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.
Posting may be light today as it’s a busy day: I have to feed the dorm ducks, giving them extra water because it’s going to be hot (93° F, 34° C), and then we have to meet with Facilities this afternoon to see what the fate of Botany Pond is. I’m worried as they mentioned “duck deterrents” during the mating season. No baby ducks? Unthinkable! Besides, since the pond will be full of water there is no way in hell to keep ducks away from it.
Today sees the return of regular Mark Sturtevant, insect and arthropod photographer extraodinaire. His captions are indented and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.
Here are more pictures that are mainly from the previous summer. The first two pictures are nymphs of a predatory Hemipteran known as the Masked Hunter (Reduvius personatus). As nymphs, they decorate themselves with dirt or sand for concealment. The third picture shows an adult Masked Hunter. Although the nymphs are normally very difficult to find, both the nymph and the adult were found at my porch light at night. Most members of this family (Reduviidae, or assassin bugs) are slow and plodding, but Masked Hunters are surprisingly quick on their feet.
A “fen” is a special kind of wetland that is a bit different from what one might call a bog or a marsh. I have learned that defining these things is a delicate matter, but as I understand it a fen is sustained by water that percolates up from limestone, resulting in an alkaline pH. Fens are characterized by an array of specific and interesting plants (and insects, as we shall see). There is a park about 15 minutes from my house called Seven Lakes State Park, and it has several fens. One of them can only be accessed by a Secret Path through the woods, and I’ve never seen a trace of anyone else there so it is now “Sturtevant’s Fen”.
Once out of the woods, the higher ground surrounding Sturtevant’s Fen is sprinkled with a lovely orchid called the Grass Pink Orchid, Calopogon tuberosus, as shown in the next picture. This orchid is famously described as the “upside down orchid”, but that is all part of a great deception. Orchid flower anatomy is a bit different from other flowers, and I hope I get this right (feel free of course to correct me, someone). In orchids, the sepals and petals tend to look like petals, and male and female reproductive organs are fused into a single structure called the column that can be seen in this orchid as the curved structure at the bottom. But what about those bright yellow thingies on the top-most sepal that look like male anthers? They are the deception part of the story, and also why this is the upside- down orchid. What appears to be a flashy set of anthers that promise a rich pollen reward are actually lures, aimed at tricking bees. When a bee visits this flower, it will likely go after the false anthers, and this causes the sepal they are on to suddenly hinge down and whack the bee against the column. This results in sticky and inaccessible pollen sacs attaching to the back of the bee. The bee flies off, and if it visits another of these orchids it will likely make the same mistake by going after the false anthers (bees are not smart). It will get whacked again, and this results in the pollen sacs being transferred. Darwin would have loved this orchid!
Out on the fen proper, the ground becomes firm sand that is always under about a quarter inch of water. Your shoes will get wet. And among the dense stands of coarse sedge grasses are three different species of carnivorous plants! Most obvious among them are the numerous Pitcher Plants, Sarracenia purpurea, which are shown in the next two pictures. Early in the season, these have tall flower stalks with weird flowers. A feature of carnivorous plants is that they do not want to eat their pollinators, so they keep their flowers well away from their insect traps. I wonder if the weird shape of the flowers themselves are also designed to keep their pollinators from falling to their doom. Of course, the watery trap in each pitcher plant holds syrupy water with digestive juices and often lots of dissolved insects. Once I found a live maggot living inside one that was evidently there to feed on trapped insects.
Crowding around the bases of the pitcher plants are Sundews, another insect-eating plant shown in the next picture. They of course trap and digest insects with sticky hairs on their leaves. The Sundew here I think is Drosera rotundiflora. They too try to not kill their pollinators with flowers on tall stalks, but I have yet to see those.
How those two carnivorous plants trap prey is pretty obvious and well known. The third carnivorous plant is more subtle about it. Dotting the fen landscape are much scarcer but very distinct flowers, one of which is shown in the next picture. These belong to the horned bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta). Bladderworts are more aquatic, and they have tiny specialized vessels among their roots that trap and digest small aquatic prey.
But for me, the real attraction of my private fen is a very special little dragonfly. These are Elfin Skimmers (Nannothemis bella), and they are by far the smallest dragonfly in the U.S. The world’s smallest dragonfly is a close relative found in China, and it is not much smaller! Elfin Skimmers abound in Sturtevant’s Fen, which is as it should be. First, here is a female. These are suspected to be wasp mimics. Next is a male.
Although those tiny dragons were perched on grass blades, it may still be hard to convey how incredibly tiny these are for a dragonfly. So just for this post, I made a special trip back to Sturtevant’s fen with a butterfly net and very carefully captured the young female shown in the last picture. Look at your index finger. The body of that little dragon will hardly stretch across the width of your finger!
Welcome to the end of the work week: Friday, July 28, 2023. Today we meet with Facilities and see if they’ll meet their promise of having Botany Pond up and running by October. It’s National Milk Chocolate Day, celebrating a relatively recent invention:
The first use of the term “milk chocolate” was for a beverage brought to London from Jamaica in 1687, but it was not until the Swiss inventor Daniel Peter successfully combined cocoa and condensed milk in 1875 that the milk chocolate bar was invented.
In the EU, anything labeled “milk chocolate” must have at least 35% dry cocoa solids. In the U.S., it must have at least 10% by weight of chocolate liquor (not boozy!)
