deBoer disses “equal opportunity”

July 26, 2023 • 12:00 pm

Freddie deBoer has written a commentary on equal opportunity, a situation that I’d much like to obtain in America.  Sure, it’s got problems, but isn’t it better than what we have now? What if every kid had access to a good school, and the chance to take music, algebra, and a culture that didn’t discourage education?

For reasons I can’t understand, deBoer doesn’t like it. Why? Because if there is equal opportunity, there would be losers as well as winners! Read for yourself by clicking:

The problem:

I’m also particularly not a fan of the concept of equality of opportunity. This has always been the standard liberal saw against socialism and other kinds of radically egalitarian politics – we don’t want everyone to end up summatively equal in all respects, but we want everyone to have an equal chance to be all that they might be thanks to their abilities and work ethic. I think that the equality of opportunity/equality of outcomes distinction actually falls apart with a moment’s inspection, as I’ll get to. But even if we accept the concept on its own terms, it has a remarkably dark side that nobody ever wants to engage with.

And what’s the dark side?

The part that never gets discussed is the obverse: what happens if someone reaches their potential by becoming a D+ student who just barely graduates from high school and ends up a ditch digger making $24,000 a year? What if a life spent in material deprivation and constant financial insecurity is the outcome of a genuinely equal opportunity? What if someone’s potential is correctly fulfilled when they end up in a life that’s barren of wealth, stability, and success? If equality of opportunity means anything, then it must include such outcomes. I constantly have to make this point when discussing education, a field where failure is seen as inherently a matter of injustice and yet one where there will always be a distribution of performance – a distribution with a bottom as well as a top. What if someone faces a completely equal playing field and, through the full expression of their talent and hard work, ends up totally ill-equipped for the job market?

There’s more, but one more bit:

But the person who gets all of the required opportunity and still struggles his way to a life of destitution is just as much a story of equal opportunity as that one.

As I said, even beyond that, there’s basic problems. Core to that whole conception of justice is the notion that talent and hard work are something inherent to the individual or under the control of the individual. But if we accept that there’s any sort of genetic component to talent at all, and we certainly should, it’s hard to see how rewarding talent falls under a rubric of distributing resources to people based on that which they can control. Talent, however defined, has always looked like just another fickle gift of nature, to me, and thus using it to hand out scarce goods is no more just than hereditary nobility. If someone suffers from complications during their birth such that they have a severe cognitive disability that prevents them from flourishing, few people would see their impoverishment as a just example of equal opportunity. But if someone is born with a genetic makeup that predisposes them to do very poorly in school and meritocracy, how is that any different?

deBoer doesn’t discuss “equity” (representation of all groups by their proportion in the population), but I have a few things to say about deBoer’s piece.

First, what would he replace “equality of opportunity” with?  Sure, some people would fail, and others succeed, and in the end that all depends on the laws of physics. But rewarding success and talent, even if it be through no “will” of the person alone, manages to rewire the brains of other people who also want rewards, so rewarding merit is a rising tide that lifts all boats. The person born with a bad genetic makeup or cognitive disability may not do that well, but there’s a solution for that (see below). And, of course, our desire to “do better” is a product of natural selection, assuming that status and “stuff” are proxies for reproductive success.

Second, no society that functions well will ensure that everyone gets exactly equal amounts of goods and services. Those are limited, and if you can’t strive to do better than you’re doing, you now only lose incentive, but also lose incentive to invent something that you think might be popular.  But in the main, what about a society in which you afford people not only equal opportunity, but guarantee them a minimal amount of income, housing, and healthcare so that they don’t suffer. This, I think, is the Scandinavian model. It combines equality of opportunity with just enough “equity” to ensure that nobody starves to death or has a useless life.  Except for the severely disabled, there’s a job for nearly everyone, though yes, not all those jobs are satisfying.

Here are the world’s ten happiest countries for 2023.  I don’t know about social welfare in all of these places, but six of them are in Scandinavia.  All of them, as far as I know, have a free and open economy with lots of opportunity, but also good social welfare systems. And all of them, also as far as I know, have free government healthcare (correct me if I’m wrong).

