Monday: Hili dialogue

April 24, 2023 • 6:45 am

Top o’ the week to you: it’s Monday, April 24, 2023, and National Pigs in a Blanket Day. If you’re not American, you may not know what this Fifties-style snack is, so here are some.

In Chicago, you would not offer the alternative of catsup with the PiBs.

I’m quite under the weather today as I got a very bad cold during my travels (don’t worry, I did an antigen test and I’m covid negative), but have a wicked sore throat, coughs, and malaise. It’s the first cold I’ve had since the pandemic started; I attribute that to my scrupulous handwashing. I suspect I got my cold crowded in the Métro or in airplanes.  All of which is to say that you shouldn’t expect much posting today. I even lack the energy to put up a readers’ wildlife post. As always, I do my best.

It’s Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (someone tell Cenk Uygur), World Meningitis Day, Fashion Revolution Day, and World Day for Laboratory Animals. Here’s a statue at the University in St. Petersburg in honor of all the cats used in laboratory experiments at the school. It’s actually kind of sad, and I shouldn’t be smiling. (This was at a scientific meeting in 2011, and a colleague took the picture with my camera.)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the April 24 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I’m not sure if this is a glitch by a Chinese official, but it’s caused a lot of consternation in Europe.

France, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania expressed dismay after China’s ambassador in Paris questioned the sovereignty of former Soviet countries like Ukraine.

Asked about his position on whether Crimea is part of Ukraine or not, Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye said in an interview aired on French television on Friday that historically it was part of Russia and had been offered to Ukraine by former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

“These ex-USSR countries don’t have actual status in international law because there is no international agreement to materialize their sovereign status,” Shaye added.

France responded on Sunday by stating its “full solidarity” with all the allied countries affected, which it said had acquired their independence “after decades of oppression”.

“On Ukraine specifically, it was internationally recognized within borders including Crimea in 1991 by the entire international community, including China,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that China will have to clarify whether these comments reflect its position or not.

The three Baltic states and Ukraine, all formerly part of the Soviet Union, reacted along the same lines as France.

Unless China claims that its ambassador to France misspoke, there will be big trouble, for China will have to claim that Russia is actually fighting against Russia instead of Ukraeine.

*In the face of Congressional inaction on immigration reform, Biden has taken it upon himself to greatly expand the number of legal immigrants into the U.S. He’s done this through executive order:

Amid a protracted stalemate in Congress over immigration, President Biden has opened a back door to allow hundreds of thousands of new immigrants into the country, significantly expanding the use of humanitarian parole programs for people escaping war and political turmoil around the world.

The measures, introduced over the past year to offer refuge to people fleeing Ukraine, Haiti and Latin America, offer immigrants the opportunity to fly to the United States and quickly secure work authorization, provided they have a private sponsor to take responsibility for them.

As of mid-April, some 300,000 Ukrainians had arrived in the United States under various programs — a number greater than all the people from around the world admitted through the official U.S. refugee program in the last five years.

By the end of 2023, about 360,000 Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians are expected to gain admission through a similar private sponsorship initiative introduced in January to stem unauthorized crossings at the southern border — more people than were issued immigrant visas from these countries in the last 15 years combined.

The Biden administration has also greatly expanded the number of people who are in the United States with what is known as temporary protected status, a program former President Donald J. Trump had sought to terminate. About 670,000 people from 16 countries have had their protections extended or become newly eligible since Mr. Biden took office, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

All told, these temporary humanitarian programs could become the largest expansion of legal immigration in decades.

While this is better than willy-nilly immigration, much of it people seeking economic benefits rather than fleeing persecution, ,we’re talking millions of people here. And these orders can be overturned by the courts. I suppose Biden acted because Congress won’t, and in my view that’s largely due to Democrats who can’t bear restrictions, and want in effect open borders. Best that this be done by the legislature than by Presidential fiat.

*As a lifelong feeder, I couldn’t resist reading this NYT piece: “The secret to ordering the best thing on the menu“.  “Oh boy!” I said. “What are these big secrets? The main one is “eat out of the box”, and don’t necessarily go for the restaurant’s specialities:

This. . . order is an example of how I like to approach restaurants: Live life on the edge of the menu. Take a flier on the oatmeal cream pie at a crab shack, the vegan risotto at a steakhouse, the quesadillas at an underground Champagne bar. Just because a restaurant is known for one thing doesn’t mean you can’t order something else. If it looks good to you, get it. Often you’ll be rewarded for your transgression.

When I was a graduate student, before big exam days, I would hole up in my apartment subsisting on Frosted Flakes and Cheez-Its, then emerge from the shadows to treat myself to what I called Brain Dinner at my local brick-oven pizzeria, Buca, which has since closed. But I wouldn’t go for a pepperoni pie or even a Hawaiian. My order would be a salmon dish: a gently salted center-cut fillet, roasted until crisp at the edges but pink and tender on the inside. It came with a relish of red onion, olives and capers and a trio of summer vegetables: eggplant, zucchini and squash. The blazing heat of a brick oven, it turned out, meant great pizza but even better salmon and vegetables. You can’t really recreate that kind of flavor at home, what the Koreans might call bulmat, or fire taste.

. . . Sometimes the oddity on a menu might be the chef’s passion project, which is reason enough to order it. Newcomers to the New Orleans favorite Pêche Seafood Grill might not know that the restaurant goes heavy on the vegetables, but you have to know to order them. When I visited the city for a friend’s wedding in January, my eyes gravitated toward the citrus-glazed turnips. They seemed so unassuming, maybe even out of place, on the otherwise flashy menu of raw-bar staples like oysters varying in plumpness and brininess; a nutty, almost creamy royal red Gulf shrimp dish that stains your fingers with a crab roe sauce; and the beloved steak tartare with smoked-oyster aioli on toast, which landed on nearly every table in the dining room. Who knew that the star of my seafood lunch would be a side dish of turnips?

. . . .and that’s about it. Not all that useful advice. I’ve tried it, and it sometimes works, but when a restaurant is known for something, the odds are that it’s something good. 

*A prognostication by the Wall Street Journal is that the 2024 Presidential election will feature the same leads as 2020’s: Biden vs. Trump (it’s likely that Harris will remain as Biden’s VP candidate, but Pence is surely toast). This is not a choice most Democrats want, but voting for Trump is out of the question:

President Biden is expected to announce his re-election campaign this week, putting to rest questions of whether he will seek a second term as the nation’s first octogenarian president. At the same time, polls show former President Donald Trump with a substantial lead in the Republican presidential field despite facing criminal charges in New York and the potential for more legal problems on the horizon.

While the race for the White House remains in an early stage and presidential campaigns can shift quickly, the start of the 2024 cycle shows that a rematch between Messrs. Biden and Trump is a distinct possibility, one that would play out before a divided nation as the two parties uneasily share control of the levers of power in Washington.