Fierce fighting raged Thursday in southeastern Ukraine, where a Western official said Kyiv has launched a major push and Russian President Vladimir Putin said “hostilities have intensified significantly.”
Battles in recent weeks have taken place on multiple points along the over 1,000-kilometer (over 600-mile) front line as Ukraine wages a counteroffensive with Western-supplied weapons and Western-trained troops against Russian forces who invaded 17 months ago.
Putin praised the “heroism” with which Russian soldiers were repelling attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region of the southeast, claiming Moscow’s troops not only destroyed Ukraine’s military equipment but also inflicted heavy losses to Kyiv’s forces.
. . .Ukrainian troops have made only incremental gains since launching a counteroffensive in early June, and Putin has repeatedly claimed Ukraine has suffered heavy losses, without offering evidence.
Ukraine has committed thousands of troops in the region in recent days, according to a Western official who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.
It was unclear how the current effort differs from previous ones by the Ukrainian military to break through deeply entrenched Russian defenses. The Russian army has set up vast minefields to stymie Ukrainian advances and used combat aircraft and loitering munitions to strike Ukrainian armor and artillery.
Ukrainian authorities have kept operational details of the counteroffensive under wraps, and they have released scant information about its progress.
That is all ye know on earth, but less than we need to know. So many lives for so little land taken back by Ukraine: it reminds me of World War I.
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump met on Thursday with officials in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, as federal prosecutors edged closer toward bringing an indictment against Mr. Trump in connection with his wide-ranging efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to three people familiar with the matter.
It was not immediately clear what subjects were discussed at the meeting or if Mr. Smith took part. But similar gatherings are often used by defense lawyers as a last-ditch effort to argue against charges being filed or to convey their version of the facts and the law.
On Thursday, the prosecutors were said to have listened courteously — without signaling their intentions beyond what they had conveyed in an earlier letter to the former president — as Mr. Trump’s lawyers made their arguments.
In a post following the meeting on his social media site, Mr. Trump said that his lawyers had “a productive meeting” with the prosecutors. He said they had explained to Mr. Smith’s team that “I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers, and that an indictment of me would only further destroy our country.”
As if that’s going to convince the prosecutors! But wait! There’s more!
The former president’s legal team — including Todd Blanche and a newly hired lawyer, John Lauro — has been on high alert since last week, when prosecutors working for the special counsel sent Mr. Trump a so-called target letter in the election interference case. It was the clearest signal that charges could be coming.
The letter described three potential counts that Mr. Trump could face: conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding and a Reconstruction-era civil rights charge that makes it a crime to threaten or intimidate anyone in the “free exercise or enjoyment” of any right or privilege provided by the Constitution or by federal law.
And don’t forget that concurrent with this is an indictment already handed down by the Justice Department charging Trump with holding onto 31 classified documents after he left office. Still, most readers here seem to think that Trump will never see jail time. Has anyone changed their mind?
*In a press conference Wednesday, Mitch McConnell froze, speechless, for 19 seconds. (Video below.) The Guardian reports that he’s had other episodes that suggest he’s not in a good way.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, suffered an initially unreported fall earlier this month, before a very public health scare this week revived questions about his age and fitness.
On Wednesday, while speaking to reporters at the US Capitol, the 81-year-old appeared to freeze for nearly 20 seconds. Another Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, a doctor, then escorted his leader away from the cameras.
Only four months ago, McConnell, who suffered from polio as a child, affecting his gait, fell and sustained a concussion, leading to a prolonged absence from Capitol Hill.
Here’s the video: 19 seconds of silence. Clearly something’s going on and one Twitterite thinks McConnell’s having a seizure.
On Wednesday, he returned to work and told reporters he was “fine” shortly after his incident. An aide told reporters McConnell “felt lightheaded and stepped away for a moment. He came back to handle Q and A.”
But NBC News then reported that McConnell also tripped and fell earlier this month, suffering a “face plant” while disembarking a plane at Reagan airport, according to an anonymous witness.
Another source told NBC McConnell now uses a wheelchair as a precaution in crowded airports. McConnell did not comment on the NBC report.
I don’t wish illness on anyone, including the tortoisian and conservative McConnell, but he really should retire.
*In an article that’s largely unreadable because of the surfeit of Māori words, the New Zealand Herald (the country’s main newspaper) announces a new initiative to legally protect Māori ‘treasures’ as well as well as mātauranga Māori (Māori “ways of knowing”)
Kaikohe’s Kohewhata Marae buzzed at the weekend as a decades-old challenge to the Crown marked an exciting step forward.
Political leaders, kaitiaki (guardians) and revered kaumātua of te ao Māori (the Māori world) gathered for the launch of Tiaki Taonga, a movement to foster understanding and engagement with the kaupapa of taonga (treasures) and protection of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge).
“I think today represents the beginning of the beginning,” said Te Rarawa’s Haami Piripi on Saturday.
“What today is doing is reinvigorating people’s interest [in Wai 262], regenerating their involvement and reactivating their inspiration.”
The movement, which was launched by Wai 262 – known as the flora, fauna and intellectual property rights claim – will also become the legislative framework which was sought through the claim made to Waitangi Tribunal in 1991.
. . .Waitai said Tiaki Taonga was about “constitutional change to fully recognise kaitiakitanga of taonga and mātauranga by Māori, for Māori”.