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Israel

5. Netherlands

6. Sweden

7. Norway

8. Switzerland

9. Luxembourg

10. New Zealand

The big problem with this article, unusual for a piece by the thoughtful deBoer, is that he makes the perfect the enemy of the good. What is his alternative to equal opportunity? Strict communism? Hasn’t worked!

h/t: Mike

California community colleges go off the rails with DEI

July 26, 2023 • 9:30 am

This could be a long article if I summarized all the mishigass going on in the community college system of the state of California, but I’ll try to be brief and put the items in numbered form. The upshot is that the system has thrown its hat entirely in the DEI ring, making all faculty and staff pledge fealty not just to DEI, but to the extreme Ibram Kendi-an view of DEi. And if you don’t obey they’re rules for behaving as an “antiracist”, you could be demoted, fired, or denied tenure. To me, this is a clear and wide-ranging violation of both freedom of speech and academic freedom. (Remember the community college system is part of state government and so must obey the Constitution.)

1.) A lawsuit against California Community Colleges (CCC). The editorial board of the WSJ describes a situation that some might dismiss simply because of the newspaper’s conservative op-ed column, but that would be a mistake. Why? Because the facts check out completely, even on the CCC’s website. See below. Click to read:

An excerpt:

Critics of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis argue he has gone too far in trying to root out “wokeness” from public universities, but look to California to see where academic groupthink is going if left unchecked. A legal complaint filed this month by a history professor in Bakersfield says that his community college’s performance and tenure reviews are being used to force faculty to adopt woke progressive values in their classrooms.

Daymon Johnson has been at Bakersfield College since 1993. As he tells it, three months ago California Community Colleges, which serves 1.8 million students at 116 campuses, amended its regulations so employees must espouse its tenets of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA). “Faculty members shall employ teaching, learning, and professional practices that reflect DEIA and anti-racist principles,” the regulations say. Schools must “place significant emphasis on DEIA competencies in employee evaluation and tenure review.”

A detailed baseline explanation of that last policy was soon distributed to faculty, including at Bakersfield College. “The DEI competencies provided in this document are meant to define the skills, knowledge, and behaviors that all California Community College (CCC) employees must demonstrate,” it says, according to the copy attached as an exhibit to Mr. Johnson’s lawsuit. Here are a few of the items it lists as markers of success for faculty and staff:

• “Promotes and incorporates DEI and anti-racist pedagogy.”

• “Develops and implements a pedagogy and/or curriculum that promotes a race-conscious and intersectional lens.”

• “Contributes to DEI and anti-racism research and scholarship.”

• “Articulates the importance and impact of DEI and anti-racism as part of the institution’s greater mission.”

• “Advocates for and advances DEI and anti-racist goals and initiatives.”

• “Leads DEI and anti-racist efforts by participating in DEI groups, committees, or community activities that promote systemic and cultural change to close equity gaps and support minoritized groups.”

• “Participates in a continuous cycle of self-assessment of one’s growth and commitment to DEI and acknowledgement of any internalized personal biases and racial superiority or inferiority.”

Mr. Johnson opposes it all and is suing with help from the Institute for Free Speech. “Professor Johnson cannot satisfy DEIA standards based on the state Chancellor’s DEIA competencies without violating his conscience and surrendering his academic freedom,” his filing says. “Almost everything Professor Johnson teaches violates the new DEIA requirements—not just by failing to advance the DEIA and anti-racist ideologies, but also by criticizing them.”

He doesn’t want to change his “classical pedagogy that stresses the study of ‘truth, goodness, and beauty.’” He doesn’t want to engage in DEIA “self-reflection,” which “he views as religious-like and little more than neo-Marxist re-education on race.” He doesn’t want to “articulate” the antiracism credo, which he believes is “antithetical to Bakersfield College’s mission and the American national ideal not to discriminate and provide equal opportunity for all regardless of the melanin in a person’s skin.”

To see what Johnson is being asked to adhere to, follow the links given below.

2.) The CCC mission as stated on its page (click below):

These seems pretty innocuous at first, or at least in line with the stuff going on in other places, but this is extreme.

The Chancellor’s Office is equipping districts and colleges with the tools and support they need to create equity-centered, anti-racist policies and practices, including:

  • Embedding DEIA competencies and criteria into employee evaluations and tenure review processes.
  • Updating the student grievance process to provide clear steps for students to raise concerns and resolve acts of racism, microaggressions and discomfort
  • Re-evaluate and embed DEIA in district equal employment opportunity (EEO) plans to demonstrate an ongoing, action-oriented commitment to EEO and DEIA.
  • Encouraging more mentorship opportunities between students and faculty.
  • Provide professional learning resources focused on institutional bias, structural racism, and their impact on campus culture and student success.

The requirements for faculty and staff are extreme, and their success on the job rests on adhering to a strict form of Critical Race Theory.  First, here’s a 4-minute video showing a number of CCC staff discussing the new policy. It starts off innocuously, discussing the pandemic, fires, and other natural disasters. Only then does it get to the bee of DEI (0:39).