. . .Mr. Biden is expected to open his re-election bid with a video announcement. Advisers are considering a Tuesday launch to coincide with the fourth anniversary of his entry into the Democratic primaries in 2019. Mr. Biden is scheduled to address the North America’s Building Trades Unions that day, allowing him to highlight his $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law before an audience of union members who have backed both Democrats and Republicans in the past.

Mr. Trump is planning a response to the announcement, aides said, and he has said the president is vulnerable on a range of issues, from immigration to inflation.

. . .A Wall Street Journal poll released last week found Mr. Biden at 48% and Mr. Trump at 45% in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, a lead within the poll’s margin of error. In testing a potential field of 12 competitors for the Republican presidential nomination, the poll found that Mr. Trump had the support of 48% of GOP primary voters, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 24%. No other Republican candidate was in double digits.

While Mr. Biden faces minor opposition in the Democratic primaries, polls show that the public holds deep reservations about his presidency. In the six Wall Street Journal surveys dating to late 2021, an average of 43% of voters have said they approve of Mr. Biden’s job performance, while an average of 48% said they approved of how Mr. Trump handled the job when he was president.

I’m not sure if Trump has officially announced his candidacy, but he’s been acting as if he has since, well, since he lost. And the poll showing 48% for Biden and 45% for Trump in a head-to-head contest scares the bejeesus out of me, not only because it makes me doubt the sanity of half of America, but because Trump could even win. The world would think we were insane! All we can hope for is that Trump somehow gets disqualified between now and then by some kind of criminal conviction, but, barring that, the man and his supporters seem completely impervious to the three investigations that Trump is undergoing. The only operative word is “OY!”

*If you’re French or a wine lover, you’ll know that the term “Champaagne” is reserved by French (and now EU) law only for wines produced in the right part of France and in the right way. (That’s why you won’t find any U.S. sparkling wines, no matter how pricey, described as “champagne.”

This puts the EU in conflict with the Molson Coors Brewing Company of America, which markets Miller High Life beer, described in “the champagne of bottle beers” and the “champagne of beers” since 1969.

That won’t fly in Europe, and so, when a shipment of 2,352 cans of Miller High Life arrived in Belgium destined for Germany (why would Germans want this stuff?), the cans were immediately crushed by customs.

Charles Goemaere, the managing director of the Comité Champagne, said the destruction of the beers “confirms the importance that the European Union attaches to designations of origin and rewards the determination of the Champagne producers to protect their designation.”

Molson Coors Beverage Co. said it “respects local restrictions” around the word Champagne.

“But we remain proud of Miller High Life, its nickname and its Milwaukee, Wisconsin provenance,” the company said. “We invite our friends in Europe to the U.S. any time to toast the High Life together.”

Belgian customs said the destruction of the cans was paid for by the Comité Champagne. According to their joint statement, it was carried out “with the utmost respect for environmental concerns by ensuring that the entire batch, both contents and container, was recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Don’t try ordering a Millers anywhere in the EU. But why on earth would you want to?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is dong srs cat bzns:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m sorting bank statements.
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty robisz?
Hili: Segreguję wyciągi z banku.
********************

From Nicole:

A Gary Larson Far Side cartoon:

And a cartoon on consciousness, sent by smipowell and created by Zach Weinersmith.  It’s homunculi all the way down!

Two tweets Masih showing more brutality towards peaceful Iranian protestors. The first physical, the second verbal.

Titania tweeted; the occasion is the death of Barry Humphries (aka “Dame Edna”).

From Barry: a dog rights a duckling:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: a 13-year-old boy gassed upon arrival:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a newly-hatched duckling conks out to catch some Zs:

A happy squirrel:

Way before “civilizations” started, there was art, and the urge to reproduce what you saw in nature. Here’s a good one:

Colin Wright debunks a dreadful paper claiming that sex is “multimodal”

April 23, 2023 • 12:30 pm

Colin Wright has made one of his missions the explanation of biological sex and why those who claim it’s a spectrum—or simply bimodal rather than binary—are misguided. This is important because the “no-binary” crowd is infecting biology with ideology that confuses people. Wright also deals with gender issues, and hosts guest posts on his Substack site, “Reality’s Last Stand”

Colin writes well and clearly, and although I’ve referred you to a number of papers on biological sex in humans and other animals in the last few weeks, this is one of the best. It originated when Wright came across the paper below on bioarχiv—a paper written (largely from ideological motives) to show that sex isn’t binary, nor even bimodal, but multimodal.  What that means is that if you look at different characteristics of organisms instead of just gamete size, you can come up with any number of sexes.

Click to read it, if you must:

Wright found the paper abysmal, because it is. It’s dire and apparently hasn’t yet been accepted for publication anywhere.  In the piece below, which is long but comprehensive, Wright simply dismantles the authors’ claims one by one, leaving them with. . . well, no thesis at all. Their main issue is that the authors apparently don’t understand the biological definition of sex, and so try to pretend that other characteristics associated with sex, including both morphology and behavior, are variable, in turn implying that there are many dimensions of biological sex. In fact there’s only one: gamete size, and if you read their paper and Wright’s refutation, you’ll see that the authors are deeply muddled. The alternative view is that they’re scientifically duplicitous, motivated by ideology to muddle biology. But I’ll be charitable and say that they’re muddled thinkers rather than sneaky ones.

As one example, McLaughlin et al (henceforth “MEA”) think they make a huge dent in the definition of sex by stating that female hyenas have pseudopenises through which they give birth.  The response is easy: “How do you know they’re female hyenas?” Because they make eggs, Jake! Many of the examples in the McLaughlin paper are of this nature, conflating sex with sex-related characteristics.

Click below to read Wright’s critique:

I can’t begin to summarize all the many points of this paper, but let me give a few quotes. (Colin’s own words are indented, except where he quotes MEA, when it gets doubly indented. My own words are flush left.)

The ideological motivation for McLaughlin et al.

Because the sex binary has been deemed “oppressive” and invalidating of transgender identities and experiences—cardinal sins of our age—this has started an arms race among activist scientists to come up with a model of sex that is the least binary thing imaginable. Since the “bimodal spectrum” concept still entails two of something, this must be abandoned as it may be seen as problematically implying a fundamentally binary underlying property that’s producing the bimodal distribution of sex-related traits—and they’d be right!

In pursuit of this goal, a “Multimodal Sex literature survey team” composed of researchers from UC Berkeley and Loyola University Chicago has been assembled to “re-imagine a more inclusive framework for biological sex.” On January 27, 2023, the team produced their first pre-print titled “Multimodal models of animal sex: breaking binaries leads to a better understanding of ecology and evolution.” The paper argues that sex is best viewed as “a constructed category operating at multiple biological levels” (C) rather than binary (A) or bimodal (B).

