations since November.

Here are the four nonnegotiable demands:

1. “Any deal will allow Israel to return to fighting until its war aims are achieved.”

2. “Weapons smuggling to Hamas from the Gaza-Egypt border will not be possible.”

3. “The return of thousands of armed terrorists to the northern Gaza Strip will not be possible.”

4. “Israel will maximize the number of living hostages who will be returned from Hamas captivity.”

#1 is probably not acceptable to Hamas, for it would force them surrender (see also #3), though it’s not clear that this will eventually remove Hamas from power.  And #4 is a bit ambiguous; it should say “Hamas must return ALL the hostages, living or dead. Despite the fact that many of the Israeli public seem willing to keep Hamas in power if they just let the hostages go, I don’t think keeping Hamas in power is in Israel’s interests.

*Columbia University has fired the three deans who became infamous for exchanging anti-Semitic text messages during presentations about antisemitism by rabbis and other pro-Jewish people. (The text messages were photographed over the shoulders of the texting deans.)

Three Columbia University administrators have been removed from their posts after sending text messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May, according to a letter sent by Columbia officials to the university community on Monday.

The administrators are still employed by the university but have been placed on indefinite leave and will not return to their previous jobs.

Nemat Shafik, the Columbia president, described the sentiments in the text messages as “unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community.” She said the messages were “antithetical to our university’s values and the standards.”

The announcement came about a month after a conservative website published photos that showed some of the text messages sent by the administrators.

And it followed weeks of unrest at Columbia over the war in Gaza as the university emerged as the center of a nationwide protest movement. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations led Dr. Shafik to order the arrest of students on trespassing charges this spring. In late April, protesters occupied a campus building, leading to more arrests. In May, citing security concerns, the university canceled its main commencement ceremony.

The three Columbia administrators involved in the text message exchanges are Cristen Kromm, formerly the dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, formerly the associate dean for student and family support; and Susan Chang-Kim, formerly the vice dean and chief administrative officer. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, also engaged with the administrators in the text exchange.

He will remain in his post, according to the university provost, Angela V. Olinto.

Remember that they’re not FULLY fired, as they’re on leave, presumably not getting paid, and one source said that they’re just being “reassigned.” Also remember that the arrested Columbia students, with (I think) one exception, had all their charges dropped, though I don’t know whether they’ll get disciplined internally by Columbia.

At least the school did SOMETHING about the deans, though. It’s pretty damn embarrassing to have several deans joking and making antisemitic remarks during a symposium on Columbia’s Jewish issues. I am surprised that Sorett remains in office, given that he was involved in the text exchange, but maybe he didn’t say anything antisemitic. (Plus he’s the Big Dean.) One might think that this is free speech, but it’s a violation of institutional neutrality and I think deans serve at Columbia’s will.

*The undisputed king of hot-dog eating, Joey Chestnut, didn’t compete in Nathan’s annual wiener-eating contest this year, so somebody else won. But, wolfing down the pups in another location, Chestnut made the winner look bad.

Patrick Bertoletti gobbled up 58 hot dogs to win his first men’s title Thursday at the annual Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, taking advantage of the absence of the event’s biggest star. In the women’s competition, defending champion Miki Sudo won her 10th title and set a new world record by downing 51 links.

Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, the reigning men’s champion and winner of 16 out of 17 previous competitions, didn’t attend this year over a sponsorship tiff. Instead he competed later in the day against four soldiers at a U.S. Army base in El Paso, Texas, where he wolfed down 57 hot dogs in five minutes.

Bertoletti, 39, of Chicago, won in a tight, 10-minute race where the leader bounced back and forth, defeating 13 competitors from around the world. He said he lost weight and practiced for three months with “an urgency” to prepare for the event, thinking he had a good chance of winning.

“With Joey not here, I knew I had a shot,” Bertoletti said. “I was able to unlock something that I don’t know where it came from.”

Bertoletti bested his prior record of 55 hot dogs at the event, which is held every Independence Day on New York’s Coney Island, a beachfront destination with amusement parks and a carnivalesque summer culture.

Chestnut: 57 dogs in five minutes.  Bertoletti: 58 dogs in ten minutes. Chestnut was almost twice as fast. In fact, Chestnut was banned from the Nathan’s contest because he signed a deal with Impossible Foods, which makes vegan dogs! (I’m not sure the 58 dogs Chestnut ate in Texas were vegan or not.) But here’s Bertoletti (the female champion, Miki Sudo, downed 51 dogs, a really good total for a woman).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is kvetching:

Hili: Do people still write books?
A: Of course, why do you ask?
Hili: Its been a long time since you bought any.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy ludzie jeszcze piszą książki?
Ja: Oczywiście, dlaczego pytasz?
Hili: Dawno żadnej nie kupowałeś.