What struck me most strongly was the repeated assertion that you need to be surrounded by mentors and faculty in which they “can see themselves reflected.” What they mean is that students require an environment filled with others of their own ethnicity if they are to succeed. This shows clearly that “diversity” here means not just “racial diversity” (forget about intellectual, religious, or socioeconomic diversity), but “racial diversity that can be discerned by looking at peoples’ appearances”.

This is about as far from being “color blind” as you can imagine, but if you check the links below, you’ll see in the definition of “color blind” that Martin Luther King’s plea for ignoring skin color is immediately binned by the CCC.  The explicit assumption is that students cannot feel that they belong at a university unless they see many people who “look like them.”

3.) There is an approved glossary of terms on the CCC website. There are too many to show, but check it out. I’ll give but three. This was all distributed to the faculty and staff.

The first two are straight out of Kendi with its emphasis on the ubiquity of structural racism and the claim that if you are not actively opposing racism, you’re a racist yourself

Anti-Racist: Person who actively opposes racism and the unfair treatment of people who belong to other races. They recognize that all racial groups are equal (i.e. nothing inherently superior or inferior about specific racial groups) and that racist policies have caused racial inequities. They also understand that racism is pervasive and has been embedded into all societal structures. An anti-racist challenges the values, structures, policies, and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism, and they are also willing to admit the times in which they have been racist. Persons that say they are ‘not a racist’ are in denial of the racial problems and inequities that exist.

Anti-Racism: A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas. Practicing antiracism requires constantly identifying, challenging, and upending existing racist policies to replace them with antiracist policies that foster equity between racial groups.

If you don’t do constantly engage in such activities, your denying the existence of racism and inequities, and the implication (à la Kendi) is that “if you’re not an antiracist, you’re a racist”).

Color Blindness: Is a racial ideology that assumes the best way to end prejudice and discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity. This ideology is grounded in the belief that race-based differences do not matter and should not be considered for decisions, impressions, and behaviors. However, the term
“color blind” de‐emphasizes, or ignores, race and ethnicity, a large part of one’s identity and lived experience. In doing so, it perpetuates existing racial inequities and denies systematic racism.

Bye, bye, MLK.  Colorblindness is said here to perpetuate racism. I don’t think they understand what “treating individuals as equally as possible” really means in academia. It does NOT mean ignoring differences in background or understanding.

I find this one offensive and patronizing, implying that nonwhite students cannot be judged by merit, but must be held to lower standards.

Merit: A concept that at face value appears to be a neutral measure of academic achievement and qualifications; however, merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality. Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards (i.e., the use of standardized tests that are biased against racial minorities) and as highlighted by anti-affirmative action forces. Merit implies that White people are deemed better qualified and more worthy but are denied opportunities due to race-conscious policies. However, this understanding of merit and worthiness fails to recognize systemic oppression, racism, and generational privilege afforded to Whites.

The site also says that “race” is a pure social construct, and that “there are no distinctive genetic characteristics that truly distinguish between groups of people.”  That, of course, is a flat-out lie. The classical human races, or even ethnic groups, are not absolutely distinguishable by single genes, but using constellations of genes allows one to place both ethnicity and geographic origin with substantial accuracy, as Luana and I discuss in our paper. (Of course we deny the assertion of the CCCC that “race presumes human worth and social status for the purpose of establishing and maintaining privilege and power.”

4.) And the CCC’s vision for DEI, mandating how its employees must behave if they’re to succeed. If you look at only one thing, look at this document mandating proper behavior for employees.  If you don’t adhere, you’ll disappear.

Here’s the intro:

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION COMPETENCIES AND CRITERIA The DEI competencies provided in this document are meant to define the skills, knowledge, and behaviors that all California Community College (CCC) employees must demonstrate to work, teach, and lead in a diverse environment that celebrates and is inclusive of diversity (See Table 1). During the evaluation and tenure review process, employees will be able to demonstrate they have met the DEI competencies using concrete examples based on DEI criteria provided in this document (See Table 2). As aforementioned, the subgroup participated in activities to develop the DEI competencies and criteria. In partnership with the Chancellor’s Office, the Success Center analyzed and categorized the subgroup’s responses from activities using thematic coding. Responses that shared a common theme were grouped together under an overarching thematic code, and a description was created for each thematic code. In addition, each competency and criteria was assessed as to whether it applies to faculty, staff (including administrators), or both employee types. The most common themes that emerged for DEI Competencies were Cultural Competency, Self-reflection, and Self-Improvement. The most common themes that emerged for DEI Criteria are Service, Self-assessment, and DEI Environment.