“Tikanga will be recognised by ture [law] so, in the future, when the use of taonga and mātauranga Māori are being considered, te iwi Māori will have exclusive authority over their use as guaranteed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and New Zealand law.”
The movement brings to life the Kanohi Ora engagements, which form an important stage in the Wai 262 constitutional development.
As the Kanohi Ora engagements take place throughout Aotearoa, input by iwi Māori will be sought through a serious of wānanga (seminars) for whānau, hapū and iwi to inform the protection framework.
“By listening to whānau, and understanding their shared experiences and opinions, we will help to build a framework informed by those who need this legislation to protect their taonga,” said Waitai, who’s also executive director of the Ngāti Kuri Iwi Trust Board.
Got that? (Remember, this is NZ’s most widely read newspaper. But what bothers me most is the claim that the Māori “way of knowing” was all-encompassing:
Alongside wānanga, technicians and practitioners are working simultaneously to build the world-first legislation on indigenous IP (intellectual property) protection.
Piripi, who is a Wai 262 Taumata Whakapūmau member, emphasised the presence of Māori knowledge, rights and interest prior to the arrival of Europeans.
“We had, at that time, an answer to everything, every problem. Every solution was in our paradigm, our Māori worldview.”
“I think Māori New Zealanders, and certainly non-Māori New Zealanders today, are failing to recognise that.”
“They’re failing to recognise the integrity of our rock of culture, and our expanse of knowledge.”
Piripi said the Government had a duty – for the country’s benefit – to protect the monumental knowledge held.
“The fact that we had our own explanation of the universe is a big deal,” he said.
I’m not sure what indigenous intellectual property involves, nor do they explain, but the claim that [the Māori] “had, at that time, an answer to everything, every problem. Every solution was in our paradigm, our Māori worldview” is a bogus claim. They didn’t know what matter was made of, the laws of physics, or anything about antibiotics or modern medicine. It may be a big deal that the Māori “had our own explanation of the universe”, but it wasn’t a thoroughly correct explanation of the Universe. (It had a lot of religion and superstition.) You are entitled to your own opinions, as someone said, but not your own facts.
I’m allowed to criticize this kind of pilpul because I’m both retired and not a Kiwi; otherwise I’d be in danger of losing my job.
This appears to be a binary left-right conflict. The right sees the abolition of D.E.I. as a step toward meritocracy, while the left sees it as an attack on minority rights. But moving beyond reflexive partisanship, there is a strong argument for abolishing D.E.I. programs on liberal grounds.
. . .The most significant question looming over this debate is one that, unfortunately, has rarely been posed by either critics or supporters of D.E.I. programs: What is the purpose of a university? For most of the classical liberal tradition, the purpose of the university was to produce scholarship in pursuit of the true, the good and the beautiful. The university was conceived as a home for a community of scholars who pursued a variety of disciplines, but were united in a shared commitment to inquiry, research and debate, all directed toward the pursuit of the highest good, rather than the immediate interests of partisan politics.
Today, many universities have consciously or unconsciously abandoned that mission and replaced it with the pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion. Many D.E.I. programs seem to be predicated on a view radically different from the liberal tradition: namely, that the university is not merely a home for the discovery of knowledge, but also a vehicle for activism, liberation and social change.
Note that DEI programs usually embody specific ideologies that are not to be questioned, and, in my view, violate the First Amendment if not academic freedom. Rufo goes through a lot of what he found in Florida, but I want to highlight his shoutout to the Kalven Report, the University of Chicago’s almost unique policy of institutional neutrality:
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases, there is more need than ever for clear policies. The application of the Kalven principles, in particular, will help depolarize academic institutions and relieve university administrators of the constant pressure to respond to every political controversy. Taken together, these policies will ultimately help public universities restore their reputation as stewards of scholarship, rather than political partisans.
These two proposals would honor the principles of liberal education, encourage a culture of open debate and cultivate a “community of scholars” with a wide diversity of opinions and a shared commitment to truth — something that both liberals and conservatives can and should support.
The U.S. team tied Netherlands 1-1 in the Women’s World Cup. Here are the hightlights, and the U.S. is still at the top of group E. If the U.S. loses against Portugal next week, they’re out of contention, though. The tournament is in New Zealand
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the cats are having a chinwag:
Szaron: What do you see there?
Hili: Deeper shade.
In Polish:
Szaron: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Głębszy cień.
And here is Baby Kulka:
And it’s a special day in Dobrzyn, for it’s the tenth anniversary of Listy z Naszego Sadu(Andrzej and Malgorzata’s website, “Letters from our orchard.” Malgorzata said this:
There is an article with a picture of you and Hili. It’s Andrzej’s article about 10 years of Listy. He decided that your picture with our Editor-in-Chief is the best illustration of the story.
The article is here, and here’s a partial English translation. I’m a proud boy! (Note that I’m wearing my Hili shirt.)
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From Merilee:
From Nicole:
From The Absurd Sign Project:
From Masih, not a hijab in sight! In Tehran!
