Curmudgeon sees John Lennon’s “Imagine” as a harmful song

April 14, 2022 • 11:45 am

John Lennon’s 1971 song “Imagine” has become a sort of anthem for humanists, and is without doubt Lennon’s most famous solo composition and performance. Its plea for harmony, secularism, and, I suppose, income redistribution, constitute the reasons for Gary Abernathy’s objection to the song, detailed in an essay in the Washington Post. Click on the screenshot to read:

The backstory is that Julian Lennon (John’s son and the inspiration for the Beatles’ song “Hey Jude”) said he’d never perform his father’s song. But he changed his mind when Putin attacked Ukraine. As NPR reported:

Julian Lennon, the son of the late Beatles star turned solo artist John Lennon, publicly performed his father’s hit song “Imagine” last week for the first time. He said he did so in support of Ukraine.

“As a human, and as an artist, I felt compelled to respond in the most significant way I could,” Lennon tweeted. “So today, for the first time ever, I publicly performed my Dad’s song, IMAGINE.”

In a video of the performance, Lennon and a guitarist sit in a room illuminated by candles. The camera slowly swings around them as Lennon sings the antiwar anthem.

“Why now, after all these years? — I had always said, that the only time I would ever consider singing ‘IMAGINE’ would be if it was the ‘End of the World’ …” Lennon said.

He suggested that the song represents “our collective desire for peace worldwide” and that it transports listeners to a place “where love and togetherness become our reality.”

Noting the millions of people who’ve fled the violence in Ukraine, Lennon called on world leaders to support refugees around the world and urged people to “advocate and donate from the heart.”

Here’s Lennon’s performance, which I like.

But as you can tell from the title of the op-ed, Abernathy doesn’t like it. I couldn’t figure out why from his title, but when you know that Abernathy is a pro-Trump Republican, it makes sense.

Here’s his bio from the Post:

Gary Abernathy, a contributing columnist for The Post, is a freelance writer based in the Cincinnati, Ohio, region. After spending 13 years as an editor at three Ohio newspapers from 1983 to 1996, Abernathy worked in Republican Party politics in Ohio and West Virginia, as well as for an Ohio congressman and two U.S. senators. He returned to journalism in 2011, serving until July 2018 as publisher and editor of the (Hillsboro, Ohio) Times-Gazette, one of the few newspapers to endorse Donald Trump for president in 2016. Abernathy has served as an on-air election analyst for the PBS NewsHour, along with other frequent television and radio appearances. He has won numerous industry awards for column writing, editing and reporting.

I’ve put the lyrics to “Imagine” below the fold so you can see the lyrics Abernathy objects to. Quotes from his op-ed are indented, italics are mine.

Here are the three things Abernathy doesn’t like about the song.

1.) “No religion.”

“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try,” the song opens — not a happy thought for Christians and members of other religions who put their hopes in the belief in an eternal afterlife. We don’t want to imagine no heaven. Why would we try?

“No hell below,” suggests the next line. Well, yes, I have to admit that would be nice, but if there’s a heaven …

If there’s a Heaven, then, says the Bible, there’s a hell. He continues

Yes, I know — religion has caused countless wars through the centuries, and so much of our social and political divide is centered on religious differences. There are those who think we’d all just be better off without any belief in God.

And maybe they’d be right. Those who say that in a world without God, people would find other reasons to kill each other, but we already have plenty of reasons. The way I see it, the fewer excuses we have to divide people into groups, the less xenophobia and hatred we’d have. And so I feel (though I can’t prove it), that Lennon is right here: without religion we’d have less reasons to hate and slaughter our fellow humans.

2.) “Nothing to kill or die for”.  To Abernathy this is manifestly unpatriotic, because we should be willing to kill or die for our country or for freedom.

“And no religion too,” it dreams. Again, many of us think religion is a good thing, just like “countries” are for those of us who are proud of ours. . . .

Later, the song suggests we imagine “nothing to kill or die for.” Aren’t some things worth dying for? Many have died for our freedoms. I’d hate to imagine where we’d be if they hadn’t.

“Countries” are for those of us who are proud of ours”? What the deuce is he talking about? Wouldn’t it be better if there hadn’t been “countries” in the the first place? They’re just another source of division and hatred. One feels that Abernathy is almost glad that countries exist so he could say he’d die for America and its freedoms. But what if he lived in Russia, or North Korea, or the Afghanistan of the Taliban? Nevertheless, he persists:

. . . And maybe in a world without countries, what would otherwise be Ukraine and Russia could coexist harmoniously. For anyone who feels that way, “Imagine” is for you. (Had John Lennon lived, I think, he would have been right at home in the modern social justice movement.)

Indeed! He’s undercutting his own point. And I don’t think Lennon is saying he’s not willing to kill or die to protect his family. He’s talking about the harmful effect of divisions in humanity—divisions that cause enmity.