These requirements apply to both faculty and staff except for the third:

Self-reflection
Theme applies to both faculty and staff.

Recommended Description

• Engages in self-assessment of one’s own commitment to DEI and internal biases, and seeks opportunities for growth to acknowledge and address the harm caused by internal biases and behavior.

 

 Self-improvement
Theme applies to both faculty and staff.

Recommended Description

 • Demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement as it relates to one’s DEI and anti-racism knowledge, skills, and behaviors to mitigate any harm caused (whether intentional or not) to minoritized communities.

 

 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Pedagogy & Curriculum
 Theme applies to faculty.

Recommended Description

• Promotes and incorporates DEI and anti-racist pedagogy.
• Accommodates for diverse learning styles and utilizes holistic assessment methods.
•Participates in training to incorporate culturally affirming pedagogy.

 

Data
Theme applies to both faculty and staff.

Recommended Description

• Uses data to uncover inequitable outcomes measured through equity-mindedness that calls out racialized patterns in the data, policies, and practices to inform strategies to improve equitable student outcomes and success.

This is not only inapplicable to many people, but also mandates a given result: you must find “racialized patterns in the data” and then fix them. Talk about confirmation bias!

And, finally, the most invidious one.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Criteria Themes Service (e.g., service to the institution or community, or professional service)
Theme applies to both faculty and staff.

Recommended Description

• Advocates for and advances DEI and anti-racist goals and initiatives\
• Leads DEI and anti-racist efforts by participating in DEI groups, committees, or community activities that promote systemic and cultural change to close equity gaps and support minoritized groups.
• Contributes to student life on campus and supports diverse students beyond the classroom.
• Includes a DEI and race-conscious pedagogy and/or curriculum in campus activities for students, faculty, and/or staff.
• Understands and applies asset-based student-centered practices and activities that recognize students’ lived experiences, strengths, and capabilities and empowers students to take ownership of their learning experience (e.g., Competency Based Education, Credit for Prior Learning, etc.).
• Commits to the success of minoritized students by providing specific opportunities to access educational pathways and opportunities for academic and career success (including academic and non-academic advising, mentorship).
• Develops and implements student programs and activities that incorporate a raceconscious and intersectional lens and equips students to engage with the world as scholars and citizens.
• Creates an inclusive learning and working environment by valuing differences among colleagues and students and recognizing the ideological disproportionate impacts on historically minoritized racial groups.
• Contributes to DEI and anti-racism research and scholarship.

 

It’s not surprising that Daymon Johnson is suing the CCC for forcing him to adhere to these behaviors. They’re not only compelled speech, but compelled thought. That violates freedom of speech. Further, by mandating that faculty have to incorporate antiracism into their curricula in specific ways, it also violates academic freedom. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t prevail in the lawsuit.

Once again we see public colleges being transformed into instruments for Social Justice.  It seems sufficient to me to say that a school does not discriminate on the grounds of race, ability, gender, religion, and so on, and add that the college prizes diversity attained within the law.

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 26, 2023 • 8:15 am

Don’t forget to send in any good wildlife photos you have lying about!

Today’s plant photos are from reader Dan Fromm. His captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them:

Our Texas rain lilies.

In the early ‘oughts my wife and I visited a friend in Austin, TX, a native Texan and a retired ichthyologist,  who took us to visit Pedernales Falls State Park where Pat, who is our family’s gardener, dug up a few bulbs of a rain lily.  Jim told us that the plant was Cooperia drummondi.

www.itis.gov, my preferred reference for taxonomy, says that C. drummondi Herb. is an invalid synonym of Zephyranthes chlorosolen (Herb.) D. Dietr. and that Z. drummondii D. Don. is also valid.  I’m not as clear as I’d like to be about how to tell the two apart but believe with no good justification that ours are Z. drummondii.

We brought Pat’s wild rain lilies back to New Jersey.  She potted them, set them out on the patio and hoped for the best.  The plants bloomed, the flowers were pollinated by our local bees and we had seeds.  Some fell into their parents’ pot; Pat selected others and put them on top of the soil in new pots and in the garden.

Since our winters are more severe than Texas Hill Country winters, Pat brings her potted rain lilies in for the winter.  They usually go out in mid-spring.  She doesn’t water them at all while they’re indoors.  After they’re outside and watered they bloom.  We have more plants than we started with, not a surprise.