Witness the intriguing scene in Tehran, Iran's subway! The regime uses religious songs to lure people towards Islamic ideology, but the youth boldly challenge their authority by defying the mandatory hijab. These are the girls of #WomanLifeFreedom revolution. pic.twitter.com/yfNkb2reyI
From Simon. Brian Cox retains a healthy skepticism towards the “UFOs” investigated by the government:
I keep being asked what I make of the UFO thing in Congress yesterday, so here it is: I watched a few clips and saw some people who seemed to believe stuff saying extraordinary things without presenting extraordinary evidence. Therefore I have nothing more to say, other than: It…
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 28, 2023
From Dr. Cobb, now out of cataract surgery and delighted with the results. The first tweet is about the possibility that Gregor Mendel “cooked” his genetic data (“pea-hacking,” as one wag said). See the thread for further discussion:
No-one has ever been able to replicate Gregor Mendel's observations of pea plants.
They're a little "too perfect", lacking even random statistical noise that would have been expected from small sample sizes.
Yesterday’s New Statesman, a liberal UK paper, has dueling essays by Richard Dawkins and Jacqueline Rose on whether there’s a sex binary (Dawkins says “yes,”, Rose “no”). I won’t go into into Dawkins’s background, as he’s a familiar figure here, but will note that Rose is a linguistics professor at Birkbeck College and “is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature.” One could argue that that’s not a background that allows one to pronounce on biological matters, but I’ve never been a big one for using bona fides as arguments.
The paper’s intro to the two essays is just this:
Note: We asked two thinkers to address one of the most vexed questions of our time: “What is a woman?”
Here, Richard Dawkins argues that biological sex represents a “true binary”. See here for Jacqueline Rose on why that binary should be challenged.
That’s not exactly two essays that answer the question, but who cares? Whether or not sex in animals is binary—and it is—is indeed a “vexing question,” but not because the biology is ambiguous. It isn’t. It’s vexing because people refuse to accept the binary nature of sex in animals (and nearly all plants) because it is wrongly seen to cast aspersions on people whose gender (note: not sex), does not conform to a binary of gender, in which there is more variation than in sex. This is something that Luana Maroja and I discuss in our Skeptical Inquirer paper (point 1), and I won’t go into it further, except that the biological definition of sex rests solely on gamete size, with males having small, mobile gametes and females large immobile gametes. Our paper also discusses why this distinction is made, and its biological implications. It also discusses why the sex binary has nothing to say about the societal aspects of gender.
If you think Richard has lost his elegance both prose and biological explanation with age, this article should dispel it. Click to read (it’s free):
It’s a succinct but engaging discussion of why the sex (gamete) binary evolved, the various mechanisms (environment, chromosomes, temperature) that lead to the binary, and the confusion around gender, a confusion between its linguistic and sociocultural uses, on top of which is extra confusion that I discussed in the last post—about what gender even means as a human behavioral/mental phenomenon. But he insists on a sex binary.
There’s only one small slip-up I found, and that’s where Richard says this (my bolding):
Obviously, Klinefelter (always male) and Turner (always female) individuals must be eliminated from counts of intersexes, in which case Fausto-Sterling’s estimate shrinks from 1.7 per cent to less than 0.02 per cent. Genuine intersexes are way too rare to challenge the statement that sex is binary. There are two sexes in mammals, and that’s that.
But genuine intersexes don’t challenge the statement that sex is binary. They aren’t classifiable as “male” or “female” (the author whose figures we relied on uses morphology or chromosome constitution as the criteria for “intersex”) but nor do they constitute a third sex. They are developmental anomalies that are not exceptions to the male/female binary. As Luana and I wrote:
Further, developmental issues can sometimes produce people who are intersex, including hermaphrodites. Developmental variants are very rare, constituting onlyabout one in 5,600 people (0.018 percent), and also don’t represent “other sexes.”
The binary abides.
But except for that quibble, the essay is on the money. Read it for yourself, learn some biology, and I’ll reproduce the ending:
. . . gender dysphoria is a real thing. Those who sincerely feel themselves born in the wrong body deserve sympathy and respect. I was convinced of this when I read Jan Morris’s moving memoir, Conundrum (1974). As what she called a “true transsexual”, she distanced herself from “the poor cast-aways of intersex, the misguided homosexuals, the transvestites, the psychotic exhibitionists, who tumble through this half-world like painted clowns, pitiful to others and often horrible to themselves”. Under “misguided” she might have added today’s unfortunate children who, latching on to a playground craze, find themselves eagerly affirmed by “supportive” teachers, and au courant doctors with knives and hormones. See Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020); Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls:Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021); and Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021). Many of us know people who choose to identify with the sex opposite to their biological reality. It is polite and friendly to call them by the name and pronouns that they prefer. They have a right to that respect and sympathy. Their militantly vocal supporters do not have a right to commandeer our words and impose idiosyncratic redefinitions on the rest of us. You have a right to your private lexicon, but you are not entitled to insist that we change our language to suit your whim. And you absolutely have no right to bully and intimidate those who follow common usage and biological reality in their usage of “woman” as honoured descriptor for half the population. A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes.
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And so onto Rose’s essay (click to read):
It’s immediately obvious that Rose and Dawkins are talking at cross-purposes, with Rose willing to accept transgender women as equivalent to biological women, and asserting that the denial of this is harmful. She takes the ability to change genders as somehow casting aspersions on the sex binary. Rose also layers all kinds of historical arguments on the word “woman,” none of which do anything wotjh refuting Dawkins’s arguments. It’s as if we have two different essays addressing two different questions. I’ll give some of Rose’s statements to show this (the bold headings are mine):
The argument from feminism:
Being a woman is at risk of becoming a protected category, as the binary man/woman hardens into place. This is happening even though it has always been a central goal of feminism to repudiate the very idea of womanhood, as a form of coercive control that means the end of freedom.