. . . and a lovely picture of Szaron:

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

From Cat Memes:

From Jesus of the Day:

From Now That’s Wild: (I am not a fan of IPAs, especially if they’re very hoppy)

From Masih; translation from Farsi:

“What are you supporting?” Strong criticism #بهاره_هدایت of famous figures who are standing by the Islamic Republic today with their backs to the people. Bahare Hedayat bravely said that [her] estimate is that because of this interview, [s]hewill be returned to prison despite his bad physical conditions, but [s]he refused to remain silent. Shame on them for not even remaining silent and showing that they do not deserve people’s trust at every opportunity.

Hedayat is an Iranian woman’s rights activist who’s been imprisoned several times.

From Keith, translation from the Japanese:

[Sad news] Alpaca found looking thin and sad

It just got a haircut!

From Sullivan. This is what happens when you calmly question a person who doesn’t have an answer:

Two tweets from my own feed:

I didn’t know of this place:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a French girl gassed upon arrival, age one:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. Matthew helped organize these Crick letters for the auction. Proceeds go to to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds:

As Matthew said, “This could mean trouble!”  I hope it doesn’t! The Starmers have a cat!

More on the decline of New Zealand science: a required course for all students in the Faculty of Science

July 8, 2024 • 11:20 am

New Zealand’s attempt to integrate indigenous ways of knowing with modern science takes place not only on the secondary-school level, but also at universities, including the most prestigious one in the country: The University of Auckland. The course below (“Aotearoa” is the Māori word for New Zealand, and is now inseparable from “New Zealand”) is required for all first-year science students at the University under the University’s “Curriculum Framework Transformation” (CFT) plan. There will be a version of this course for all other faculties as well, so it’s a general requirement.

Click below to read it (and download a pdf), and I’ll put the gist of the course below (bolding is mine):

 

Course Prescription

What does it mean to do science here and now? This course considers how knowledge of place enhances your learning, the significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how knowledge systems frame understanding. Students will think critically about the relationships between science and our environment, along with the ethics of science in practice.

Course Overview

Contemporary science is deeply entwined with place, knowledge systems and ethics. This course examines these concepts through the lens of sustainability to demonstrate how they shape research agendas, methodologies, and applications of contemporary science. To address the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability, science must recognise and navigate the complexities of these interrelated concepts.

Explore the role of place-based knowledge, the importance of embracing diverse knowledge systems for science and the ethical responsibilities inherent in contemporary science in Aotearoa New Zealand. This interdisciplinary course will challenge you to think critically, fostering an awareness of the intricate relationships between science and its broader context, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Capabilities Developed in this Course

Capability 1: People and Place
Capability 2: Sustainability
Capability 3: Knowledge and Practice
Capability 4: Critical Thinking
Capability 6: Communication
Capability 7: Collaboration
Capability 8: Ethics and Professionalism
Graduate Profile: Bachelor of Science

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to:
  1. Demonstrate how place, and an understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, are significant to your field of study (Capability 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
  2. Critically and constructively engage with knowledge systems, practices and positionality (Capability 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7)
  3. Employ a reciprocal, values-based approach to collaborating (Capability 4, 6, 7 and 8)
  4. Communicate ideas clearly, effectively and respectfully (Capability 6, 7 and 8)
  5. Reflexively engage with the question of ethics in academic practice (Capability 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
  6. Demonstrate a critical understanding of sustainability (Capability 2, 3 and 4)

Seriously, is this going to be useful to the students, or will it just confuse them and waste their time?

Note that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the Treaty of Waitangi, signed by some (but not all) Māori tribes in 1840. It established the rights of Māori and the English colonists, giving the Crown full sovereignty over the country but also giving Māori the right to keep their lands while making them full British subjects.  It has been interpreted, with respect to education, as mandating that Māori “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori)  must be given equal treatment in schools to modern “ways of knowing”.  I’ve discussed that requirement ad nauseam, and won’t go over it here, except to say that mandating this coequality is a foolish and counterproductive thing to do, at least if New Zealand wants to enter the era of modern science.

 

This educational coequality of modern science with a mixture of trial-and-error empirical knowledge indigenous practices, which include spirituality, religion, ideology, eommunality, tradition, and ethics—this coequality is a dubious and contested interpretation of the Treaty. But the Māori are regarded as sacred victims, and an ethos has arisen in New Zealand that this coequality cannot be questioned. People have been fired or demonized for questioning it. Nevertheless, if the country wants its students given a proper science education, infusing it with local lore is not the way to go.  As one local said when he saw this course, “Its primary purposes seem to be pushing an activist view of the Treaty of Waitangi and pushing the validity of Mātauranga Māori as an alternative knowledge system.”

 

Indeed, and that’s from someone familiar with science education in New Zealand. Now there’s no issue with teaching local “ways of knowing” in anthropology or sociology courses, but “indigenous science” often proves to be infused with nonscientific stuff like oral tradition, myth, and religion/spirituality.  To pretend that the Treaty is essential for first-year students, and that alternative “ways of knowing” are just as good as modern ones, is to begin propagandizing science students in their first year at University.

At least New Zealand can’t say it hasn’t been warned of the consequences of this form of wokeness. As the country continues to drop in science rankings compared to countries like the U.S. and Canada, it may reach a point where people think, “Wait a minute; what are we doing?”