Pat has continued this cycle for more than twenty years.  2023 started slowly for our rain lilies, who stayed indoors until June 27th.  We had rain that day, and on the morning of 29th we had three trays of lovely white blossoms.  The trays bulge because the plants’ bulbs have grown.  The largest are fist sized.

In the morning of the 30th the white blooms had turned pink.  By the end of the day the blossoms had begun to collapse.

On the morning a July 1st we had a few new white flowers.  The older ones had pretty much shed their petals.  Later that day developing seed pods began to appear and the pedicels started to fall off.

On July 4th the pods were larger but some pedicels remained.

On July 8th the pods were well developed but not ready to dehisce.

On July 14th the pods were open and ready to shed seeds.  They might have begun to open a day or two earlier but I wasn’t up to visiting them then.  Gastroenteritis, not recommended.  After I photographed them Pat harvested the seed pods and spread some seeds on fresh soil in a new tray.

July 18:

Finally, by July 23d the seeds had germinated and the sprouts were well on the way.

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

July 26, 2023 • 6:45 am

Good morning on a hump day (কুঁজ দিন in Bengali), Wednesday, July 26, 2023, and National Bagelfest. If you don’t live in Montreal, good luck in getting the real thing:

The real thing, dense, chewy, cooked over a wood fire, and boiled with a bit of honey (with schmear):

It’s also Aunts and Uncles Day, National Coffee Milkshake Day, World Tofu Day, and Esperanto Day, celebrating ” the publication of Unua Libro, the first book in the Esperanto language, by the language’s creator, L. L. Zamenhof on this day in 1887. As Wikipedia notes, “Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire, but now part of Poland.”  I tried to learn it when I was a kid, but gave up quickly, and I know nobody who speaks it now.  But it still has official uses, for example by the Chinese government.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the July 26 Wikipedia page.

Reader Rick writes in saying that it’s George Bernard Shaw’s birthday, and sends a quote:

I have never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from other men. There is not much harm in a lion. He has no ideals, no religion, no politics, no chivalry, no gentility; in short, no reason for destroying anything that he does not want to eat.

-George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (26 Jul 1856-1950)

Da Nooz:

*Israel is still recovering from the legislature’s passage of a law that weakens the power of the nation’s Supreme Court, and politicians are plotting their next move.

After a night of furious mass protests, Israelis on Tuesday confronted a divided nation, some celebrating and some seething over the passage of a highly contentious law that limits the Supreme Court’s ability to check governmental power.

Quiet generally prevailed across the country, as supporters and opponents of the law — the first step in a broader effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultraconservative government to curb judges’ influence — considered their next moves in a political standoff that could take weeks or months to play out.

Even as most demonstrators who had camped outside Parliament left after an eviction order, leaders of the protest movement, which has held mass rallies for 29 consecutive weeks, have vowed to fight on. Thousands of doctors scaled back medical operations in much of the country on Tuesday, hundreds of high-tech industry leaders said they’re considering moving their businesses abroad and the country’s biggest union said it was still considering a general strike.

How the deeper political crisis might be resolved remains unclear. Opposition activists said they had already asked Israel’s Supreme Court to review the law limiting its powers. A decision could take months, but the case would set up a crisis among the branches of the Israeli government.

And the doctors are on strike, too, which seems very unfortunate as the issue is a political, not a medical one:

The Israeli Medical Association, which represents 97 percent of Israel’s doctors, declared a strike in much of the country for Tuesday, saying its members outside Jerusalem, the capital, would handle only emergencies and critical care needs.

Israelis in the military have threatened to strike, though so far few have done so.

More than 11,000 Israelis in the military reserve said last week they’d resign if the government’s judicial overhaul went ahead. But now that the law has been passed, military officials and experts say it will take time to test the sincerity of those warnings.

The military says that the vast majority of those who participated in the joint declarations last week have yet to either send in their resignations or formally turn down direct call-ups. Since most reservists only get called up a few times a year, it may be weeks or months before significant numbers are forced to follow through with their threats.

“It’s still too early to say,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman. “People still seem to be sleeping on the decision.”

In the meantime, the military is trying to persuade the relatively few who have already withdrawn to change their minds, Colonel Hecht said. “We’re saying to them: ‘We need you, only together can we defend this house,’” Colonel Hecht said.

If you were an Arab state bent on eliminating Israel, you’d now be thinking about invading. But somehow I can’t imagine Israeli reservists refusing to defend their country.