“Womanhood” here is clearly not the same thing as “biological woman”, but a gender stereotype. And there are plenty of feminists who accept the sex binary, even today! Finally, at least in the U.S. “sex” is a protected category.
The argument from societal pressure and aging:
It was Simone de Beauvoir who famously wrote, “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.” Whatever biology may dictate, becoming a woman is something that society, not nature, enjoins on all humans biologically classified as female, as it casts its oppressive diktats over them, mind, body and soul, layer upon layer. But the still-radical edge of de Beauvoir’s statement conceals its more conservative premise – “they become one” – which implies that “becoming a woman” is something that biological females, one way or another, manage to do, however restrictive their lives then become (de Beauvoir’s crushing account of those lives remains unsurpassed). Meanwhile, the idea that “female” is some kind of primordial condition remains, as if it were the bedrock of all the limitations to follow.
If a woman is an “adult human female,” then “becoming one” simply means becoming an adult. But what Rose is talking about here appears to be women conforming as they grow up to stifling social expectations. Again, this has nothing to do with the sex binary. In fact, note that Rose alludes to a sex binary here when saying “all humans biologically classified as female.” She reinforces this shortly thereafter:
To assume that “female” is a neutral biological category is, therefore, historically naive and racially blind. It not only drastically limits the options, but trails ugly histories behind it. The point is not to deny biological difference, but to refuse to wrench the term from the historical forces through which it takes on its myriad lived shapes.
What, then, is the biological difference she’s talking about? Isn’t it the sex binary?
The argument from transitioning. To Rose, changing genders, or “transitioning”, is more evidence against the sex binary. But in fact it isn’t, as transitioning usually means members of one biological sex adopting the traits of another. The question isn’t whether you can do that, but whether humans fall into two discrete classes at birth:
Far from being inevitable or always welcome, rigid sexual differentiation is one of the most insidious features of our social/sexual arrangements, grafting itself on to the biological body like a parasite. Challenging the binary by transitioning becomes one of the most imaginative leaps in modern society. Research published this June found that roughly 7 per cent of people changed sexual identity and/or orientation in the course of a six-year period in the UK. And that proportion is rising. According to the same study, the impulse to change sex does not show any sign of declining with age. People over 65, especially women, are almost as gender-fluid as the young. This suggests that the neat division of humans into women and men for most of a life is deferred by youth for as long as possible. Change then becomes permissible in old age when the individual has fulfilled the task of sexual conformity, which can then be left behind.
Transitioning may be challenging the binary, but it in no ways effaces it.
It’s very clear that Rose seems to accept that you’re born as male or female, but then society puts all kinds of complications on that fact, like sexism, the desire to transition, and patriarchal expectations. Yet none of this does anything to refute what Dawkins says. These are not dueling essays, but essays that have their swords pointed in different directions. One more quote from Rose:
But to claim that sexual differentiation is “reality” surely ignores that “reality” for feminism is something to be negotiated, struggled over, fought against. To claim the right to dictate on this matter is oppressive and omnipotent, and uncomfortably like the patriarchal order that feminism seeks to dismantle.
Here we have the postmodern conception of different realities: the reality of the sex binary that somehow is in contrast with the reality of womanhood as feminists conceive it. But Dawkins isn’t dictating the latter; he’s simply pointing out that people are born into one of two biological classes. If that truth is oppressive to Dr. Rose, well, it’s too bad. At least it gives her a lot of grist for her obscurantist mill.
There will be two posts on human biological sex today—at least if my exhaustion permits. Here’s the first.
I suppose this declaration by Keir Starmer will anger gender activists, especially those who insist that “a trans woman is a woman,” but it comports with common usage and avoids the fracas that the Scottish government got into last year when it declared (with court affirmation) that self-identification of a biological male as a woman, declared on a certificate, establishes the sex of a person. Here’s the declaration of Lady Haldane, a judge of Scotland’s Supreme Court, affirming the government’s decision.
“I conclude that in this context, which is the meaning of sex for the purposes of the 2010 Act, sex is not limited to biological or birth sex, but includes those in possession of a GRC [gender recognition certificate] obtained in accordance with the 2004 Act stating their acquired gender, and thus their sex,” she wrote.
Sex is not gender, for one thing, and you can’t change your gamete type by getting a gender recognition certificate, which is not about sex but about gender (see below).
Last year, the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, refused to define what a “woman” was, and although she was motivated by an admirable desire to protect the rights of trans women, she got into trouble for saying “I’m not going to. I’m just not going to get into this debate at a level that’s about simplified and lurid headlines.” Shortly thereafter she resigned, but of course she’d been assailed on many issues. The refusal to define “woman” is a hallmark of extreme gender activism, a fracas that Sturgeon and the Scottish government got itself into. Your either have to say that it’s an inborn biological trait or is the result of self-identification. Waffling means that you know there’s a conflict between the two.
Now, according to the Times of London (click on screenshot, though it’s mostly paywalled; perhaps judicious inquiry will yield the piece), Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has gone along with the Tories by not only refusing to accept self-declaration of sex (or gender, if you will), but also giving its own definition of “woman”, one that, in my view, is pretty correct in a biological sense:
Here’s the central bit:
Sir Keir Starmer has said that “a woman is an adult female” as he hardened his stance on gender.