They haven’t gotten close to that point yet.

NZ science fair project aims to prove the truth of an indigenous legend

July 8, 2024 • 9:25 am

This is one small example, but an important one, of how science in New Zealand is being corrupted by trying to comport it with the indigenous “way of knowing”, Mātauranga Māori (MM).

The article below, from the July 4 New Zealand Herald (the biggest newspaper in the country) describes a science fair in the town of Rotorua, highlighting one student project that “tests” whether they could “prove” that a legend might be true.  (There are other projects highlighting MM and indigenous knowledge.)

This was sent to me anonymously, for of course criticizing stuff like this in New Zealand could cost you your job and/or your reputation.  The indigenous people, their myths, and their “ways of knowing” are regarded as sacred and untouchable.

The story is that of the love story of Tūtānekai and Hinemoa, recounted in Grey’s ‘Polynesian Mythology’, first published in 1855. The legend involves a Māori man who wanted to run away with a woman, and lured her to an island in a lake by playing his flute:

Every night Tūtānekai sat on a high hill and played his flute, the wind carrying his music across the lake to Hinemoa’s home. But Hinemoa did not come. Her people had suspected her intention, and they had pulled all the canoes high up on the shore.

Every night Hinemoa heard the sound of her lover’s flute and wept because she could not go to him. Eventually she wondered if it be possible to swim across to Tūtānekai.

Hinemoa took six hollow gourds and fastened them to her body to buoy her up. The night was dark and the great lake cold. Her heart was beating with terror, but the flute played on. She stood on a rock by the shore and there she left her garments, entered the water and began to swim.

In the darkness she could see no land, having only Tūtānekai’s flute to guide her, and led by that sweet sound she arrived at last to the island.

At the place where she landed, she found a hot pool and went in to warm herself, for she was trembling with cold.

And all went well after that. I find it bizarre that a group of students wanted to test whether this was true, when what they were really testing whether it was possible. 

Click below to read:

Bolding is mine, and the excerpts from the article are indented:

A group of Rotorua children have used science to prove whether the basis of the legendary love story of Hinemoa and Tūtānekai is true.

They concluded it very well could be.

Te Arawa Lakes Trust’s Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā Mātauranga Māori Science and Design Fair is in its third year.

It aimed to celebrate the intersection of Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and science, and give students a platform to showcase innovative projects and designs.

There were 35 exhibits in its first year. Last year grew to about 40, and this year more than 100.

Topics covered five categories and ranged from projects focusing on water quality and rongoā (traditional Māori medicines) to investigating a legendary love story.

The latter involved a group from Te Rangihakahaka Centre for Science and Technology looking at the legend of star-crossed lovers Hinemoa and Tūtānekai.

[Rongoā involves not only herbal medicines, but prayer and massage.]

Note that the intent was to prove whether a legend was true, though this language could have been from the reporter and not the students. But the aim of the project was surely to find whether a Māori legend might actually be based on fact:

 

The story, told in the song Pokarekare Ana, is about how beautiful chief’s daughter, Hinemoa, fell in love with lower-ranked suitor, Tūtānekai, and swam across Lake Rotorua to be with him on Mokoia Island when she heard his flute calling to her.

The students decided to test whether she would have been able to hear the sound of his flute from across the water.

The group looked at how various conditions impacted on how loud the flute would have been and how it would have gotten louder as Hinemoa swam across Lake Rotorua.

With transmission loss expected between 30-40 decibels, it would have been soft at first: “a sound like wind in the trees”.

Conditions needed to be calm. No wind; glassy water; cold; overcast and no ripples.

Conclusion: “it would be audible”.

This, of course, depends on how loudly Tūtānekai was playing and whether conditions were right (which of course we cannot know), but I suppose if he was playing to attract his lady love, it would have been loud. (I saw the famous island when I was in Rotorua.)

But the problem with this is that it melds legend with science and, by so doing, mistakes the question “is the story not ruled out by analysis of sound?” with the question that science would ask: “what is the evidence that the story is true?”  And since the story is based solely on a legend transmitted orally and then written down by a European in a book on Polynesian mythology, it has low credibility from the outset.  There are of course dozens of such stories that could be analyzed to see if  bits of them are ruled out by what we know of physical reality, but saying that “they’re not” is not the same as “proving” them. In other words, the Bayesian priors for the truth of this myth were low at the outset, and the probability that this really happened is not substantially increased by analysis of flute sounds.

Further, there are dozens of Māori legends that could not have been true, like the claim that their Polynesian ancestors discovered Antarctica in the seventh century, and in a canoe made of human bones. (This claim is still being advanced by a group of Māori academics.) Maybe there should be a science-fair project seeing if a canoe made of human bones could even float!

There’s a bit more:

Te Arawa Lakes Trust environment officer Keeley Grantham said categories were broad, which meant there was an “amazing array” of projects.

. . .“We’re not just looking at Western science, we’re looking at mitigating environmental issues through a whole heap of different lenses, especially through our te ao Māori lens.