At the end Colin’s paper notes even more ideological impetus:

The paper ends with a discussion about “the interplay of science and society” that reveal the authors’ true motivations. They assert that “uncritically applying a simple binary without considering the mechanisms shaping sex-specific effects can confound inferences and completely erases the biological realities of TGNC and intersex people.” Further, the authors state:

The historical legacies of sexism, racism, queerphobia, and ableism have deeply influenced the frameworks we use to study nature. Challenging these foundations is difficult but vital to both increasing inclusion in biology and dismantling assumptions that interfere with our ability to observe the natural world on its own terms.

It is undoubtedly true that sexism and racism has historically interfered with producing good science, but we cannot allow new passions and political ideologies to do the same.

The authors make their political motivations explicit:

There is pressure for scientists to avoid making the politics of our work explicit, especially those of us who do not directly study social issues. However, especially in the United States, legislation targeting TGNC people is increasingly undergirded with simplistic binary language purportedly rooted in biology.

Because they believe “binary language” is fueling “legislation targeting [transgender and gender nonconforming] people,” all binary language must be abandoned. As scientists, the authors say we are “best situated to communicate how nature is a rich tapestry of diversity that affirms, rather than invalidates, human experience.”

As biologists we should not be engaged in erasing, invalidating, or affirming people’s identities or experiences. Our job is simple: describe and explain the natural world as accurately as possible.

Those last two sentences are about as clear as you can get.

I haven’t read a single paper claiming that sex isn’t binary in animals (and most plants) that isn’t at bottom motivated by ideology. You might like the ideology, which is often to validate people who feel that their sex isn’t “male” or “female”, but what you want to see in nature needn’t correspond to what we do see in nature. And that’s a sex binary.

Why do I go on about this? Because this is one example of a trend in which people impose onto nature the ideologies they hold, often distorting biology in the process and confusing lay readers. It’s an offense to science, and one that’s the subject of the paper I’ve written with a co-author that will be out in two months. Stay tuned.

But I digress and self aggrandize. Let’s proceed:

Why hermaphrodites are not a third sex. 

The authors [of MEA] then go on to present supposed challenges to the “common assumption” of two sexes. The first challenge they posit is the existence of hermaphroditic species, which they believe violates the binary sex model because individuals produce both sperm and ova and “do not have separate sexes.”

However, the binary classification of gametic sex breaks down when we consider the broader diversity of gametic phenotypes. For instance, hermaphroditic species possess both gamete types required for reproduction, and do not have separate sexes (Jarne and Auld 2006).

The sex binary, however, does not require that the two sexes exist in separate bodies. The authors are simply conflating the sex binary with a phenomenon called gonochorism or dioecy, which is “the condition of individual organisms within a species existing as one of two possible sexes, specifically male or female.” The existence of hermaphroditic and gonochoric species just represent different ways a species can utilize male and female reproductive strategies. Regardless of whether an organism is only male, only female, or both male and female, there are still only two fundamental functions—the production of sperm and/or ova.

I’ll add here that I’ve looked at the literature on human hermaphrodites, and found only two cases in which fertile gametes are produced: one had viable sperm and the other viable eggs. No hermaphrodite has both viable sperm and eggs, as some animal hermaphrodites do. But there are still only two sexes.

The sex binary involves gamete size and the reproductive systems that produce sperm vs. eggs, not other traits.  This is one of the biggest errors that people make when debunking the sex binary; you can see it, for instance frequently espoused by P. Z. Myers and his acolytes. Wright:

To make their strawman argument even more explicit, the authors quote the biologist Joan Roughgarden saying that “the biggest error in biology today is uncritically assuming that the gamete size binary implies a corresponding binary in body type, behavior, and life history.”

Now let me make my point more explicit: biologists do not claim that “the gamete size binary implies a corresponding binary in body type, behavior, and life history,” because such a claim is absurd, unnecessary, and easily refuted by the most cursory glance at reality. [Emphasis is Wright’s, and Myers badly needs to absorb this.]

The final strawman the authors construct is to incorrectly assert that “sex” is a term “used to encompass a broad collection of gametic, genetic, hormonal, anatomic, and behavioral traits.” They claim that semantically flattening all of these traits into “a binary model, for which individuals are classified as either ‘female’ or ‘male’” is “an oversimplification, since ‘sex’ comprises multiple traits, with variable distributions.”

While this portrayal of sex as a combination of many traits is a common belief among those who lack a fundamental understanding of what it means to be male or female, this does not track reality. Rather, these traits are upstream mechanisms that guide sex development and downstream consequences of one’s sex. They do not describe sex itself which, again, refers only to the function of producing a certain type of gamete.

As I’ve mentioned before, the recognition of the gamete size binary—the so-called “flattening”, has in fact been enormously productive in biology, for it’s given us not only an explanatory basis for sexual selection (which itself explains a ton of biological phenomena), but also enables us to make predictions about how parental investment affects behavior (e.g., why female seahorsea rather than males are members of the sex with colorful adornments).

The authors of the MEA paper actually recognize that sex is binary when making arguments against it. For example, they mention the damn penis in the female hyena without realizing how they know she’s a female, and somehow think that variation within a sex effaces the sex binary. I’ll give just one example:

The second case study claims to investigate “the evolutionary consequences of more than two sexes.” Perhaps here we will finally be told what these new sexes are! But the first sentence moves the goalpost from “sexes” to “operative sexes,” which they never define.

The example they give of a species “with more than two sexes” is the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). This species has two color morphs, males and females with either white or tan stripes. The more aggressive white stripe morph has a large inversion on chromosome 2, and the species mates disassortatively by color more, meaning that white stripe morphs tend to mate with tan striped morphs. This chromosome inversion coupled with the disassortative mating by morph has led to a situation where chromosome 2 “behaves like” another sex chromosome.

But having more than two sex chromosomes is not the same as having more than two sexes. While this species may be an interesting case study for how sex chromosomes have have evolved, it certainly isn’t an example of a species with “four sexes,” which would require four distinct gamete types.

Any competent reviewer of this paper would see immediately that this is a case of sex-related variation in coloration that causes assortative mating, but in the end a male sparrow still produces sperm and a female produces ova, regardless of their color. This interesting case of evolution doesn’t do jack about dispelling the sex binary.

Finally, Wright doesn’t pull any punches about the scientific value of the MEA paper:

In the end, the authors have failed to demonstrate anything other than the existence of two sexes. In fact, their language throughout reveals the fundamentally binary nature at the root of every phenomena they claim debunks it. They have done nothing but demonstrate their complete ignorance of a field they are claiming to be advancing, and have made their political motivations for doing so explicit.

Because this paper is currently a pre-print, that means it has not yet completed peer review. It may be under review somewhere right now. Let me be clear: this paper does not deserve a review; it deserves an immediate rejection without comment. However, given current political trends, I do not trust the review process to filter out papers of such poor quality drenched fashionable DEI rhetoric.