3.) “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can/No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man.”  This means only one thing to Abernathy: rampant socialism:

Again, many of us think religion is a good thing, just like “countries” are for those of us who are proud of ours, and “possessions” for those of us who believe in the bedrock concept of private property.

. . . “Imagine,” as beautiful as it is, contains troubling imagery for anyone who cares about faith, patriotism and capitalism. And really, we don’t have to imagine this world. We’ve seen it. It’s called socialism.

Well, you could also call it “democratic socialism”; the system seen in Scandinavia. And that doesn’t sound too bad!

There’s no doubt that Lennon didn’t personally accept the concept of “no possessions”, as he kept a lot of his wealth. I think he’s calling for income distribution, for with “no possessions” it would be hard to live at all. He wants equality, or so I think, because inequality of income or “stuff” is another source of hatred and division. The mere existence of “possessions” doesn’t cause division; it’s the unequal distribution of possessions that does.

In the end, Abernathy wonders if he’s just being an old man yelling at the clouds:

Am I reading too much into a song that just makes a simple plea for peace and unity? Maybe. Maybe not. For many of us, “Imagine” is a siren song to the rocky cliffs of destruction. I love the song for its lilting melody and seductive imagery. I find myself humming along. Imagine if everything were perfect. Wouldn’t that be nice? But then I think about the words: No heaven. No countries. No religion. No possessions. And I make myself snap out of it. Can’t we find a better anthem?

I appreciate Julian Lennon’s intentions in wanting to offer hope to Ukraine. He said the song “reflects the light at the end of the tunnel that we are all hoping for.” Good for him. And his father’s song isn’t going anywhere. It’s become the classic invocation of peace and harmony, while any opposition is just curmudgeonly and old-fashioned.

But if the light at the end of the tunnel is the one of these lyrics, I’m not sure I want to step into it. Imagine that.

Yes, he is an old man yelling at the clouds. He wants his religion, his wonderful America, and he seems to have no problem with inequality. No wonder his paper was pro-Trump!

Maybe readers could suggest a song that better embodies Abernathy’s principles. I suspect it would be a country song.

Click on “Continue reading” to see the lyrics to “Imagine”

Continue reading “Curmudgeon sees John Lennon’s “Imagine” as a harmful song” →

Dorothy the mallard hen causes trouble!

April 14, 2022 • 10:00 am

We’ve had very few ducks at Botany Pond this year. Every morning there is a pair of drakes, one of which is Putin, so named because he’s aggressive and tends to drive other ducks out of the pond. He is Dorothy’s mate. (We don’t know the other drake, who usually leaves about 10 a.m.) Later in the day, Dorothy, who’s here for her third year, appears in the pond.

Dorothy’s late appearance made me think she’s either building a nest, laying eggs, or incubating eggs. (I don’t think she’s incubating yet as she appears every day, while ducks who are sitting on a clutch of eggs leaves them only briefly once every few days for a snack and a drink.) I’ve finally located Dorothy, but first let’s make sure it is Dorothy. Yesterday I took photos of her bill to see if they matched the known Dorothy of the previous two years.

Here’s the putative Dorothy photographed yesterday to show the left side of her bill. Note the dent at the back of her head, almost certainly caused by violent mating by a male (Putin?).

An enlarged photo:

Here’s her left side in 2020. Note the diagnostic black spot and surrounding coloration (the pigmentation changes a bit from year to year.  This is a match.

Here’s the right side of Dorothy’s bill from yesterday:

The four dots circled from above (she was called “Dorothy” because it is the long version of “Dot”—her original name).

And from 2021: the four black dots are there, though they were more heavily pigmented two years ago (bill pigmentation tends to darken over the season, though).

I call this one a match, though it’s not as dispositive. But taken together, I have very little doubt about this being Dorothy.

Her behavior is also familiar, as she responds to my whistle and, for a while, ate from my hand.

Dorothy’s had a hard life: two years ago Honey kidnapped her entire brood and Dorothy had to re-nest, producing a second brood that she was at last able to rear.

Here she is yesterday: isn’t she adorable?

Now, the trouble! For the last two years Dorothy has nested in the same window: facing the pond, three floors up. (In 2020 she nested there twice.) This year, however, she has chosen to nest underneath the air conditioner in my office window! I discovered this when I heard scratching from my office, and, lo and behold, saw a duck head poking out from under the A/C unit. (I have A/C in my office because the unit cooling my entire lab is down for good and will eventually be replaced when the floor is renovated for someone else.)

Here she is (red arrow). I presume she chose the spot for protection. I haven’t seen any nesting materials there yet, but I can’t get a good look at her.