“And enabling kids to broaden their scope of knowledge and just really build upon what they already know and just continue networking and sharing their kaupapa with other tamariki and other people that work in this field.”

About 16 kura (schools) were involved and “at least” 250 children. Groups and individuals could take part.

We have the usual mischaracterization of science as “Western” (science is now worldwide), as opposed to another way of knowing:  “looking at things through our “te ao Māori lens.”  A translation of “te ao Māori“:

Te Ao Māori encompasses the holistic worldview of the Māori people, reflecting an interconnected relationship between the natural world, people, and spirituality. The values embedded within Te Ao Māori offer a framework that aligns seamlessly with collectivist ideals, fostering a sense of unity and shared purpose.

 Whoops, there’s some spirituality in there, as well as values. That is one problem with regarding MM as a “way of knowing”, as the empirical knowledge in it is inextricably bound up with legend, religion, ideology, ethics, and superstition. And this mixture of legend and empirical observation is precisely why the student project is misguided. For surely it was designed to give credibility to Māori legends and to MM.  Were I the teacher, I would have guided students away from projects like this, which simply misleads them about the nature of scientific investigation.

With this kind of stuff encouraged by teachers, is it any wonder that science in New Zealand is circling the drain? Trying to comport it with indigenous legend is simply going to confuse people and, perhaps, drive them out of going into what the article calls “Western” science.

**********

Translation of the other terms above, taken from the Māori dictionary (note that they’re presented in an English-language newspaper without explanation, and I’m guessing very few readers understand them):

kaupapa:  topic, policy, matter for discussion, plan, purpose, scheme, proposal, agenda, subject, programme, theme, issue, initiative.

tamariki:  children – normally used only in the plural.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 8, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today’s photos come from UC Davis math professor Abigail Thompson, a recognized “Hero of Intellectual Freedom” (see here). Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

I included a couple pictures of the pools themselves this time, with lots of anemones, Anthopleura xanthogrammica (giant green anemone) and Anthopleura elegantissima (aggregating anemone) and ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus), ostrich plume hydroids and sponges (the bright orange/red stuff):

Family Sabellidae (Feather duster worm). Marine worms are fantastic creatures, but narrowing it down even to the genus can be tricky.  The body of the worm is in the cylindrical tube that ends in sand grains.  The feathery orange tentacles bring food into the worm’s mouth.  The pink is a bit of anemone in the foreground:

Triopha catalinae (clown dorid). One of the most spectacular nudibranchs in California:

Triopha maculata (spotted dorid):

Halosydna johnsoni (maybe….) (scale worm):

Granulina margaritula (pear marginella).  This tiny snail (about the size of a sesame seed) brings its flamboyant mantle (the beautiful speckly brown stuff around the edge) up over its shell:

Anthopleura artemisia (moonglow anemone).  This type of anemone has very variable coloring- the next picture is the same species:

Anthopleura artemisia (moonglow anemone) #2:

Aeolidia loui (warty shag-rug nudibranch).  A good argument for using scientific rather than common names; this nudibranch is quite lovely:

Camera info: Olympus TG-7, mostly in microscope mode, with pictures being taken from above the water.

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 8, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome back to work after a long holiday weekend in America; today is Monday, July 8, 2024, and National Raspberry Day. If you’re not American, you may not know that “raspberry” means, besides the fruit, this noise made by sticking out your tongue and vibrating it rapidly. It indicates disapproval, as when the umpire at a baseball game makes a call you don’t like. Listen:

 

It’s also National Blueberry Day, National Freezer Pop Day (a quiescently frozen confection that’s almost extinct), Islamic New Year, National Milk Chocolate with Almonds Day, and, in Ukraine, Air Force and Air Defense Forces Day.

Here’s a special lagniappe: a movie of Ozy’s subordinate pig, Nelson, chasing away other pigs and then a shot of Ozy resting.  Rosemary Alles, who took the video in South Africa, says this:

The mother and her babies are being chased by Nelson (the other alpha bull besides Ozy), Nelson is afraid of Ozy. You can see Ozy at the end of the video, just before he went to sleep in his nice nest that Jerry showed yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGRDtt6F9QQ

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 8 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The WSJ discusses Kamala Harris as a Biden replacement: “Is this Kamala Harris’s moment?” Apparently yes.

A document making the case for Harris, 59 years old, written anonymously by senior Democratic operatives who say they have no personal or professional ties to the vice president, has been circulating among Democrats. It argues that she is the “one realistic path out of this mess,” according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

While other prominent Democrats might jockey for the nomination even if Biden steps aside and endorses Harris, some within the party are warning about the ramifications of bypassing the first female and first Black vice president, as well as the first of Indian descent.

“She has been a very visible and vocal advocate for this administration,” said civil-rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, a Democrat. “She’s a loyal Democrat. I think the question is whether the Democratic Party will be loyal to women and loyal to Blacks, who have been loyal to them as symbolized by her.”