Yes, the paper is dire and full of errors, and surely shouldn’t be published in this form. But regardless, in the course of taking it apart, Wright demonstrates many of the fallacies that plague the “no-sex-binary” crowd, and does so clearly. If you’re interested in this topic, you should have a look at his article. Among those people who keep their eyes on the prize, Colin Wright and Emma Hilton are, in my view, the people most worth following.

Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren tells us how to control guns in America:

April 23, 2023 • 10:50 am

While there are those who say that trying to control guns, and thus gun violence, is a futile job in America, so wedded to our firearms are we, most of us want some controls over laws that allow assault weapons, concealed carry, open carry, no need for background checks, and so on. I’m one of these. In fact, I’d be happy if America went to the British or Scottish system of gun control—or one even stricter.

But this seems nearly impossible in a country where so many people love their guns, and especially where the courts repeatedly interpret the Second Amendment as allowing people to carry rifles into grocery stores. (The best article I know of describing the misinterpretation of the Second Amendment was one by Garry Wills in the NYRB in 1995 (free online). Here’s Wills’s last paragraph:

The recent effort to find a new meaning for the Second Amendment comes from the failure of appeals to other sources as a warrant for the omnipresence of guns of all types in private hands. Easy access to all these guns is hard to justify in pragmatic terms, as a matter of social policy. Mere common law or statute may yield to common sense and specific cultural needs. That is why the gun advocates appeal, above pragmatism and common sense, to a supposed sacred right enshrined in a document Americans revere. Those advocates love to quote Sanford Levinson, who compares the admitted “social costs” of adhering to gun rights with the social costs of observing the First Amendment.

We have to put up with all kinds of bad talk in the name of free talk. So we must put up with our world-record rates of homicide, suicide, and accidental shootings because, whether we like it or not, the Constitution tells us to. Well, it doesn’t.

Well, it’s been 28 years since that article came out, and gun laws are even laxer and mass shootings are now a weekly occurrence. While I do what I can by way of signing petitions and writing and the like, in today’s America there seems to be no practical way to control guns.

But here comes Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren of the NYT, doing her weekly shtick, which is to say what’s bloody obvious and makes people feel good, while at the same time extolling her Christian faith—and accomplishing nothing.  To her credit, she is a staunch advocate of gun control. But her question in the article below (click screenshot to read) is weird: why should Christians do things differently about gun control than anybody else? The answer, I suppose, comes at the end: Christians, following Jesus, are supposed to be peaceful and loving people, and therefore should control guns and the carnage they produce. She fails to give a reason, though, why Christians differ from secular humanists or any empathic people in this respect. She simply quotes the Bible.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Click the screenshot to read:


I will be brief.  Here are the three things Warren things we need to control guns. What’s bizarre is that she pretends these solutions are somehow new.

1.) We need to change American society and the laws. 

To reduce gun violence in the United States, we need legal change and we need social change. Both take time. And both demand a level of unity and sustained attention that is unusual in our day. Reducing gun deaths in America will require focus, persistence and cooperation over years and decades from people across a broad swath of political and ideological communities.

It is unlikely that guns will ever be banned in this country, but there are legal steps we can take to ensure responsible gun ownership. We need any and all laws that can make a difference: restrictions on the types of guns that can be sold (such as banning AR-15-style weapons), requirements of licensing, insurance and safety courses for gun ownership (as we do with driver’s licenses and vehicles), universal background checks, red flag laws, storage requirements and stricter age limits for gun ownership. We need to make it harder to get guns, which makes it easier to ensure guns stay in trustworthy hands.

DUH! It’s like nobody ever thought of those things, eh?

2.) The social change requires bipartisan consensus that gun proliferation is bad. 

We desperately need unity across the aisle to change the culture around guns. At the very least, given the needless destruction guns are causing each day, reasonable conservatives and progressives can surely agree that we need to approach firearms with sobriety, concern, maturity and restraint. We can all unite against foolishness, recklessness and political posturing when it comes to firearms, stand against the glamorization of guns and denounce any cavalier treatment of them.

Has she ever heard of the Republican Party? Does she have any idea of the schism between those who love guns and those who despise them? What is a “reasonable” conservative when it comes to guns? And if this consensus is so obvious, why hasn’t it happened?

The paragraph above is anodyne, saying what’s completely obvious. Of course you need bipartisan consensus to change the laws! And of course it’s not feasible to create all this change now. (It may be impossible to create hardly any changes in gun laws.)

Finally, it’s Time for Faith:

3.) We need religion to help us get rid of guns. Yes, you heard it right. Of course Warren has to drag Jesus in here as a solution.

Furthermore, to achieve the social and cultural changes necessary to reduce gun violence, we need individuals and communities of faith — not just progressive people of faith, but all people of faith — to stand against the idolatry of guns in America.

Why not “all people” instead of “all people of faith”? Does she realize that Christians are among the most avid gun nuts in America? Is she somehow evoking the Bible and seeing that people worship guns as they used to worship golden calves, and that we need to see that those who worship God should be the most eager to abandon gun “idolatry”? She manages to note that black churches have “led the way in a fight against gun violence,” though I’m not sure it’s true—her evidence is anecdotal. But I’m prepared to believe her given that blacks are by far disproportional victims of gun violence in America.

In the end, amongst the homilies and bromides, Warren seems to be saying that Christians should be leading the fight for gun control because the Bible tells Christians to be peaceful and loving, and if you’re like that, you don’t want guns:

As a priest and as a Christian, I have long believed that Christians are called to love our neighbors and seek, in the words of the biblical book of Isaiah, the “welfare of the city.” To do so, we must understand our context, our culture and the needs of our particular time and place. What does it mean to be peacemakers, to love our neighbors and to affirm the value of human life in this moment? The unavoidable conclusion is that we in America’s churches can no longer claim to worship the “prince of peace” while tolerating the preventable obliteration of America’s children.

I guess it meant something different to be a peacemaker back in the days of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the extirpation of Central Americans. And the Bible is hardly a textbook of neighborly love and peace. The Old Testament repeatedly describes the God-approved decimation of entire tribes, not to mention the killing of individuals for making fun of bald men, and so on. Re the New Testament, in Matthew 10:34-36, the Prince of Peace says this:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

Now liberal Christians interpret this, maybe correctly, as saying that Jesus realized his message would divide people. But it certainly doesn’t paint the Prince of Peace as someone keen to reach across the aisle. In truth, Warren is doing what liberal Christians always do: insert their secular values into the Bible and then pretend that they came from the Bible. You don’t have to be religious to favor gun control.

Why do they pay this woman good money to churn out this pap every Sunday. Do they think her words are profound? Worse, does she think her words are profound?  This stuff would never get by in a regular op-ed column, which would be spiked on the grounds of EXTREME TRITENESS.