The problem is that this spot is directly above the pointed roof of a breezeway between two buildings (Zoology and Botany), and if the ducklings jump, as they will, they will land on the roof. If they survive that, and tumble down to the east, they won’t be able to get to the pond except by climbing a flight of six stairs (see below), which they can’t do. (I suppose a ramp could be built.) If they tumble to the west, they face a long walk in the grass with a wall between them and the pond; they’d have a long walk around it. If the brood flls go both ways (if they survive), I don’t know how the mother could collect them all. It’s distressing, and suggestions are welcome.

I tried to drive Dorothy away from my window when I first discovered her there (she could not yet have built a nest); I banged on occluded window, yelled, and used a scary duck call. Nevertheless, she persisted. I can understand why she loves that sheltered spot, as it protects her and her future nest from predators and rain, but, as they say, “ducks are good at being mothers, but not so good at picking nest spots.” Remember, mallards are ground nesters, and use windowsills around Botany Pond to avoid disturbance and predation—an unusual behavior that urban mallards have sometimes adopted. The babies are not adapted to jump from great heights.

Some photos of the problem

The nest site above the roof. There is no way the leaping ducklings can avoid landing on the roof. Notice, too, the metal “spikes” sticking up from the roof. My only relief is that there is no gutter to the roof where a duckling could get stuck.

If they roll to the east off the roof (if they survive!), which is the most likely outcome, they will in all probability land in a stairwell which they can’t get out of (see below), and has railings, edges, and cement (see second photo):

The stairwell, which spells death for a duckling:

 

Further, even if they got out of that stairwell, which is impossible, they’re still separated by the pond by a flight of six steps up to the breezeway, and then down to the pond area. A/C unit indicated with an arrow. (East is to the right.) No duckling could climb those steps

If they survive and fall to the left (west) they encounter this, and have to walk that long line beside the wall to get to the pond. Without mom leading them, it would be impossible:

So this is what we face, and I’m not sure how to deal with it.

At any rate, the turtles have emerged as it’s been warmer and sunny, and so people come to the pond to see them, too. Putin watches them by the duck ramp:

They piled up on the bank by “Duck Plaza”.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 14, 2022 • 8:30 am

Reader Athayde Tonhasca Junior submitted an unusual but absorbing contribution about bees, incorporating biology, history, and art. His captions are indented, and don’t forget to click on the photos to enlarge them.

The Western or European honey bee* (Apis mellifera), as well as other bees from the genus Apis, secrete liquid wax through specialised glands located in their abdominal segments. Once exposed to the air, the wax hardens into flakes and falls off. Worker bees chew and mould the wax into honeycomb, the architecturally complex array of cells that store honey and pollen, and house the brood (eggs, larvae and pupae).

Fig. 1. Wax coming out of glands on the underside of the bee’s abdomen © Helga Heilmann/Barrett 2015, Encaustics.

Beeswax is a natural plastic and lubricant, used since prehistory for polishing, waterproofing, metal casting and embalming. Beeswax candles were a convenient alternative to smoky, messy and stinky torches, oil-fuelled lamps and tallow candles. The popularity of beeswax candles rose with the spread of Christianity then fell after the Reformation, when candlelight lost its importance in liturgical practices. But beeswax is still a profitable commodity for candle manufacture, for the preservation of fresh fruit, and in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.

The softness and pliability of beeswax presented the ancients with a candle moment (a lightbulb moment was way in the future): a thin layer of wax on a flat piece of wood, stone or metal could be written on with a sharpened stick. The tablet prototype was born.

The Greeks and Romans improved the concept by using a wooden frame shaped like a shallow tray, which was filled with a layer of beeswax. Frames were fastened together with wires or twine, so that tablets could be opened and shut like a book; the edges prevented the waxy surfaces from rubbing against each other. A stylus made from iron, bronze or bone was used to scratch words in the wax.

Fig. 2. Reproductions of a Roman wax tablet and a stylus © Peter van der Sluijs, Wikimedia Commons.

Tablets were portable and reusable writing surfaces; the beeswax could be warmed and the surface smoothed over. The stylus was flattened at one end so it could be used to scrape off any unwanted writing. For the Romans, a tabula rasa (scraped tablet) meant to start over, just as, centuries later, the slate and chalk used by school pupils was the origin of the term ‘a clean slate’. A good writer was said to have ‘a good stylus’. With time, ‘a stylus’ came to mean a distinctive characteristic of any kind, so giving rise to ‘style.’

Figs. 3a & 3b. A Greek man (~500 BC) and a Roman woman (~50 AC) with their wax tablets and styluses © Pottery Fan (a) and Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Wikimedia Commons.

Papyrus and vellum, the sturdy writing media of the day, were expensive and therefore out of reach of most people. Wax tablets were the affordable alternative, thus used widely for ephemeral communications such as letters, drafts, drawings and accounting ledgers. But permanent records such as wills and contracts were registered in wax as well. The earliest written documents recorded in Britain, dating from 50 to 80 AD, are Roman wooden tablets retrieved between 2010 and 2013 from a construction site in London (the Bloomberg Tablets).