For Harris’s strongest backers, that it is even a question whether a sitting vice president should be her party’s last-minute replacement at the top of the ticket is the latest sign she has been disrespected in the role. Her detractors, meanwhile, say she hasn’t proved she is up to the task.

Here were her tasks:

Not long after taking office, Biden initially handed Harris a portfolio that centered on two of the most complex issues facing the administration: immigration and voting rights. Both have long been entrenched in partisan politics on Capitol Hill and famously difficult to overhaul through legislation.

You can argue about whether she did anything useful on these issues, and blame the failure on Congress, but what has she accomplished? If you say that the Veep isn’t meant to do anything, well, then, Whitmer is sitting in the statehouse doing something right now. And fie on you if you’re one of these:

Harris’s backers have long argued she has been subject to more criticism and scrutiny in her role in part because she is the first woman and first Black person to hold the job.

Nope; if she has been subject to more criticism and scrutiny, at least by Democrats, it’s because sometimes she sounds bonkers. To be sure, Harris is prone to her own gaffes and crazy talk, and sometimes seems more a figure of fun than any other VP since Dan Quayle. Potatoe!  But, increasingly Harris is looking like she might get Biden’s job by accident.  It’s a crime that Democrats aren’t willing to bypass Harris to go for someone like Whitmer; it’s almost as if they’d rather stick to a DEI mentality than to defeat Trump!

I have to admit that I don’t see loyalty and ethnicity as sufficient to vault someone into candidacy. What about Gretchen Whitmer, for crying out loud? If you want a minoritized person, isn’t a woman enough, or does she have to be a woman of color? In the end, now is not the time for “respect”; it’s time to WIN THE PRESIDENCY. Put me down for Whitmer.

*Is Biden ill with Parkinson’s? A Free Press article suggests that he has the disease. This summary is from the morning newsletter (the full article by Emile Yoffe is at the last link):

Has the reason for Joe Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline been hiding in plain sight? Two July 6 reports suggest the president has been seeing a movement disorder doctor for months.

On Saturday, the New York Post reported that a doctor at Walter Reed Medical Center with expertise in Parkinson’s visited the White House January 17, hosted by the president’s physician Kevin O’Connor. A second report, published by Alex Berenson on his Substack, Unreported Truths, revealed that the doctor visited the White House nine times between July 28, 2023, and March 28, 2024. (The logs run through March 31, 2024, and are available for anyone to access online.)

The doctor in question is Kevin R. Cannard, a neurologist and retired Army colonel. His physician profile page shows he is a neurologist and movement disorders specialist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center who researches treatments for early phase Parkinson’s disease. Berenson notes that Walter Reed “provides medical care to senior federal officials.” Read on for Emily’s argument on why the American people deserve to know the truth about our president’s health. 

*This NYT op-ed is an important article about science that nobody will pay attention to: “To save life on Earth, bring back taxonomy.”  (Taxonomy is the study of the genealogical relationship of organisms, most often the evolutionary history of species.) There is little evolutionary biology you can do unless you know where your species stands in the history of life, and how it’s related to other species you may be studying. Despite that, few people are being trained in taxonomy, and the fewer there are, the fewer that will be trained. There are only one or two Drosophila taxonomists around, and  yet this is one of the most intensively studied organisms for evolutionary genetics. Without knowing the taxonomy of the group, we are cut off from a lot of research. Anyway, a few excerpt from the piece byRobert Langellier, identified as “a writer and field botanist in Vermont.”

Taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying organisms, is the foundation for conserving disappearing plants and animals. Yet the field — often viewed as an archaic, dusty tradition that harks back to intrepid 19th-century botanists describing the plants of newly colonized lands — is dying. Several decades after the taxonomic frenzy of 1830 to 1920, when Western scientists went deep into far-flung regions of the world, molecular genetics revolutionized our ability to classify species, and began vacuuming up funding while the analog field of taxonomy was left to languish.

With genetic sequences, we can now identify the fundamental building blocks of life, but we need to be able to interpret genetic data in a way that humans can understand and use. That’s taxonomy’s job. And if we want to save what’s left of the vast diversity of life on Earth, we’ll have to reinvest in this science. How we delineate between species determines what we choose to save.

The dire state of taxonomy in the United States might be best illustrated by the Flora of North America, the definitive 30-volume attempt to name and describe every plant species here and in Canada. The project began in the 1980s, but it still hasn’t been completed because its contributors have struggled to secure consistent funding. By the time the last volume is completed in 2026, it will have to be revised immediately. For instance, its first volume, on ferns, released in 1993, is utterly out of date as new species have been discovered and nonnative species have moved in. Imagine trying to understand a 2024 Camry with a manual from 1993. That’s what botanists and conservationists trying to maintain biodiversity are working with.

I’m glad he added the last paragraph. Yes, taxonomy is important for conservation, but it’s important in all sorts of ways, and “knowing our world” pretty much covers it all.

*Reader Bill, who sent me this headline from KOCO in Oklahoma City, simply said, “Only in America. . .”. Indeed! Click to read:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has intimidated Baby Kulka

Hili: Kulka is under the stairs.
A: So what?
Hili: She is afraid of me.
In Polish:
Hili: Kulka jest pod schodami.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Boi się mnie.