More anti-Semitism in academia: under pressure, Jewish students at Yale Law School pull out of supporting a talk by a centrist Israeli politician

April 23, 2023 • 9:30 am

Does anybody really doubt that American and British college campuses are become increasingly anti-Semitic? You can say, as some do, that opposition to Israel comes mainly from Netanyahu’s right-0wing government, and isn’t directed at Jews themselves, but that won’t wash. The recurrent cries that Israel is an apartheid state (implying that Palestinians are oppressed people of color and that Palestine isn’t the real apartheid state), combined with the trope “Zionists” (an anti-Semitic euphemism for “Jews”), leave little doubt that there’s a palpable resurgence of anti-Semitism both on campus and on the progressive Left. It’s the Jews (“Zionists”) and the existence of Israel, not Netanyahu, who are the targets.

Would an apartheid state allow a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—a terrorist-associated organization banned in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAR—become an Israeli minister (equivalent to a U.S. Cabinet member), while several members of that same organization sat in the Israeli parliament? Of course not, but this was the case in Israel, at least in the recent past. I doubt that the Palestinian Authority or Hamas would allow an Israeli Jew to play a substantial role in their government! If anyone claims that Israel is an apartheid state, you can immediately write them off as both ignorant and anti-Semitic.

You can see the fulminating anti-Semitism clearly in the article below (yes, it’s from the right-wing site Free Beacon, but if you ignore the report because of that, you’re an ostrich).  It recounts how Jewish students at Yale Law School (a hotbed of wokery) invited a moderate former member of the Knesset (the Jewish parliament), and a vocal opponent of Netanyahu, to address them on the topic of anti-Semitism. The speaker was Michal Cotler-Wunsch, a former member of the moderate Blue and White Alliance, a unity group in  the Knesset that was critical of Netanyahu and more pro-Palestinian and pro-gay-rights than other Israeli parties. As the article below notes,

The behind-the-scenes drama surrounding the event demonstrates the extent to which pro-Israel speakers—even those who criticize the Jewish State’s government—are increasingly unwelcome at America’s top law school.

A former member of the Israeli Knesset, Cotler-Wunsh is part of the Blue and White alliance that briefly unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2020. The centrist party has promoted same-sex unions, opposed bans on public transit during Shabbat, and signaled an openness to peace talks—albeit not to land concessions—with the Palestinians, stances that have endeared it to secular Israelis while angering the country’s ultra-Orthodox bloc.

“If I’m controversial, I don’t know who isn’t,” Cotler-Wunsh said.

The topic of her talk was “Defining and combating Anti-Semitism“. How controversial can you get?  But apparently that raised some hackles. And had not a deputy dean of the Law School stepped in at the last moment, offering to host the event personally, Cotler-Wunsch’s talk would have been canceled.

Click the screenshot to read:

From the article:

A Jewish student group at Yale Law School pulled out of an event with a centrist Israeli politician, Michal Cotler-Wunsh, after deciding the talk would be too controversial, according to Cotler-Wunsh and two professors with knowledge of the situation.

Yale’s Jewish Law Students Association agreed in February to host Cotler-Wunsh for a lecture on anti-Semitism and human rights, one of several planned stops on a speaking tour organized by the Academic Engagement Network, a pro-Israel advocacy group. But on April 14–one week before Cotler-Wunsh’s talk, which is scheduled for Friday—Yale’s Jewish Law Students Association told the Academic Engagement Network that it would no longer be able to sponsor the event, according to Miriam Elman, the network’s executive director.

The drama follows a string of anti-Semitism controversies at the Ivy League university, which just this month hosted Houria Bouteldja, an anti-Israel activist and outspoken defender of Hamas, on the second night of Passover.  The event’s timing sparked blowback from Jewish students—though not from the Jewish Law Students Association—who said their religious obligations prevented them from organizing a counter-event or from attending the talk to pose questions.

Though the Jewish Law Students Association gave no reason for its about-face, Cotler-Wunsh and two Yale law school professors said they understood that the group succumbed to pressure to call off her lecture.

It is not clear who was applying that pressure, and Morgan Feldenkris, the president of the Jewish Law Students Association, did not respond to a request for comment. The talk would have been canceled but for deputy dean Yair Listokin’s willingness to step in and host the event himself, Elman said. Listokin declined to comment.

Dean Yair Listokin, also a chaired Professor of Law at Yale, saved the day, but I’d still like to know who pressured the Jewish Law Students Association to back away from supporting what was, after all, a pretty uncontroversial talk. Or is fighting anti-Semitism somehow controversial?

And who else could apply that pressure save someone who doesn’t want an Israeli politician—regardless of their views—to speak?  And yet, as the article recounts, Yale has been a venue for a fair bit of anti-Israeli activity:

This is not Yale Law’s first debacle over anti-Semitism or the Jewish state. In 2021, the Yale Law Journal hosted a diversity trainer, Erika Hart, who accused the FBI of artificially inflating the number of anti-Semitic hate crimes. And last year, activists at the law school urged students to boycott a spring break trip to Israel, plastering signs around the school that called Israel an apartheid state, according to sources familiar with the matter. Some of those activists, two sources said, were themselves members of the Jewish Law Students Association.

Here’s a tweet from Cotler-Wunsch as she went to Yale. I can’t find any account of her talk on Friday, not even at the Yale Daily News, but it must have gone on as scheduled. Thanks, Dean Listokin!

h/t: Ginger K., Malgorzata

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 23, 2023 • 8:15 am

I’m back from France, so please send in your wildlife photos!

This week I will not screw up and post John Avise‘s bird photos on Saturday. They properly belong on Sunday, and we have a new batch of “royal” birds today. John’s narrative and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Avian Royalty

The theme of this week’s post artificially brings together several groups of mostly unrelated avian species photographed at widely diverse locations (as indicated in parentheses).  What all of these species sshare is at least a hint of royalty in their official common names.

Imperial Cormorant (aka Imperial Shag), Leucocarbo atriceps (near Antarctica):

Imperial Cormorant flying:

King Penguin, Aptenodytes patagonicus (South Georgia Island):

More King Penguins on South Georgia Island:

King Penguin headshot:

Cassin’s Kingbird, Tyrannus vociferans (California):

Couch’s Kingbird, Tyrannus couchii (Texas):

Eastern Kingbird, Tyrannus tyrannus (Michigan):

Western Kingbird, Tyrannus verticalis (California):

Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Regulus calendula (California):

Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon (Florida):

Royal tern. Sterna maxima (Florida):

Royal Tern flying (Florida):

Emperor Goose, Anser canagicus (Northern Ireland):

Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 23, 2023 • 6:45 am

It’s the Sabbath for goyische cats, and remember that the Sabbath (indeed, every day) was made for cats, not cats for the Sabbath. It’s Sunday, April 23, 2023, and National Picnic Day. Let’s hope the weather in your parts is good; here it’s too cold 37º F, 3º C) to picnic. Here’s Gary Larson’s Far Side take on a bird picnic:

It’s also German Beer Day, National Cherry Cheesecake Day, Lover’s Day (but which lover is being celebrated?), World Laboratory Day, World Book Day, UN English Language Day, and UN Spanish Language Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the April 23 Wikipedia page.