*A federal judge has overturned Biden’s new immigration policy, which was aimed at restricting immigration at the southern border by regularizing the way immigrants applied for admission. This seems to be a blow to Biden but a boon to “progressive” Republicans:

A federal judge struck down on Tuesday a stringent new asylum policy that officials have called crucial to managing the southern border, dealing a blow to the Biden administration’s strategy after illegal crossings by migrants declined sharply in the last few months.

The rule, which has been in effect since May 12, disqualifies most people from applying for asylum if they have crossed into the United States without either securing an appointment at an official port of entry or proving that they sought legal protection in another country along the way.

Immigrant advocacy groups who sued the administration said that the policy violated U.S. law and heightened migrants’ vulnerability to extortion and violence during protracted waits in Mexican border towns. They also argued that it mimicked a Trump administration rule to restrict asylum that was blocked in 2019 by the same judge, Jon S. Tigar of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Judge Tigar stayed his order for 14 days, agreeing to a request by the Biden administration to give it time to appeal.

. . . A migrant surge could open up President Biden to attacks from Republicans, as campaigning gets underway for the presidential election next year. This policy, in particular, did not diverge greatly from the one introduced by President Donald J. Trump, according to legal experts.

. . . Even so, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit could put Judge Tigar’s ruling against the policy on hold while the government appeals, and the case could ultimately reach the Supreme Court.

Once again, I fault Congress for failing to pass sensible immigration legislation; there seems to be no will, especially among Democrats, to do so. And even that legislation might have to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court.

*This is past history by now, but the news has just been reported. According to the Washington Post, when  Yevgeniy Prigozhin, head of the mercenary Wagner Group, started his mutiny and March on Moscow, Putin was paralyzed with indecision, a distinctly un-Putinlike behavior.

When Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, launched his attempted mutiny on the morning of June 24, Vladimir Putin was paralyzed and unable to act decisively, according to Ukrainian and other security officials in Europe. No orders were issued for most of the day, the officials said.

The Russian president had been warned by the Russian security services at least two or three days ahead of time that Prigozhin was preparing a possible rebellion, according to intelligence assessments shared with The Washington Post. Steps were taken to boost security at several strategic facilities, including the Kremlin, where staffing in the presidential guard was increased and more weapons were handed out, but otherwise no actions were taken, these officials said.

“Putin had time to take the decision to liquidate [the rebellion] and arrest the organizers” said one of the European security officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. “Then when it began to happen, there was paralysis on all levels … There was absolute dismay and confusion. For a long time, they did not know how to react.”

This account of the standoff, corroborated by officials in Western governments, provides the most detailed look at the paralysis and disarray inside the Kremlin during the first hours of the severest challenge to Putin’s 23-year presidency. It is consistent with public comments by CIA Director William J. Burns last week that for much of the 36 hours of the mutiny Russian security services, the military and decision-makers “appeared to be adrift.”

It also appears to expose Putin’s fear of directly countering a renegade warlord who’d developed support within Russia’s security establishment over a decade. Prigozhin had become an integral part of the Kremlin global operations by running troll farms disseminating disinformation in the United States and paramilitary operations in the Middle East and Africa, before officially taking a vanguard position in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

As the local authorities didn’t get any information from the Kremlin, they assumed the Wagner March was okay with Putin, and let Prigozhin’s band march on.  Not good leadership. However, the Post adds that it also speaks as well to widespread dissatisfaction within Russian forces with Putin:

The disarray in the Kremlin also reflects a deepening divide inside Russia’s security and military establishment over the conduct of the war in Ukraine, with many including in the upper reaches of the security services and military supporting Prigozhin’s drive to oust Russia’s top military leadership, the European security officials said.

Putin appears to have righted himself, but the dissatisfaction within the Russian military and security services is heartening to supporters of Ukraine—unless those people are even bigger aggressors than Putin.

*From the Heterodox Academy comes a short essay by David Sacks, a Stanford Law School student, “How universities should consider diversity after SSFA” (the court decision in “Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. vs. President and Fellows of Harvard College“)

Diversity-related values, such as promoting a diverse academy or ensuring equality of opportunity, are laudable. In many ways, Justice Powell’s view recommends itself to those of us who embrace the Heterodox Academy’s values of viewpoint diversity and academic freedom. However, I see two problems with Powell’s approach: The Court is right about Affirmative Action’s unconstitutionality, and relatedly, it is functionally the wrong approach for promoting diversity. . .