The Labour leader insisted that biological women needed single-sex spaces and ruled out introducing self-identification for changing gender.
At Labour’s national policy forum at the weekend, the party formally ditched a policy of self-ID, which would have allowed people to change their legal gender without the need for a medical diagnosis of dysphoria.
Starmer cited controversy over the Scottish government’s law introducing self-identification, which was blocked by Rishi Sunak, and said he disagreed with Scottish Labour’s decision to support the reform.
“We don’t agree, we don’t think that self-identification is the right way forward,” Starmer said. He added that he had “reflected on what happened in Scotland”.
The Labour leader has been shifting position since struggling to say in 2021 whether a woman could have a penis, before declaring this year that 99.9 per cent of women “haven’t got a penis”.
Challenged on a BBC Radio 5 Live phone-in, Starmer went further. “Firstly, a woman is an adult female, so let’s clear that one up,” he said.
The party would “keep it a medical process” to change gender, Starmer said, while adding that he wanted to “modernise” the Gender Recognition Act and “get rid of some of the indignities in the process”.
The weekend’s policy discussion has “allowed us to be clear that there should be safe places, safe spaces for women, particularly in relation to violence against women”, he added.
Citing his own experience prosecuting violence against women as director of public prosecutions, Starmer said he felt “very strongly” about the need for safe spaces and that “biological women who have been subjected to violence against women and girls want a safe space where they can feel . . . that they are properly supported and protected”.
Asked what women needed to be protected from, Starmer raised the case of Isla Bryson, a rapist who was moved from a female to a male prison after a public outcry.
Starmer’s definition comports with that of the Oxford English Dictionary, whose first definition is this one:
The statement is not perfect (Starmer could have said “a woman is an adult human female”, as we don’t speak of “women flies”; and he could have recognized the obvious earlier instead of waffling). But at least there’s a recognition that one can change gender, though Starmer says that that would require a medical process (some would disagree), and a recognition that in some cases, like prisons and safe houses, biological women need safe spaces that don’t include trans women (I would add sports).
And the concept of “gender” is currently subject to lot of debate: is it a social sex role or a self-identification that isn’t clearly connected with how you behave in society? Or all of the above? And what does Starmer mean by “medical process”? Does a psychological analysis count as a medical process (remember, psychiatrists are doctors), or do you need hormones and/or surgery? I would, for example, avoid all this debate by calling what most call a “trans woman” as someone who has medically transitioned to living in a female sex role”. That avoids self-identification as the sole criterion for your “role”.
But despite this quibbling, Starmer’s statement is a good one, particularly the emphasis on using the definition to provide safe spaces for women.
And I would add that I don’t consider this discussion transphobic, though some will. I agree with J. K. Rowling’s statement—except of course for the last two sentences:
I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth,” she tweeted. “The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women—i.e., to male violence—‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences—is a nonsense.”
She continued, “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
I have many promises from readers to send photos in, but I haven’t called in the promissory notes. Do send me any good wildlife photos you have.
Today we have part 4 of Tony Eales’s recent safari to Botswana (part 1 is here, part 2 is here, and part 3 is here). To me this is the culmination: Victoria Falls!
Tony’s narrative is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Safari Part IV: Chobe and Victoria Falls
Chobe is an amazing national park famous for its large population of elephants and having lions that specialise in hunting elephants:
Our best viewings of wildlife were along the Chobe River, the south side of which is in Botswana and the opposite shore, Namibia. Young giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis ssp. giraffa) sparring on the banks of the Chobe River.
And young impala (Aepyceros melampus) also sparring:
From the high banks we could watch giant herds of buffalo:
The riverbank also had a large troop of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus ssp. griseipes) allowing close up views of family like and squabbles.
And by the riverside the sunsets were amazing as the large mammals started to get active again:
On the Zimbabwe border we bid farewell to our guides and safari truck and after processing we got into a minibus and went to the tourist township of Victoria Falls. Several of the group decided to hire a taxi together and visit the falls that afternoon. The entrance had long lines and where the taxi dropped us hawkers came and asked us if we wanted to hire a raincoat for 3USD. Most were thinking “How wet can it really be?” but I thought that it was probably a good idea and in the end we all hired raincoats. The entrance looked cheesy with faux rocks and vines rendered in concrete giving it a bit of a discount Flintstones look, and entry for foreigners was an eyewatering 50USD each. We got in and went through the kiosk and gift store, following the rising sound of the falls and the ever-present sound of helicopters.
All I can say is that $50 seems cheap now, the first glimpses of the falls were jaw-dropping. we looked out on massive thundering falls with unmeasurable amounts of water plummeting into invisible depths, obscured as the bottom was by the clouds of spray. Above it all a great rainbow.
Picking up our jaws from the floor we soon realised that this represented perhaps a tenth of the falls and only the first of some 20 odd viewing spots along about a kilometre and a half of cliff-face that looked across directly at the face of the falls.
We were all giggling and babbling, almost running from one viewing spot to the next, through a rainforest created entirely by the spray of the falls:
Each viewing spot got progressively more of the spray until the last spot was basically like a tropical downpour:
And that was the trip. We saw so much wildlife, experienced a world very different from the one I grew up with or that I see represented anywhere on tv or in the media and marvelled at landscapes at once familiar but also alien.
I’ve travelled a lot of the world and you could say that about anywhere, the world is a wonderful and awe-inspiring place but even so, there’s something extra special about sub-Saharan Africa that’s not like anything I’ve seen before. What a place!