Wine of the Day: If you have around $20 to spend for a fantastic white, this is the one for you. It is the dry version of a famous Sauternes, itself the best sweet wine in the world. Normally made from Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes that have been infected with a mold that sucks the water out, the sweet wine comes, in effect, from rotten grapes. The mold thus concentrates the sugar in the grape and adds its own flavor (not moldy). A great Sauternes, like Chateau d’Yquem or Suduiraut, is a honeyed, perfumed miracle of a wine (not cheap, but still a relative bargain, for much of the world spurns sweet wines). They are made only in years with pervasive growth of the mold, and grown in an area of France conducive to damp weather.

Here is a dry version of an excellent sweet Sauternes, Chateau Suduiraut, made with the same grapes, but grapes uninfected with mold. It’s therefore pretty dry, but still harbors the heft and aroma of a good sweet wine without the sweet taste. It was so good that I’d recommend drinking it on its own instead of pairing it with food (I had it with chicken breast, rice, and green beans, but poured myself an extra glass for after dinner.) Given the grapes, it’s a wine to drink young, though a great sweet Sauternes can age well for decades.

Reviews of this specimen from 2020 are all good; here’s one from MW Jancis Robinson:

Outer quote mark Really Sauvignon-stinky on the nose. Then rich and broad on the palate. The best and most complete and satisfying example of this wine I can remember. In fact, perhaps the best dry table wine I can remember from a Sauternes château. More delicate than many dry white Pessac-Léognans. Creamy texture and lovely perfume. Just off dry and really admirably long. This would make a great wine for the table. In fact, I could imagine drinking it with various meat dishes – pasta with ragu? (GV) Inner quote mark

I take issue with it being best as a table wine. It’s so tasty that in fact I think it’s better drunk as an aperitif, and NOT with meat (then again, I’m not a Master of Wine like Robinson).  Its price ranges between $15 and $25; I paid $18 and I’d buy several more bottles if I could.

Da Nooz:

*In Sudan, two warlords fighting for the control of the government have wrecked the country. Thousands and been killed and foreigners are fleeing like lemmings. Yesterday President Biden (and other nations) ordered their diplomatic personnel to leave the country:

The U.S. military evacuated American Embassy officials from Sudan’s capital early Sunday morning, starting an exodus of foreign diplomats amid continuing violence as rival military leaders battled for control of Africa’s third-largest country.

The White House announced the move in an overnight statement from President Biden.

“Today, on my orders, the United States military conducted an operation to extract U.S. government personnel from Khartoum,” Mr. Biden said in the statement, referring to the Sudanese capital.

Almost 100 people — mostly U.S. Embassy employees — were evacuated using helicopters that flew in from the nation of Djibouti, about 800 miles away, according to U.S. officials. Just over 100 special operations troops were involved.

There are still many more Americans, not diplomats, stranded there.

*A NYT “news analysis” of the Supreme Court’s decision about the abortion drug mifepristone (to let the FDA approval stand until the lower courts settle the case) suggests that, after the court was burned by overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s now moving towards staying away from its own decision on abortion and leaving those matters to the legislative process. And that means either the states (which was a disaster for abortion) or the Congress It also suggest that the vote to turn the matter back to the appellate court was 7-2, with Alito and Thomas dissenting.

It was an interim ruling, and the majority gave no reasons. But the Supreme Court’s order on Friday night maintaining the availability of a commonly used abortion pill nonetheless sent a powerful message from a chastened court.

“Legal sanity prevailed, proving that, at least for now, disrupting the national market for an F.D.A.-approved drug is a bridge too far, even for this court,” said David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.

Indeed; they can just leave it to the states to disrupt their own markets!

Cynics might be forgiven for thinking that the decision last June, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was a product of raw power. The public reaction was certainly negative, as the court’s approval ratings sank and the decision itself proved deeply unpopular and a political windfall for Democrats.

In his concurrence in Dobbs, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the majority had abandoned “principles of judicial restraint” at the cost of “a serious jolt to the legal system.” Friday’s order avoided a second jolt.

. . .Since the court took up the case on an expedited basis, on its so-called shadow docket, the justices could dissent without saying so publicly, making counting the votes an inexact science. On the available evidence, though, the vote on Friday night appeared to be 7 to 2.

It is all but certain that the court’s three liberal members — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — were in the majority. It is a very good bet that Chief Justice Roberts, who staked out a compromise position in Dobbs, was with them.

And none of the members of the court appointed by Mr. Trump — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — noted a dissent.

. . .The case now returns to the Fifth Circuit, which will hear arguments on May 17. After it rules, the losing side will almost certainly appeal to the Supreme Court, and the justices would then have another chance to decide whether to weigh in.

It would be a mistake to read Friday’s order as a definitive prediction of where they are headed. But there are reasons to think that an ambitious court has grown cautious.

Yes, cautious about approving a mandate that would ban an abortion pill in states where abortion is already illegal. But it can still allow states to ban sales of the pill, or even criminalize mail-order shipment of the pill. I do believe the court knows it misstepped in its overturning of Roe. But I don’t trust it to do right on other abortion issues. It is, after all, a Catholic court.

*For a critique of Alito’s unbelievable dissent, in which he said the government would go ahead and ignore a Supreme Court decision stopping distribution of the drug, see Jennifer Rubin’s WaPo op-ed, “The Supreme Court delivers a sigh of relief—and an outrageous dissent.” Some excerpts:

Justice Clarence Thomas has gotten the attention of late due to questionable ethics. But it’s high time Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. received the scrutiny he deserves. Alito’s dissent in the mifepristone case has served up yet another example of his intemperate, partisan rhetoric.

. . . the [Supreme Court’s] decision was not unanimous. Alito and Thomas would have allowed the indefensible ruling by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to stand.

In the rush to celebrate the failure of medical zealots (this time) to dredge up an antiabortion activist in robes to countermand the FDA, Alito’s dissent shouldn’t be ignored, for it perfectly encapsulates the degree to which he’s become “unmoored from reason,” as legal scholar Norman Eisen tells me.

The opinion is so lacking in judicial reason and tone that Supreme Court advocates and constitutional experts with whom I spoke were practically slack-jawed. They cite a batch of objectionable arguments and remarks in his dissent.

First, Alito’s dissent begins with an extended, bitter and unnecessary rant about the shadow docket (the use of emergency rulings that have major policy consequences without the benefit of full briefing). . .

. . . But it gets much worse. Alito has the temerity to assert that there would be no irreparable injury in denying the stay because “the Government has not dispelled legitimate doubts” — by whom? where does this standard come from? — “that it would even obey an unfavorable order in these cases, much less that it would choose to take enforcement actions to which it has strong objections.” This unprecedented attack on the government’s obedience to court rulings — based on nothing — is out of order.