And here is Baby Kulka:

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

From Malcolm:

From Cat Memes (if you do this to your cat, send in a photo):

From Jesus of the Day:  This is true only if the uranium is undergoing fission:

Masih retweeted this, and it shows Dr. Phil lecturing a Muslim about the butchery of October 7 was wrong! The Google translation is from his words:

“When someone jumps over a fence, enters a house and burns a baby in its crib, I don’t give a damn why they did it, it’s wrong.”

Two from Barry; this is the first in a whole thread of people’s favorite “Far Side” cartoons that were tweeted. I don’t usually post those cartoons myself as Gary Larson discourages it, but these are already up on X:

This insect obviously can spray something noxious:

From my feed. Pandas play just like human kids!

Also from my feed. Mama Cat doesn’t like that intrusive d*g:

From the Auschwitz Memorial; two small children gassed upon arrival:

Two tweets from Matthew. The first is one of a thread in which David Attenborough is dressed like an insect:

. . . and this is very clever:

WSJ report: the National Institutes of Health, in complicity with universities, appears to be breaking the law by using ethnicity as a criterion for hiring.

July 7, 2024 • 11:15 am

I guess I have to give the usual disclaimers here: yes, John Sailer is a conservative, and yes, it’s an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, whose op-eds are reliably on the Right. But of course where else will you learn things that the MSM won’t tell you? In this case, we learn that the National Institutes of Health, the largest government dispenser of research funds in America, is apparently funding hiring initiatives involving racial preferences. But how can they do that given that such hiring is illegal under Title VII? (And accepting students on the basis of race was recently deep-sixed by the Supreme Court.)

The way around this, according to Sailer’s article, is simply to fund “cluster hires,” which gives an institution a pot of money to hire several faculty at once, in hopes that doing so will bring in underrepresented minorities. Well, that’s fine (it casts a wider net), so long as people aren’t hired on the basis of their ethnicity itself.  But in the case of the National Institutes of Health, cluster-hire funding also requires that candidates proffer diversity statements, which of course allow universities to pick and choose using race, which is easily determined from diversity statements. (The University of Chicago prohibits this explicitly based on the Shils Report: our hires and promotions are to be based solely on research, teaching, contribution to the intellectual community, and university or department service).

Further, beyond the NIH’s end-run around race-based hiring, universities are making their own goals much more explicit, as Sailer found out by using the Freedom of Information Act to see what universities are doing vis-à-vis hiring.

If Sailer is wrong in his quotes and claims, he could be sued, and because he bases them on public records, I seriously doubt that his article is misguided.

Click the headline to read, or find the WSJ piece archived here. 

Here are some excerpts, showing how universities manage to hire based on ethnicity. One of them, to my horror, was Vanderbilt, which, headed by Chicago’s former Provost, has been a model of rationality, honesty, free speech, and adherence to academic and legal standards.

Sailer:

 . . . . there is evidence that many universities have engaged in outright racial preferences under the aegis of DEI. Hundreds of documents that I acquired through public-records requests provide a rare paper trail of universities closely scrutinizing the race of faculty job applicants. The practice not only appears widespread; it is encouraged and funded by the federal government.

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a large hiring initiative targets specific racial groups—promising to hire 18 to 20 scientists “who are Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander.” Discussing a related University of New Mexico program, one professor quipped in an email, “I don’t want to hire white men for sure.”

Both initiatives are supported by the National Institutes of Health through its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program, or First. The program gives grants for DEI-focused “cluster hiring” at universities and medical schools, promising eventually to spend about a quarter-billion dollars.

A key requirement is that recipient institutions heavily value diversity statements while selecting faculty. The creators of the program reasoned that by heavily weighing commitment to DEI, they could prompt schools to hire more minorities but without direct racial preferences. That’s the rationale behind DEI-focused “cluster hiring,” an increasingly common practice in academia. The documents—which include emails, grant proposals, progress reports and hiring records—suggest that many NIH First grant recipients restrict hiring on the basis of race or “underrepresented” status, violating NIH’s stated policies and possibly civil-rights law.

In grant proposals, several recipients openly state their intention to restrict whom they hire by demographic category. Vanderbilt’s NIH First grant proposal states that it will “focus on the cluster hiring of faculty from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, specifically Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander scientists.” The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Texas at Dallas jointly proposed hiring 10 scholars “from underrepresented groups,” noting that the NIH First program specifically identifies racial minorities and women as underrepresented.