Fig. 4. A Bloomberg tablet. Writings on wax left scratches on the wooden surface that can be seen from photographs taken with different angles of light, thus casting shadows upon the tablet surface © Museum of London Archaeology.

Until the Middle Ages, virtually everyone who learned to write did so on a wax tablet. Livy, Ovid, Cicero, Martial and other classical authors mentioned tabulae ceratae (wax tablets) in their texts, so it is likely that much of their thinking was first drafted in beeswax. These writings were then copied over and over onto parchment and later on paper, so they survived over the centuries to inspire, by their own account, William Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri and Bernard Shaw.

So, if next summer you find yourself sitting in a garden with a book in your hands while listening to the bees buzzing around you, spare a moment to contemplate the possible connections between them and your book. You will have another reason to cherish the honey bee.

But Apis mellifera was not the only insect to have made a considerable contribution to the culture and literacy of the Western world.

No doubt you’ve seen plants with abnormal growths that resemble tumours or warts in animals. These are galls, which are caused by agents such as viruses, nematodes, mites and insects. When a plant is invaded by a gall-forming organism, it produces hormones that make the cells in the affected area enlarge and multiply quickly, creating bizarre deformations in an array of colours, shapes and sizes. Some plants are severely weakened by galls (the French wine industry was devastated by the grape gall in the 1860s), but many show no ill effects.

Fig 5. Common spangle galls on a leaf of common oak (Quercus robur) © Roger Griffith, Wikimedia Commons.

Gall wasps (Family Cynipidae) are the main gall-forming organisms in oaks (Quercus spp.) These wasps are small and difficult to spot, since they spend most of their life inside the galls. So it is not surprising that we know little about their biology and ecology; for many species, there are no records of males. Worldwide, about 1,000 species of cynipid wasps have been identified, predominantly in the Northern hemisphere.

When a female gall wasp such as Andricus kollari lays her eggs in the developing buds of an oak tree, chemicals released by her cause the formation of galls that look like marbles hanging from twigs – hence they are known as oak marble galls.

Fig. 6. The oak marble gall wasp, Andricus kollari © Graham Calow, NatureSpot.

Fig. 7. Oak marble galls © Rasbak, Wikimedia Commons.

Galls act as ‘resource sinks’, drawing chemical compounds from other parts of the plant. In the case of oaks, galls concentrate high levels of tannic acid, a substance used throughout the world to produce traditional medicines, hair dyes and tanning agents. Since time immemorial, tannic acid from crushed oak galls has been mixed with water, iron sulphate and gum arabic to produce a bluish-black liquid that adheres well to different surfaces. This concoction, known as iron-gall ink, was the main medium for writing and drawing in the Western world from the 5th to the early 20th century.

Fig. 8. Iron-gall ink © Deborah Miller, The Huntington.

Medieval monks used iron-gall ink to copy manuscripts surviving from antiquity; many of the historical documents in libraries and archives around the world were produced with iron-gall ink, including letters, maps, book-keeping records, ships’ logs, the Domesday Book, Shakespeare’s will, the confession of Guy Fawkes, drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and Van Gogh, scores of J.S. Bach, early drafts of the American Constitution, and manuscripts of Victor Hugo.

Fig. 9. Leonardo da Vinci self-portrait on iron-gall ink. Turin, Royal Library.

Fig. 10. The Magna Carta, written in iron-gall ink on parchment. The British Library.

After about 1,400 years as the main tool for the production of information, iron-gall ink was replaced in the mid-1800s by India ink, which was cheaper, easier to make and yielded a stronger black colour. The phasing out of iron-gall ink was long overdue because this instrument of creation also destroys: the ink’s iron-tannin mixture is corrosive, so with time paper becomes discoloured and brittle; documents start showing cracks and holes, eventually crumbling away. Conservation teams and curators around the world have their work cut out for them trying to restore and protect the heritage created with the help of some unassuming wasps.

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

*Honey bee or honeybee? Bumble bee or bumblebee?

Both are accepted forms, but some dictionaries recommend spelling ‘honeybee’, ‘housefly’ and ‘bedbug’ as one word, a style followed by The New York Times and The Guardian. But many entomologists – and The Entomological Society of America – follow the ‘Snodgrass Rule’:

‘Regardless of dictionaries, we have in entomology a rule for insect common names that can be followed. It says: If the insect is what the name implies, write the two words separately; otherwise run them together. Thus we have such names as house fly, blow fly, and robber fly contrasted with dragonfly, caddicefly, and butterfly, because the latter are not flies, just as an aphislion is not a lion and a silverfish is not a fish. The honey bee is an insect and is preeminently a bee; “honeybee” is equivalent to “Johnsmith.”’   —Robert E. Snodgrass, Anatomy of the Honey Bee, 1956.