. . . Moreover, Alito’s dissent demonstrates that he does not care one whit about the women affected if the drug were suddenly made unavailable. (At least he’s consistent; he also utterly ignored the interests of women in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, giving them no weight in contrast to the seemingly inviolate interest of states in commandeering women’s reproductive choices.) Their irreparable harm doesn’t register.

There’s more, too, but you can read it (if you subscribe). Alito does seem to be becoming, like Thomas, a cranky old judge who yells at clouds.

*If you’re older, like me (and the demographics of readers definitely skew upwards), have you thought about all your online accounts if, Ceiling Cat forbid, the Grim Reaper were to suddenly take you? What about your accounts, your passwords, your photos, and other stuff that you want to leave behind. I have all this stuff saved in one document, but it may not be good enough. Fortunately the WSJ has a convenient guide to dealing with your e-life after your real life is over, “Before you die, secure your digital life.” Here’s a list of the topics covered:

Designate a contact for your passwords.

Name a legacy contact for online accounts. [It tells you how do do this for Apple and Google.]

Make plans for your social media accounts. [They tell you how to do this for Facebook ant Twitter.]

Talk it through [i.e. discuss your digital assets with your family.]

Don’t leave it until you’re hit by a truck!

*Justice after 43 years? The AP reports that France has just convicted a University of Ottawa professor of terrorism in absentia. The question is whether he’ll be extradited, for he was before, only to be released and repatriated after several years in solitary confinement.

A Paris court convicted a Lebanese-Canadian professor in absentia on terrorism charges Friday and sentenced him to life in prison over a deadly Paris synagogue bombing in 1980 that was for decades one of France’s biggest unsolved crimes.

The court issued an arrest warrant for suspect Hassan Diab, who lives and teaches in Ottawa, Canada, and denies wrongdoing. He was convicted of terrorist murder for an attack that killed four and wounded 46.

For victims, the ruling means justice at last, more than four decades after a bombing described as the first antisemitic terrorist attack in France since World War II.

But for Diab and his supporters, the decision is a shock and a judicial error. His lawyers say he was in Lebanon studying for university exams at the time of the attack and is a victim of mistaken identity, a scapegoat for a justice system determined to find a culprit.

French authorities accuse Diab of planting the bomb on a motorbike outside the synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris, where 320 worshipers had gathered to mark the end of a Jewish holiday on the evening of Oct. 3, 1980. Several were children celebrating their bar mitzvahs.

Diab was previously extradited from Canada to France in 2014, where he spent over three years in jail, but the case collapsed and he went back to his family. The Globe and Mail says the conviction on appeal is a travesty, that the proceedings were not transparent, and that Diab should not be extradited to France again (this is at the discretion of the Canadian minister of justice.

*And Ceiling Cat bless the Hawaiian wildlife authorities, who have closed off an entire beach on Oahu for 5-7 weeks while a mother Hawaiian monk seal (Neomonachus schauinslandi, a highly endangered species) nurses her single pup.

Authorities have erected a “temporary fence” around the beach to protect the mother and pup, according to a Facebook post from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The fence is intended to “promote public safety and seal protection during the nursing period,” the department said. “People are encouraged to use other areas for beach and ocean recreation.”

The department added the pup will most likely stay with its mother while it is nursing for the next five to seven weeks.

They noted mother seals in particular can be “very protective of their pups” and have seriously injured swimmers in the past, making it “unsafe to swim” in the Kaimana Beach area, the department added in a news conference about the birth.

But what about the miscreants who could bother them at night? No worries!

There will be a 24/7 law enforcement presence on the beach to protect the seals, said Jason Redulla, chief of the division of conservation and resources enforcement, during the news conference.

“It’s better for you at this point to find another beach to recreate at,” Redulla noted.

Hawaiian monk seals are one of the most endangered seal species in the world, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are estimated to be just around 1,570 seals left in the wild.

The species is threatened by habitat loss, entanglement in fishing gear, diseases, and occasional intentional killings from humans.

Here’s a video and a news briefing about the mom and little one. Note that they sell the act as a way to protect swimmers from being attacked by mom instead of a way to protect the seals! If you go to the Facebook post, you’ll see the fence cordoning off a full 50 meters around the seal pair as well as a lot of pictures of mom and pup.

 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s implicit request is bloody obvious (Szaron is in on it, too):

Hili: Here you are at last!
A: How can I help you?
Hili: Stop asking stupid questions.
In Polish:
Hili: Jesteś wreszcie!
Ja: W czym mogę pomóc?
Hili: Przestań zadawać głupie pytania.

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

From Seth Andrews, who doesn’t understand this sign. Neither do I. My best guess is that it’s a sign saying you’ll get a $100 fine for jaywalking, and someone put a squirrel on it:

From Malcolm, a lovely FB photo of a dragonfly covered with morning dew.  Photo credit: Photo: Lasse Andersson

From Jesus of the Day, a story in two medieval paintings:

From Masih; more women defy the Iranian regime by removing their hijabs. The sound is annoying after the first cry of the women.

This scene, retweeted by Ricky Gervais, will make you tear up unless you have a heart of stone. Please watch it!

An amazing commercial ad, retweeted by Emma Hilton:

From Gravelinspector: Mama mallard plus ducklings in a Tesco (UK supermarket chain) parking lot:

From Malcolm:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a brave man takes the place of another among a group of prisoners who, in retribution for another’s escape, were starved to death by the Nazis:

Tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a cute one:

Cuttlefish walking on “all fours,” tweeted by Matthew:

A good piece on the ideological infection of biology

April 22, 2023 • 12:30 pm

I found this article in the Twitter feed of Manchester University developmental biologist Emma Hilton, a passionate defender of biological truth against ideological pollution. And because she said the article was great, I read it. It was.

The article is from Skeptic magazine, edited and published by Michael Shermer, and it’s well worth your while to read the piece. Author Robert Lynch, by the way, is identified as “an evolutionary anthropologist at Penn State who specializes in how biology, the environment, and culture transact to shape life outcomes.”

It’s also free, so click on the screenshot to access it.

The piece is loaded with all kinds of good stuff starting with the assertion and documentation that sex in humans is binary, something that is not just a definition, but a description of what evolution has done to the reproductive development of all animals including H. sapiens.  I’ll give a few quotes, but you could do a lot worse than read the whole thing.

I’ve left the footnotes in because he documents his statements extensively. And I’ve picked out three areas of special interest because they are controversial—not because of biology, but because the biological facts contravene fashionable “progressive” ideology. Lynch’s quotes are indented; my own takes are flush left.

Why sex is binary.

The assertion that male and female are arbitrary classifications is false on every level. Not only does it confuse primary sexual characteristics6 (i.e., the reproductive organs) which are unambiguously male or female at birth 99.8 percent of the time with secondary sexual characteristics7 (e.g., more hair on the faces of men or larger breasts in women), it ignores the very definition of biological sex — men produce many small sex cells termed sperm while women produce fewer large sex cells termed eggs. Although much is sometimes made of the fact that sex differences in body size, hormonal profiles, behavior, and lots of other traits vary across species, that these differences are minimal or non-existent in some species, or that a small percentage of individuals, due to disorders of development, possess an anomalous mix of female and male traits,8 that does not undermine this basic distinction. There is no third sex. Sex is, by definition, binary.