An emphasis on diversity of experience better captures the values Justice Powell aimed to capture in Bakke — and it better accords with HxA’s values too. Diversity of experience not only can prepare students for a university’s academic rigor — it makes a more interesting student body, promoting viewpoint diversity. The university exists primarily to encourage students’ intellectual and spiritual growth, and to promote thoughtful, novel research.

Thus, there’s nothing wrong with prioritizing diversity in admissions — a student body with the widest variety of interests, perspectives, abilities, and worldviews will create a richer educational environment inside and outside the classroom. But doing so based on race misses the point. Eliminating this crude proxy may create more work for admissions committees to ensure that deserving disadvantaged students can earn their spot in the institution. But this work is worth the time it takes. It is the privilege of the university to elevate deserving candidates across all groups, and in so doing, create a richer, more viewpoint-diverse student body.

This, of course, will eliminate the number of minority students in elite colleges, for there are plenty of other students who have diverse viewpoints, and it’s fatuous to believe that, say, all blacks or Hispanics share a single homogeneous viewpoint. (Were that the case, then increasing ethnic diversity would decrease “viewpoint diversity.” Fortunately, I don’t accept this patronizing view of minorities. In the end, there’s no substitute for the hard work of going through application by application, ensuring that all are good enough to pass a bar of merit but then confecting a truly diverse student body.

*World Aquatics, the governing body of the sport, has announced that it has created an “open” category for transgender swimmers.

Swimming will set up an “open category” that will include transgender competitors, the governing body of the sport said Tuesday.

World Aquatics president Husain Al-Musallam said the event would take place in the future but gave no details. Reports suggest it could be this year.

“This is a very complex topic,” Al-Musallam said at the World Aquatics Congress. “But I am delighted to tell you today that we are now making plans for the first trial of an open category, and we hope to be able to confirm all the details soon.

“Our sport must be open to everybody,” he said.

World Aquatics had previously banned transgender competitors from major events such as the Olympics and world championships.

The topic has been divisive and many governing bodies in major sports have avoided it. And there will be many questions to answer as the first trial event unfolds under the eyes of lawyers and scientists.

“It was very important that we protected fair competition for our female athletes,” Al-Musallam said. “But you have heard me say many times there should be no discrimination. Nobody should be excluded from our competitions.”

This isn’t ideal, as it pits transgender male swimmers against transgender female ones, with the latter probably having an inherent advantage. But it at least allows trans people to compete in athletics—something that’s essential to have fairness for everyone in athletics.  I suspect more sports federations will be going this route.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn. I asked Malgorzata what Hili, lying on the windowsill, was kvetching about, and got this response, “To quite a lot of phenomena but mainly to wokeness and to behavior of Israeli elites (she read the article by Bret Stephens and marveled about the way this very intelligent man’s mind works).”

Hili: I have new data.
A: On what topic?
Hili: The rise of the level of irrationality among the enlightened.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam nowe dane.
Ja: Na jaki temat?
Hili: Wzrostu poziomu irracjonalności w populacji oświeconych.

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

From The Cat House on the Kings:

If you know your Oppenheimer, you’ll recognize this phrase, where and when Oppenheimer said the original, and where it came from. From Kristin:

And, given the day, this is appropriate. From Pet Jokes & Puns (or GTFO!):

Lagniappe: go here.

From Masih; the brave women of Iran #7,562. She’s not wearing a hijab, either.

I found this one. There’s either water or salt on that turtle’s head:

From Simon, who says “But why?” (Good question!). He adds, “I think the slow motion hurts even more!”

From Malcolm. But why is this cat angry? (sound up).

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a 30-year-old man who lived but two weeks in the camp before dying:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb, about to have cataracts removed and new lenses installed. In the first one, Matthew likes the bear but I was more interested in the skunks.

Sound up. But why are these soldiers in England?

A byproduct of Matthew’s research on his Crick biography. The solutions, of course, involved how are proteins made, followed by the discovery of DNA, followed by the deciphering of the genetic code, the discovery of messenger RNA, and the way that proteins are synthesized on ribosomes.

 

Another duck update

July 25, 2023 • 11:10 am

The dorm ducks are still doing well, and we still schlep over a cart full of food and water to the dorm plaza three times a week. Here’s a full cart ready to go: there are about ten gallons of water, a large quantity of duckling pellets (also good for mom, though she flies off every day, presumably to feed and bathe in a nearby pond), some freeze-dried mealworms, and spare food dishes and paper towels.