There are many kinds of bees: sweat bees, carpenter bees, honey bees, and bumble bees among them.  The ‘bee’ part of the word is a reflection of the insect’s identity, and so it stands on its own.

A bed bug and a stink bug are real bugs (insects from the order Hemiptera), whereas a ladybug is not (it’s a beetle). And for many entomologists, the ‘yellow jacket’ used as a synonym for wasp in some dictionaries should be reserved for a jacket that’s yellow; the insect is a ‘yellowjacket’.

Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 14, 2022 • 7:00 am

Good morning on a rainy Chicago Thursday: April 14, 2022: National Jelly Bean Day. (Jelly Bellies and their ilk are the only ones worth eating.) It’s also National Pecan Day, Maundy Thursday, National Dolphin Day, Ex-Spouse Day, and South and Southeast Asian New Year, celebrated on the sidereal vernal equinox.

Stuff that happened on April 14 include:

Here’s a drawing of the phenomenon with the caption, “The celestial phenomenon over the German city of Nuremberg on April 14, 1561, as printed in an illustrated news notice in the same month.” We don’t know what it was, but isn’t it strange that we don’t see such things these days? I suspect this was a sun dog:

Here’s the rocking chair Lincoln was sitting in when he was shot:

Rocking Chair Used by Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater the Night of His Assassination, April 14, 1865. Photographed by Michelle Andonian

As Wikipedia says, “The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight was a famous gun fight that occurred on April 14, 1881, on El Paso Street, in El Paso, Texas. Witnesses generally agreed that the incident lasted no more than five seconds after the first gunshot, though a few would insist it was at least ten seconds. Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire accounted for three of the four fatalities with his twin .44 caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers.”

Here’s Stoudenmire, shot to death in another gunfight the next year:

  • 1894 – The first ever commercial motion picture house opens in New York City, United States, using ten Kinetoscopes, a device for peep-show viewing of films.
  • 1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40 (sinks morning of April 15th).

The Titanic leaving Southampton on April 10, 1912:

And the last photo of the Titanic two days later leaving Queenstown, Ireland. Three days later 1,544 people would die as it sank:

I can’t find a video of that incident, but here’s a video of a series of dreadful hailstorms, one of which killed a guy who was hit in the temple:

  • 2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.

Notables born on this day include:

Here’s a rare video of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller demonstrating how the former taught the latter to speak:

  • 1889 – Arnold J. Toynbee, English historian and academic (d. 1975)
  • 1904 – John Gielgud, English actor, director, and producer (d. 2000)
  • 1932 – Loretta Lynn, American singer-songwriter and musician

Lynn singing “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man”):

  • 1936 – Frank Serpico, American-Italian soldier, police officer and lecturer

Those who “passed” on April 14 include:

  • 1759 – George Frideric Handel, German-English organist and composer (b. 1685)
  • 1925 – John Singer Sargent, American painter (b. 1856)

One of Sargent’s great pictures, “Madame X” (Madame Pierre Gautreau) painted 1883-1884:

  • 1964 – Rachel Carson, American biologist and author (b. 1907)

Here’s a nine-minute clip from American Experience discussing Carson and her famous book Silent Spring (what a great title!):

  • 1986 – Simone de Beauvoir, French novelist and philosopher (b. 1908)
  • 1995 – Burl Ives, American actor, folk singer, and writer (b. 1909)

Here’s Burl Ives and Paul Newman as Big Daddy and Brick in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. It’s the famous scene where Ives goes off on mendacity:

  • 2007 – Don Ho, American singer and ukulele player (b. 1930)
  • 2015 – Percy Sledge, American singer (b. 1940)
  • 2021 – Bernie Madoff, American mastermind of the world’s largest Ponzi scheme (b. 1938)

Here’s today’s NYT upper-left headline on the Ukraine/Russia war; click to read:

And the news summary:

Russia suffered a blow to its forces on Thursday when its flagship in the Black Sea was “seriously damaged” and its crew was forced to abandon it. Russia said an onboard fire had caused the damage, but Ukraine claimed it had struck the vessel with missiles.

The head of Ukrainian military forces in the nearby city of Odesa announced that two anti-ship missiles had hit the Moskva guided-missile cruiser, which would mark the first time Ukraine had struck a Russian vessel at sea in the seven-week war, rather than at a port. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that a fire had caused ammunition on the ship to explode and reported no casualties among its approximately 500 sailors, but the possible loss of the warship marked another setback for Moscow, as the United States and Western allies bolster Ukraine with new military aid.

If I’m not wrong, that’s the very Russian ship that ordered the Ukrainian border guards on an island to surrender, and they replied, “Go fuck yourself.”