But if you can’t use race as a criterion for hiring, why are DEI statements required? This still confuses me, for it’s not even a moderately disguised way to engage in the practice. If you go to the NIH First Awards page, you see a list of seven schools given FIRST awards for cluster hiring, and then this statement:

These awardee institutions will build self-reinforcing communities of scientists, through recruitment of cohorts of early-career faculty who are competitive for assistant professor positions and have a demonstrated commitment to inclusive excellence. The institutions are also building efforts to positively impact faculty development, retention, progression, and eventual promotion, as well as develop inclusive environments that are sustainable. Overall, the FIRST cohort awardees, together with the CEC  will work to determine if a systematic approach that integrates multiple evidence-based strategies including the hiring of faculty cohorts with demonstrated commitments to inclusion and diversity will accelerate inclusive excellence, as measured by clearly defined metrics of institutional culture change, diversity, and inclusion.

Unless you fell off the turnip truck, you’ll know that “inclusive” and “diversity” are simply code words for “racial diversity.”  But the code isn’t hard to break. This means that the government is, without explicitly admitting it, in the business of producing equity, which of course is against government regulations. In fact, the NIH affirms this ban (bolding is mine):

At its inception, NIH First was widely understood not to involve racial preferences. In 2020, shortly after the program was announced, Science magazine published an explanation: “Not all of the 120 new hires would need to belong to groups now underrepresented in academic medicine, which include women, black people, Hispanics, Native Americans, and those with disabilities, says Hannah Valantine, NIH’s chief diversity officer. In fact, she told the Council of Councils at its 24 January meeting, any such restriction would be illegal and also run counter to the program’s goal of attracting world-class talent.”

ILLEGAL is the relevant word here. Sailer goes on (again, bolding is mine):

Yet multiple programs have stated their intention to limit hires to those with “underrepresented” status. One job advertisement, for a First role at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, notes: “Successful candidates will be early stage investigators who are Black, Latinx, or from a disadvantaged background (as defined by NIH).”

And some universities make explicit the fact that they’re hiring based on race. Drexel, one of the seven schools that got a FIRST Award, makes it mandatory to be an underrespresented minority to be hired:

Some grantees even admit such preferences in documents sent to and reviewed by the NIH. A joint proposal from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the university’s Baltimore County campus states that all scientists hired through the program will meet the NIH’s definition of “underrepresented populations in science.” Drexel University’s program, which focuses on nursing and public health, provides its evaluation rubric in a progress report. Among its four criteria: “Candidate is a member of a group that is underrepresented in health research.”

This raises questions about compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race discrimination in employment. The First program’s website highlights regulations requiring that federal agencies ensure grant recipients comply with nondiscrimination law. The most basic implication is that universities can’t refuse to hire someone, or prefer one candidate over another, because of race or sex. But emails show that this has been happening.

This also occurs at the University of New Mexico (UNM), which appears to have been slapped on the tuches. Bolding is mine:

At the University of New Mexico, the First leadership team heavily scrutinized the race and sex of applicants. “Just to be sure: what was the ethnicity of Speech and Hearing’s first-choice candidate?” a UNM team member asked in an email.

“She identified as URM in her application, right? I am confused, maybe I am misremembering,” a team member wrote of a different candidate. Another responded, “It looks like she said she was a ‘native New Mexican.’ We checked, and she said she’s white.”

. . . UNM appears to have violated NIH First policy, which states that programs “may not discriminate against any group in the hiring process.” The UNM spokeswoman said in a statement that “the email correspondence among members of the UNM FIRST Leadership Team do [sic] not represent the University of New Mexico’s values nor does it comport with the expectations we have of our faculty” and that “as a result of this unfortunate circumstance,” the university is instituting a required “faculty search training/workshop for all . . . faculty search committee members.”

Hiring of underrepresented minorities is, of course, a form of discrimination—against people considered “white” or “white adjacent” (e.g., Asians).

And this goes on even for non-NIH-funded hires. One place is, as I said, Vanderbilt University, run by our former Provost, Daniel Diermeier. Does he know about this?

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a large hiring initiative targets specific racial groups—promising to hire 18 to 20 scientists “who are Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander.” Discussing a related University of New Mexico program, one professor quipped in an email, “I don’t want to hire white men for sure.”

For sure!

I’m pretty sure that Vanderbilt does know about this, because they refused to comment when asked. They do have a FIRST grant proposal in for a cluster hire, and it’s explicitly aimed at hiring those of “minoritized” groups, not including, of course, Asians or Jews (bolding is mine):

In grant proposals, several recipients openly state their intention to restrict whom they hire by demographic category. Vanderbilt’s NIH First grant proposal states that it will “focus on the cluster hiring of faculty from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, specifically Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander scientists.”

. . . Taken as a whole, these documents shed new light on the practice of cluster hiring. They explain why some in academia seem to treat the practice as a form of legal racial quotas. In addition to the responses already noted, representatives of the University of Maryland, UT Dallas and UT Southwestern said that their institutions comply with civil-rights laws and don’t discriminate on the basis of race. Drexel, Northwestern, Mount Sinai and Vanderbilt didn’t reply to inquiries.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m in favor of increasing all kinds of diversity—socioeconomic, ethnic, and viewpoint diversity. The more varied people you have, assuming that they meet quality standards, the more chance you can get an oddball idea that will move science forward. But in science, and particularly in the NIH—whose money goes entirely for health-related research—an increase in diversity is important only insofar as it is associated with an increase in the quality of research produced. You can get both only by widening the net, trying to attract more applicants. And in the end you must, according to law, hire people irregardless of their race, and, as the Shils Report specifies for Chicago, using only criteria associated with merit.