Israel’s Supreme Court said Wednesday that it would begin in September to review a contentious new law that diminishes the court’s own role, setting the stage for a constitutional crisis and renewed social turmoil if the judges then overturn the legislation.
The decision sets up a looming clash between the executive branch of government and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court must now decide whether to reassert its dominance over Prime Minister Benjamin’s Netanyahu’s government — or it must accept the move to reduce its own power.
The court’s announcement came in response to the decision on Monday, by Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, to pass a deeply divisive bill that stops the court from overruling government decisions with the legal standard of “reasonableness.” The government said the term, never defined in a statute, was too subjective and gave unelected judges too much leeway to overrule elected lawmakers.
. . .on Wednesday afternoon, the court announced on its website that it would hear two of the petitions in September. An exact date has yet to be set, and the court did not announce which of its 15 judges would hear the petitions or how long the process would last. The court often takes weeks if not months to reach a decision.
The court has not issued an injunction barring the law from coming into effect, as some opponents had hoped. The hearing’s date will be set in the coming days, a Supreme Court spokesman said.
If the court strikes down the law, Mr. Netanyahu’s government will be forced to decide whether to respect the decision of an institution that it is trying to restrain. And should the government reject the court’s ruling, Israel’s other key institutions — its military, police, civil service and lower courts — will in turn need to decide whether to obey the country’s executive or judicial branch.
I’m wondering why more people don’t object to the Court using the term “reasonableness”, which needn’t be explained, to overturn laws and ministerial appointments. It’s as if the Supreme Court of the U.S., without a suit being brought, could strike down any law it wanted because it was “unreasonable”—without giving a written explanation. I’m wondering if this fracas (and the discussion has been going on for three decades) wouldn’t be taking place if the Prime Minister wasn’t perceived as right wing.
But get a load of this: as Adam Shinar says in a NYT op-ed:
As the bill cleared Parliament 64-0 — all 56 opposition members walked out to boycott the vote — petitions challenging the legislation were quickly submitted to the Supreme Court in the hope that it would strike down the new law. That hope, however, may be dashed.
All the proposed components of the overhaul — a concerted effort to entrench the government’s hold on power — are amendments to the Basic Laws, the body of legislation that serves as Israel’s de facto constitution. The Supreme Court striking down an amendment to a Basic Law is tantamount to accepting the idea of an “unconstitutional constitutional amendment”: theoretically possible, but incredibly unlikely. It’s true the court has declared it has the power to invalidate amendments to the Basic Laws, but only on very narrow grounds, such as denial of the identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Well, what do I know? I’m not even sure, after making inquiries, whether that last contention about the unlikelihood of the court overruling the new laws is even accurate.
*Hunter Biden’s plea deal with the government, in which he’d plea guilty to tax charges and the government would drop gun charges, is now in jeopardy.
A federal judge on Wednesday delayed accepting a plea deal for President Biden’s son Hunter, saying the terms as written by prosecutors and defense lawyers may not be constitutional, but also signaling the agreement could be approved in the future.
The deal that had been struck in June began to unravel near the start of the three-hour hearing. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked a series of questions that revealed a disagreement between federal prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers over whether the agreement — in which he would plead guilty to two tax misdemeanorsand likely avoid jail time — would protect him from the possibility of additional criminal charges.
While the judge pressed the prosecutors and defense attorneys to resolve the immunity issues, she also expressed concern that they had crafted a two-step plea deal in which some key features may not be reviewable by the court.
The sides had proposed that Biden would plead guilty to the tax charges in a fairly standard agreement that requires the judge’s approval. Separately, they crafted a “diversion agreement” with Biden’s attorneys in which the president’s son would admit to wrongdoing in the gun case and agree to certain conditions, including not purchasing a firearm and not using drugs, to avoid actually being charged with unlawful possession of a firearm.
The rub is that this second agreement is highly aberrant and may be unconstitutional:
A provision of the gun diversion agreement said that if Biden failed to remain drug free and meet other conditions for the next two years, the judge would determine whether he had broken the terms of the deal and tell prosecutors they could revive the gun charge against him.
But Noreika questioned whether she could lawfully do that, given that she is not a party to the diversion agreement and judges generally are not responsible for pursuing criminal charges.
It’s still possible, however, that this could still be fixed without the President’s son going to jail.
The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.
Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.
Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.
Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.
At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”
I do wonder (haven’t you?) whether there is an excessive amount of secrecy attending these sightings. Perhaps, if they’re analyzing our enemies’ secret airplanes, they want to keep it to themselves.
Heavy fighting continues in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, especially around the village of Robotyne, where Ukrainian forces have been trying to break through heavily mined Russian defensive lines, according to Ukrainian and Russian accounts.
“We came close to Robotyne. Have not yet entered the settlement itself. Fighting continues in trench positions in front of Robotyne,” Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which is involved in the offensive, told CNN.
Ukrainian forces are also “gradually advancing” in the Melitopol and Berdiansk directions, Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said. Farther east, Ukraine is “making progress” and consolidating its positions in the area of Staromaiorske, she added.
Ukrainian forces have made only modest territorial advances in the south since the counteroffensive began at the end of May.
The Ukrainian Air Force has issued a warning that powerful Russian Kinzhal missiles have been fired toward the Khmelnytskyi and Kirovohrad regions in western Ukraine, as well as at the capital of Kyiv.
Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, said the latest volley involved a variety of types of missiles launched from different areas and changing direction.
Explosions have been reported in the western Khmelnytskyi region in Ukraine, hours after the Ukrainian Air Force had warned that Russian strategic bombers were airborne.
More than 40 Ukrainian companies have contracts to develop drones for use in the war against Russia, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
Shmyhal appeared at a forum marking the first anniversary of the “Army of Drones” project that brought together Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturers. The prime minister said the production of UAVs has since increased tenfold.
Both surveillance and attack drones have played a critical role for both sides in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, assisting with targeting enemy weapons, tracking the movement of units and taking out armor.
Shmyhal said the Ukrainian government has allocated about $1 billion this year for investing in Ukrainian UAV manufacturers.
And more:
SBU says it carried out October attack on Crimea bridge: The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has acknowledged its involvement in the attack on the Crimean bridge in October last year. “SBU officers have been destroying the enemy in the hottest spots and doing everything to liberate our land as soon as possible. The destruction of the Crimean bridge is one of our achievements,” said SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk.\
Kyiv denies losses in northeast: The Ukrainian military has denied the loss of three settlements in the northeastern part of the country, near Kupyansk. The denial came after Russian officials and Ukrainian sources reported Moscow’s troops had forced Kyiv’s forces to retreat several kilometers, abandoning three small settlements in the process.
*Singapore has just hanged a man for drug trafficking, and is about to hang a woman for the same offense. You probably know that the country has draconian rules for trafficking, with as little as a pound of marijuana bringing you a mandatory death sentence. Look at this!
More adventurous Singaporeans might think that the laws under the MDA only apply within Singapore, and that they can get away scot-free by consuming drugs overseas. This cannot be further from the truth.
Under section 8A of the MDA, a Singapore citizen or permanent resident who consumes drugs abroad will be dealt with as if that offence had been committed within Singapore and punished accordingly.
From the CNN report:
Singapore executed a man Wednesday for drug trafficking and is set to hang a woman Friday — the first in 19 years — prompting renewed calls for a halt to capital punishment.
Mohammed Aziz Hussain, 56, was hanged at Singapore’s Changi Prison and has been buried, said activist Kirsten Han of Transformative Justice Collective, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore. A citizen of the city-state, he was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking around 50 grams (1.75 ounces) of heroin, Han said.
Saridewi Djamani, a 45-year-old Singaporean woman, is due to be hanged Friday after she was convicted and sentenced in 2018 for trafficking around 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of heroin, the group and other human rights organizations said. Han said the last woman known to have been hanged in Singapore was 36-year-old hairdresser Yen May Woen, also for drug trafficking, in 2004.
. . .If Djamani’s is executed as planned, Singapore will have executed 15 people for drug offences since it resumed hangings in March 2022, an average of one execution every month, Transformative Justice Collective, Amnesty International and seven other groups said in a joint statement.
Anyone — citizens and foreigners alike — convicted of trafficking more than 500 grams (17.64 ounces) of cannabis and 15 grams (0.53 ounces) of heroin faces the mandatory death penalty.
Singapore justifies this capital punishment because it’s near the “Golden Triangle,” an area of drug trafficking. But they haven’t shown that the death penalty is a deterrent. In fact, they’ve had about one execution per month for drug crimes since March of last year.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is jesting:
A: Where are you running to?
Hili: To the computer.
A: What for?
Hili: I have to ask AI where the source of the truth is.
In Polish:
Ja: Dokąd biegniesz?
Hili: Do komputera.
Ja: Po co?
Hili: Muszę zapytać A.I. gdzie jest źródło prawdy.
********************
From Divy:
A B. Kliban cartoon from Stash Krod:
From Thomas:
From Masih; another Iranian protestor loses an eye:
"When I gaze into the mirror, I brim with pride for sacrificing my eye in pursuit of freedom." Meet Zaniar Tondro, the fearless 17-year-old protester who stood unwavering during the Iran protests, despite losing an eye. #WomanLifeFreedom@z_tondropic.twitter.com/BwnU8kGiek
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 26, 2023
Tweets from Dr. Cobb, getting new eye lenses (cataract operation). His comment on this one: “One of the most bizarre pretexts for a study I have ever seen. The real question of course is HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK YOUR EARS WEIGH?” I don’t think he meant “ears.”
How much do you think your hands weigh? You are almost certainly wrong. https://t.co/qVow1xNc6u
According to the BBC, Sinéad O’Connor has left this vale of tears at 56. This is incredibly young (her 17 year old son died, an apparent suicide, last year), and the cause of death was not given.
Irish singer and activist Sinéad O’Connor has died at the age of 56.
In a statement, the singer’s family said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad.
“Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
She was best known for her single Nothing Compares 2 U, released in 1990, which went on to hit number one around the world.
Taoiseach (Irish PM) Leo Varadkar paid tribute to her, saying her music “was loved around the world and her talent was unmatched and beyond compare”.
I wasn’t a big fan, but I do remember seeing this live:
In 1992, one of the most notable events of her career took place when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on the US TV show Saturday Night Live, where she was the invited performer.
Following an acapella performance of Bob Marley’s War, she looked at the camera and said “fight the real enemy”, a protest against the Catholic Church.
The incident resulted in her being banned for life by broadcaster NBC and protests against her in the US.
“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she said in an interview with the New York Times in 2021.