In other news, a million of the 4 million or so refugees from Ukraine have returned. But before we take this as good news, news that we’d all welcome, remember that Russia and its media are ratcheting up rhetoric against Ukraine:

 After a month of fighting, the architects of Moscow’s war against Ukraine had to explain to Russians why Kyiv had not fallen. That’s when the most menacing rhetoric began.

On state television, a military analyst doubled down on Russia’s need to win and called for concentration camps for Ukrainians opposed to the invasion.

Two days later, the head of the defense committee in the lower house of parliament said it would take 30 to 40 years to “reeducate” Ukrainians.

And on a talk show, the editor in chief of the English-language television news network RT described Ukrainians’ determination to defend their country as “collective insanity.”

“It’s no accident we call them Nazis,” said Margarita Simonyan, who also heads the Kremlin-backed media group that operates the Sputnik and RIA Novosti news agencies. “What makes you a Nazi is your bestial nature, your bestial hatred and your bestial willingness to tear out the eyes of children on the basis of nationality.

*I’m always amazed at how fast the cops can apprehend a suspect when there’s not that much evidence, which is a good argument for not getting rid of police. And, in fact, yesterday the police caught the suspect in that shooting in the Brooklyn subway that wounded ten people. From the NYT:

Frank R. James, who law enforcement officials suspect of having perpetrated the worst attack on New York’s subway system in years, was taken into custody on Wednesday, more than 24 hours into an expansive search that erupted after at least 10 people were shot at a Brooklyn train station.

Mr. James was arrested in the East Village, officials said, and has been charged with having committed a terrorist act on a mass transit system, according to Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney for New York’s Eastern District. If convicted, Mr. James could face a sentence of up to life in prison.

Officials said that Mr. James was apprehended thanks to a tip that came in from a McDonald’s on Sixth Street and First Avenue. Officers responded, and when Mr. James was not present, they began driving around the neighborhood. They found him on the corner of St. Marks Place and First Avenue, one of the busier intersections in the East Village, and took him into custody without incident.

“We were able to shrink his world quickly,” said New York’s Police Commissioner, Keechant Sewell.

I like that last sentence! It turns out that James actually called in the crime tip that got him arrested, telling police he was at a certain McDonald’s. He was apprehended nearby shortly thereafter.

 

*Emma Camp, the U. Va. senior who wrote a pretty tame but much-discussed op-ed in the NYT promoting free speech (see here), has followed it up with an article in Persuasion about the reaction to her piece. It’s not bad, and even calls out the NYT for its stupid op-ed mistaking “free speech” for “speech free from criticism or social-media mobbing.” Her new piece discusses some of the over-the-top reactions to her NYT piece, and decries tribalism. It’s good to see a college student voicing these opinions, but they should be ingrained in our culture already. In the fall Ms. Camp will go to work for Reason magazine. (h/t Paul).

 

*Reader Simon wrote me this: “Did you see that Russia has announced sanctions on 398 members of Congress? The question on everyone’s lips is, of course, ‘Who are the 37 that didn’t get hit? (And will they take a Russian vacation now?)'”.

Can anybody find out? I tried but I couldn’t. Who would the Russians exempt?

 

*Once again: do you need a second booster if you’re older than 50 or immunocompromised? The NYT asks the experts, and of course the experts differ. But not really, because they do agree that geezers and the compromised should still get the booster (my emphasis below).

Dr. Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in San Diego, says the F.D.A. made the right call. “No one wants to get a booster shot, and I wish we didn’t need them,” he said. But in his view, the data from Israel are compelling, and older adults or those with risk factors for Covid-19 should get the second booster. When it comes to the first booster, which federal authorities authorized last November for all adults, he says the shot had “a vital effect” and should have been pushed out sooner.

But others disagree. “I’ve always been skeptical of the first booster, and I’m even less sure about the second booster,” said Dr. Phil Krause, the former deputy director of the F.D.A.’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

Dr. Krause left the F.D.A. last fall after the White House endorsed the initial booster shot before his agency had reviewed the data. Like Dr. Topol, he says that boosters make sense for the elderly and people who are at high risk for severe Covid-19. But for everyone else, he says the data show that the initial two-shot mRNA vaccines provide strong and durable protection against severe illness, and the need for extra shots is, at this point, not warranted.

Are these people really in disagreement? The differences, according to the NYT persist not only because the data aren’t that strong, but because of this:

One big point of dispute concerns the purpose of boosters. “Are we trying to keep people out of the hospital, or prevent mild illness, or decrease population-wide transmission?” said Dr. Luciana Borio, a former acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. “If you don’t have a clear, agreed-upon goal, I think it’s easy for there to be disagreement.”

I did what the television recommends but which isn’t possible for most people: I ASKED MY DOCTOR. He said that I can get a shot if I want, but that the benefits are truly marginal.