 

Fossil of giant fanged salamander found in Namibia

July 7, 2024 • 9:30 am

A giant salamander—and by “giant” I mean about 2.5-4 meters long—equipped with teeth and wicked fangs was found in Namibia, dated at about 270 million years ago, and just reported in Nature.  Its significance is that it is early, but is considered a “stem” tetrapod, meaning that it has some of the characteristics of modern amphibians, which are tetrapods (four-legged animals that could move around on land).  The authors, according to this CBS News story, suremise that it “was considerably longer than a person, and it probably hung out near the bottom of swamps and lakes”.  It was also an apex predator, meaning that it ate other animals, but there was nothing around that could eat it.

Its was found in an area that, 270 million years ago, was at high latitude, ergo cold and partly glaciated. This beast is the first suggestion that there was a tetrapod fauna in cold-ish climates at that time.

Click below to see the article, or download the pdf here:

The researchers recovered a skull that was about 60 cm (2 feet long), as well as the front part of the postcranial skeleton. The authors don’t give a size estimate, but with a two-foot head it was probably large, and could have been 12 feet long: the longest salamander known yet. (The largest living salamander, the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus), can attain a length of about 5 feet.  This puppy could have been twice as long.

Two skull fragments were known of this animal before, but it hadn’t been named and there were no remains of the skeleton. The authors named this one Gaiasia jennyae, after the Gai-As formation in which it was found, and also after Jenny Clack (1947-2020), who studied early tetrapods. (This, of course, will anger the pecksniffs who think that animals shouldn’t be named after people, but they can jump in the lake.) It is the only species in the genus Gaiasia.

The sample in the field (from the Supplementary information):

(From paper): B. Reassembling the ex situ type specimen of Gaiasia jennyae (F 1528)– a dorsal up skull with lower jaw and most of the articulated axial skeleton. C. In situ dorsal-up Gaiasia jennyae skull (F 1522) at locality shown in A. panorama. D. Type specimen of Gaiasia jennyae (F 1528) shown in B. after preparation. Note the differential compression of the skull roof. There is no evidence of pre-burial breakage or subaerial weathering. Scale bar =10cm.

Here’s the skull in dorsal (a,b) and ventral (c,d) views, and reconstructions.

From the paper: a,b, Skull in dorsal view. a, Photograph. b, Interpretative drawing. c,d, Skull in ventral view. c, Photograph. d, Interpretative drawing. e, Reconstruction of the articulated specimen in lateral view showing preserved elements of the skeleton. adsym, adsymphysial bone; an, angular; anf, angular fenestra; c1, anterior coronoid; c2, middle coronoid; caf, carotid artery foramen; chf, chordatympanic foramen; d, dentary; ept, ectopterygoid; exo, exoccipital; f, frontal; it, intertemporal; j, jugal; l, lacrimal; mx, maxilla; n, nasal; p, parietal; par, prearticular; pfr, prefrontal; pl, palatine; po, postorbital; pof, postfrontal; pp, postparietal; pospl, postsplenial; psph, parasphenoid; pt, pterygoid; qj, quadratojugal; sa, surangular; spl, splenial; sq, squamosal; st, supratemporal; t, tabular; v, vomer. Scale bars, 50 mm (a,c).

And a reconstruction of the skull and postcranial skeleton they found. Because we don’t have the posterior skeleton, length estimates are guesses.

Here are photos and a reconstruction of the lower jaw. The white circles show the fangs, which are indicated in the upper drawing. There were three on each side, and interlocking fangs on the top mandible as well. It ate by both suction and biting:

(From the paper): e, f. Photographs of the right hemimandible. e, Ventral view of the posterior half. f, Dorsal view of the symphyseal area. adsym, adsymphysial plate; an, angular; anf, angular fenestra; c1, anterior coronoid; c2, middle coronoid; chf, chordatympanic foramen; d, dentary; par, prearticular; pospl, postsplenial; sa, surangular; spl, splenial. Dotted white circles show the position of the symphysial fangs. Scale bar, 50 mm.

. . . and a reconstruction of the front of the animal from the paper. Remember, that fearsome head was about two feet long!

(From the paper): c, Artistic reconstruction of Gaiasia in lateral view; artwork by Gabriel Lio.

Now this is unlikely to be any kind of ancestor of reptiles, but it’s likely that this is one of several species occurring when tetrapods had already evolved from fish and one of its relatives probably gave rise to modern amphibians, while another gave rise to all modern reptiles (and after followed the evolution of birds and mammals). Its importance is not only the “gee whiz” factor, but also the indication that there was a thriving ecosystem at high latitudes about 270 myr ago. After all, this is an apex predator, and it had to eat something aquatic (fish or, perhaps, other early amphibians).  So if these creatures existed, there must also have been many other animals living at high latitudes at that time.