I’d add here that saying it’s binary “by definition” leaves out something important: the binary nature of sex didn’t arise because biologists decided to impose a strict binary on something quasi-continuous in nature. Rather, the presence in animals of only two sexes—producers of two distinct types of gametes—is a result of evolution, and the “definition” is more of a “concept”—an encapsulation in words of a dichotomy biologists see when they look at nature. (This also holds for “species”, which is why we have a biological species concept rather than a definition—an encapsulation in words of the discontinuities among plants and animals we see in nature.) There are two paths, and only two paths, for the development of gametes. There is no animal with three gametes. Human hermaphrodites, none of which has ever produced both sperm and eggs that can function, are not a third sex. Neither are the very rare individuals who represent disorders of sex development (DSDs). Transgender people, of course, don’t violate the binary of biological sex; indeed, by transitioning in one direction or the other, they serve to confirm it. Finally, we understand how the sex binary evolved. Once it did, species are resistant to the evolutionary invasion of any more sexes.

Why it’s important to recognize why sex is binary. The short answer is that it explains a ton of other observations about nature, all of them arising from the fundamental difference in gamete size, which leads to a difference in reproductive investment, to sexual selection, and so on.  And it also leads to testable predictions about biology:

It was [Robert] Trivers, who four decades earlier as a graduate student at Harvard, laid down the basic evolutionary argument in one of the most cited papers in biology.2 Throwing down the gauntlet and explaining something that had puzzled biologists since Darwin, he wrote, “What governs the operation of sexual selection is the relative parental investment of the sexes in their offspring.” In a single legendary stroke of insight, which he later described in biblical terms (“the scales fell from my eyes”), he revolutionized the field and provided a broad framework for understanding the emergence of sex differences across all sexually reproducing species.

Because males produce millions of sperm cells quickly and cheaply, the main factor limiting their evolutionary success lies in their ability to attract females. Meanwhile, the primary bottleneck for females, who, in humans, spend an additional nine months carrying the baby, is access to resources. The most successful males, such as Genghis Khan who is likely to have had more than 16 million direct male descendants,3 can invest relatively little and let the chips fall where they may, while the most successful women are restricted by the length of their pregnancy. Trivers’ genius, however, was in extracting the more general argument from these observations.

By replacing “female” with “the sex that invests more in its offspring,” he made one of the most falsifiable predictions in evolution — the sex that invests more in its offspring will be more selective when choosing a mate while the sex that invests less will compete over access to mates.4 That insight not only explains the rule, but it also explains the exceptions to it. Because of the initial disparity in investment (i.e., gamete size) females will usually be more selective in choosing mates. However, that trajectory can be reversed under certain conditions, and sometimes the male of a species will invest more in offspring and so be choosier.

When these so-called sex role reversals5 occur, such as in seahorses where the males “get pregnant” by having the female transfer her fertilized eggs into a structure termed the male’s brood pouch and hence becoming more invested in their offspring, it is the females who are larger and compete over mates, while the males are more selective. Find a species where the sex that invests less in offspring is choosier, and the theory will be disproven.

I love that last paragraph, for seahorses (and pipefish) are the exception that proves the rule.

The sex difference in gamete size, because of sexual selection, has led to sex-specific selection pressures that have given human males and females different behaviors. Yet the blank-slaters deny this because their ideology tells them that any differences they see in behavior between the sexes must have a cultural or sociological rather than a biological origin.  Yes, of course there are social influences that affect the sexes differently. But men and women are also biologically different in important ways. I’ll give one more nugget from this mother lode of an article:

Biological differences in behavior between men and women.

The evidence that many sex differences in behavior have a biological origin is powerful. There are three primary ways that scientists use to determine whether a trait is rooted in biology or not. The first is if the same pattern is seen across cultures. This is because the likelihood that a particular characteristic, such as husbands being older than their wives, is culturally determined declines every time the same pattern18 is seen in another society — somewhat like the odds of getting heads 200 times in a row. The second indication that a trait has a biological origin is if it is seen in young children who have not yet been fully exposed to a given culture. For example, if boy babies are more aggressive than girl babies, which they generally are,19 it suggests that the behavior may have a biological basis. Finally, if the same pattern, such as males being more aggressive than females, is observed in closely related species, it also suggests an evolutionary basis. While some gender role “theories” can attempt to account for culturally universal sex differences, they cannot explain sex differences that are found in infants who haven’t yet learned to speak, as well as in the young of other related species.

Many human sex differences satisfy all three conditions — they are culturally universal, are observable in newborns, and a similar pattern is seen in apes and other mammals. The largest sex differences20 found with striking cross-cultural similarity are in mate preferences, but other differences arise across societies and among young children before the age of three as boys and girls tend to self-segregate into different groups with distinct and stereotypical styles.21 These patterns, which include more play fighting in males, are observable in other apes and mammal species,22 which, like humans, follow the logic of Trivers’ theory of parental investment and have higher variance in male reproduction, and therefore more intense competition among males as compared to females.

If so, why then has the opposite message — that these differences are either non-existent or solely the result of social construction — been so vehemently argued? The reason, I submit, is essentially political. The idea that any consequential differences between men and women have no foundation in biology has wide appeal because it fosters the illusion of control. If gender role “theories” are correct, then all we need to do to eliminate them is to modify the social environment (e.g., give kids gender-neutral toys, and the problem is solved). If, however, sex differences are hardwired into human nature, they will be more difficult to change.

Acknowledging the role of biology also opens the door to conceding the possibility that the existence of statistically unequal outcomes for men and women are not just something to be expected but may even be…desirable. Consider the so-called gender equality paradox23 whereby sex differences in personality and occupation are higher in countries with greater opportunities for women. Countries with the highest gender equality,24 such as Finland, have the lowest proportion of women who graduate college with degrees in stereotypically masculine STEM fields, while the least gender equal countries such as Saudi Arabia, have the highest. Similarly, the female-to-male sex ratio in stereotypically female occupations such nursing is 40 to 1 in Scandinavia, but only 2 to 1 in countries like Morocco.

Note the play fighting in males, which become more overt aggression when boys turn into men at puberty. And this is certainly an explanation for the palpably greater degree of risk-taking of postpubescent men compared to women.  It takes all kinds of forms, including street racing, which is a male pursuit, and a dangerous one.

Do note the explanation for ideological resistance to biological facts given in the third paragraph. The “gender equality paradox” of the last paradox is resolutely ignored by “progressives,” who argue that any difference in representation of sexes in a profession must be due to sexism—most likely of a structural nature.