 

*Writing on Bari Weiss’s site, Zoe Strimpel asked “Who hijacked feminism?” Her thesis is that the first several waves of feminism brought women the equal rights they wanted, and now feminism has become the purview of arcane academic theory. She goes on to say that this is part of a larger identitarian movement. I don’t fully agree with her assertion women have succeeded in getting what they deserve (especially treatment with respect, both personal and professional), but there’s a lot of sense in some of Zoe’s argument:

By the 1980s, women had won several key victories. Equal pay was the law (if not always the reality). No-fault divorce was widespread. Abortion was safe and legal. Women were now going to college, getting mortgages, playing competitive sports and having casual sex. In the United States, they were running for president, and they were getting elected to the House and Senate in record numbers. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

In the wake of all these breakthroughs, the movement began to lose steam. It contracted, then it splintered, and a vacuum opened up. Academics took over—hijacked—the cause.

. . . Unfortunately, identity politics cannot content itself with simply defending women’s rights or LGBT rights or the rights of black people to be treated equally under the law. It must persist indefinitely in its quest for ever-narrowing identities. (The ever-expanding acronym of gay and gay-adjacent and vaguely, distantly, not really in any way connected communities, with its helpful plus sign at the end, neatly illustrates as much.) Everyone is entitled to an identity, or a plethora of identities, and each identity must be bespoke—individualized—and any attempt to rein in the pursuit of identity runs counter to the never-ending fight for inclusivity. Even if that inclusivity undermines the rights of other people. Like women.

This dynamic, with the most marginal interest trumping all others, easily took over a feminism long primed by whacky postmodern ideas like Butler’s—paving the way for its second, related hijacking. This one by biological males.

 

*Finally, Elon Musk has launched a hostile takeover bid to acquire Twitter.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is seeking to buy the social media platform Twitter and make it a private company, promising to “unlock” the company’s “extraordinary potential,” the latest twist in a stunning multiweek saga.

In a securities filing dated Wednesday, Musk described his offer of $54.50 per share as “my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”

The hostile takeover bid comes after a wild two weeks between Musk and Twitter, which was full of head fakes and at least one lawsuit.

The company’s share price closed on Wednesday at around $46 per share but it was up 10 percent in premarket trading. If Musk decided to unload his shares, it could send the company’s stock price sharply lower.

Musk owns 9.2% of Twitter’s share. If he gets the company, what will he do with it?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili goes a’-hunting:

A: What are you doing?
Hili: I’m lying in wait.
A: What for?
Hili: I don’t know yet.
In Polish:
Ja: Co ty robisz?
Hili: Czaję się.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Jeszcze nie wiem.

Here’s Karolina reading.

Andrzej’s caption: A Ukrainian girl is looking for familiar words in a Polish book.

In Polish: Ukraińska dziewczynka poszukuje znajomych słów w polskiej książce.

From Thomas: Talk to the cat!

From Ginger K., a Mark Parisi catoon:

From Doc Bill:

Two tweets from my magical Gmail thread:

Look at this needy penguin!

Reader Simon thinks that (despite the typo–should be “join”) this is a big fuck-up because it’s just going to make Putin more desperate. I don’t think we should predicate our foreign police on what makes Putin more desperate.  The Washington Post editorial board favors NATO membership for Sweden and Finland? What do you think?

A tweet from Ken with commentary:

Yesterday, Joe Biden named former federal prosecutor Steve Dettelbach to be the new head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. While doing so during a Rose Garden ceremony, Biden made a grandpa joke about  Dettelbach being responsible for the nice weather, too.

The Republican National Committee found this joke to have a dark anti-Semitic subtext [JAC: Dettelbach is Jewish]

From Ginger K: This “scholarship” was published by Robin DiAngelo (see refs. at bottom).

Tweets from Matthew: Look at that preservation!

Nature not pretty: barnacles have hijacked a crab (which is doomed) to facilitate their reproduction:

Can the Standard Model of particle physics be wrong?

Washington Post ditches “pregnant women” for “pregnant people”

April 13, 2022 • 12:00 pm

As I’ve always said, I don’t mind using whatever pronouns someone wants to be known by, but the buck stops for me when transgender women are considered as full biological women—and by that I mean women who produce (or have the potential to produce) large and immobile gametes. It’s not the word “woman” I object to; it’s the implicit conflation of biological women with transsexual women in every possible way: the equation of biological women with biological males who consider their gender to be female and may or may not take action to change their bodies. (I don’t care if they “transition” physically or not; I’ll be glad to use their pronouns.)

In this case, however, the gender transition is reversed: the Post uses “people” instead of “women” because they are catering to the other class of transsexuals: biological women who transition to the male gender—”transmen”. For this group the saying is “transmen are men.” Since transmen can get pregnant if they retain their female organs, but are prohibited from being called  “women”, then they are lumped together with biological women as simply “pregnant people”.