Yesterday the whole brood of ducklings (well, teenage ducks) was waiting by the door, and when we came in they ran toward us. They were clearly hungry, and the first thing they did was eat a huge meal. While they were doing that, my job was to take the pools and water dishes, empty them out, and take them in the restroom to scrub them clean with soap and water. It’s a nasty job because the ducks aren’t particularly sweet-smelling (their leavings smell like fish!). While I’m doing that, the other members of team duck clean out the “swimming pools” and replenish them with water.  After that, I return with clean dishes and vessels, and we leave out a bunch of food and clean water.

By then the  ducklings have eaten their fill (for the moment) and they have a swim.

Maria, the mother, was there yesterday, and was watchful as usual. They’re all getting tamer, now to the point where I can dump fresh water into the small “pool” while a duckling is swimming in it. Here’s one having a fine old time splashing, dipping, and dunking:

Only about eight of the ten can fit in this pool, but yesterday we put a larger one (a “cement mixing tub” from Home Depot) in the shade on the grass, under a tree.

Maria is always between us and her babies, but she trusts us quite a bit now. She’s a great mom!

After food and a swim, the ducklings repair to a shady spot to preen and then have a nap. This order of tasks is invariant. Note Maria between us and her brood.

When Mom is there, they scatter about a bit, but when she’s gone they huddle close together. That’s clearly an adaptive behavior:

The lovely Maria and some of her babies:

Look, they have most of their feathers now! And we haven’t lost a duckling (“no duckling left behind” is our motto”).

They still have down on their backs, but they’re about 2/3 the size of Mom. Two in the pool. The one with the orange-yellow beak is likely a female (hen), while the one in the foreground, with more green in the beak, is probably a male (drake):

A snoozing duckling. Note the down on its back.

We’re going to have a hot three days this week, so extra water is called for.

Why did Twitter become “X”?

July 25, 2023 • 9:30 am

Among the things Elon Musk is doing to Twitter, he appears to have changed the logo to, yes, “X”! The NYT explains:

Elon Musk has made one of the most visible changes to Twitter since he took control of the social media company last fall: replacing its widely recognized bird logo.

In a tweet early Sunday morning Eastern time, Mr. Musk said that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” About 24 hours later, a stylized, black-and-white X appeared on the company’s website in place of the blue bird logo.

Twitter’s corporate accounts also adopted the new branding, which was projected onto the side of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco overnight. “Lights. Camera. X!” Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s chief executive, posted on the site, accompanying a photo of the building.

“X” is a term for what Mr. Musk has described as an “everything app” that could combine social media, instant messaging and payment services, akin to the popular Chinese app WeChat.

Mr. Musk has said that buying Twitter is “an accelerant to creating X,” and the corporate entity he created to purchase and control Twitter is called X Holdings.

Mr. Musk spoke on a Twitter audio livestream early Sunday to say he was changing Twitter’s logo. “It should have been done a long time ago,” he said. “Sorry it took so long.”

A few hours later, Mr. Musk said in an email to Twitter’s employees that “we are indeed changing to X.”

“This is my last message from aa Twitter email,” he wrote, before signing off with a salute emoji.

. . . . Mr. Musk has had a long affinity for the letter X. In 1999, he co-founded X.com, an online bank, and later merged it with another start-up to create PayPal. In 2017, he said that he repurchased the X.com domain from PayPal.

This makes no sense to me, although I’m not a businessman. It’s like naming Coca Cola the “X Drink”.  And, sure enough, all my birdies have been replaced by Xs:

From Chrome:

From my Twitter feed (arrow is mine). There used to be a bird!

This is bad. No more birds, and we can’t even say “Twitter”: we’ll have to say “X”.  Nor can we “tweet.” What do we do instead, “emit Xs”?

Unlike many, I don’t hate Musk. He seems a bit cold, and is also arrogant and imperious, as well as rich (which some people cannot stand), but he’s clearly made great innovations like SpaceX and Tesla.  After watching a video of him talking to Bill Maher, below, I like him a bit more.  I watch his machinations with interest, but I can’t work up any strong dislike for him.

Here’s his 21-minute appearance on “Real Time.” Maher is a bit of a sycophant when encountering the world’s richest man, but I don’t see any real humanity in Musk. Maybe he’s been subject to too much sycophancy. He laughs quite a bit, showing the “sense of humor” that Maher praises, but even Musk’s laughter creeps me out a bit.

I do like Musk’s stands on free speech and the “woke mind virus,” which you can hear starting at 5:20.

In general, I think the world is a better place because of Musk, though there are those who say that his immense wealth (over 200 billion dollars!) must have come from exploiting people. I don’t agree: he creates what people want to pay for.