Ergo, the Washington Post has caved to this tendency by issuing the following headline (mentioned in the latest Substack column on Bari Weiss’s site); click to read:

In her piece about feminism at Weiss’s site, Zoe Strimpel said this:

“Pregnant people at much higher risk of breakthrough Covid,” The Washington Post recently declared. This was in keeping with the newspaper’s official new language policy: “If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and nonbinary.”

That is explicitly obeisance of the mantra “trans men are men”, which is correct in terms of moral or legal treatment, but isn’t biologically true. In fact, the word “woman” appears only once in the article:

The researchers measured the risk by analyzing the records of pairs of fully vaccinated patients from the same part of the country. In each pair, one patient had the condition that was being measured, and the other did not. The patients were not matched by age, and the pregnant people could have been matched in the analysis with a man or a woman.

Why are they even admitting that there’s a dichotomy between men and women? (Indeed, there must be, for the very concept of “transsexual women” recognizes that there are classes of “men” and “women”.)  But of course there is a dichotomy—biologically. For all practical purposes, biological sex is a binary. The words “pregnant people“, however, appear six times. They can’t say “women” because transsexual men can sometimes get pregnant, and trans activists consider that this is the case of a man getting pregnant.

As I said, I’m happy to recognize someone’s self-assignment of gender, but I’m not willing to say that a transsexual male is a “man” in the biological sense—and getting pregnant is something that only biological women can do.  If this continues, so that language is tweaked to conform to the wishes of “progressive” activists, will we eventually lose the words “man” and “woman” altogether? Why not, if the Post‘s policy be sensible? It’s no wonder that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was reluctant to answer the question “What is a woman?” (She punted, but I think she should have answered as I would have, drawing a distinction between women as a biological class and women as a gender group).

I was sent the Post link by a woman reader who had enough of the paper when she read this headline and of the Post’s new policy. As she wrote me:

I knew my subscription to the Post could only last so long once I was forced to cancel the New York Times, and this is it. I told them if women don’t exist, neither do I–and if I don’t exist, I can’t possibly subscribe to The Washington Post.
LOL! It’s a good reason.

Princeton University punishes professor for exercising free speech, shows it doesn’t understand what “free speech” really is.

April 13, 2022 • 10:45 am

I’m always surprised by the high quality of reporting in Tablet, as it doesn’t seem to be a site many people read.  It also has the reputation of being a “Jewish magazine,” which of course puts off some people, but if you look at its articles, you’ll find many of them that don’t have anything to do with Jews or Judaism. One example is the article below. It’s about the increasingly bizarre behavior of Princeton University, which is in the process of “canceling” a professor for some remarks he made about a black student group. Because the remarks were deemed racist by some, the school decided to permanently place Classics Professor Joshua Katz on a list of racist professors and actions—an official site that’s made available to incoming Princeton students as a “teaching document”.

Even if you think Katz’s remarks were unwise (I do, though I don’t see them as racist), they still constitute free speech and an exercise of academic freedom. For the University to demonize Katz for his statement, and to parade him before students as an exemplar of a racist, is a violation of the viewpoint neutrality that Princeton claims it has. Worse, when Katz fought back, supported by many of his fellow professors, Princeton claimed a “right” to add him to the List of Bad People because that was Princeton exercising its freedom of speech. (The President of Princeton also issued a statement officially denouncing Katz.)

Befuddled as Princeton and its president (Christopher Eisgruber) are, they can’t distinguish between free speech and the chilling of speech enacted by making official statements of what is politically unacceptable. That is, they are mixing up the strictures of our University of Chicago’s Principles of Free Speech with our University’s Kalven Report, with the latter mandating that the University and its constituent units make no official statements about ideology, morality, or politics unless they have to do with the functioning and purpose of the university: teaching and learning.  Princeton was in fact the first University to adopt Chicago’s Principles of Free Expression (about 80 universities have now done so). But Princeton doesn’t really understand these principles, and so, as its head goes up its fundament, has decided to make an example of Katz by consigning him to academic perdition.

Click the screenshot to read:

The scenario in short (statements from the Tablet are indented). First, though, I’d ignore Tablet‘s opening screed about what “social justice” is.  To me it’s a confusing discussion and not really relevant to this story except insofar as Katz is accused of being anti-social justice..

1.) Katz made a comment in an article he wrote in Quillette about the “Black Justice League” and about a faculty letter describing pervasive structural racism at Princeton. Here’s part of Katz’s a response to the faculty demands made in their letter (the first quote is from the letter):

“Acknowledge, credit, and incentivize anti-racist student activism. Such acknowledgment should, at a minimum, take the form of reparative action, beginning with a formal public University apology to the members of the Black Justice League and their allies.” The Black Justice League, which was active on campus from 2014 until 2016, was a small local terrorist organization that made life miserable for the many (including the many black students) who did not agree with its members’ demands. Recently I watched an “Instagram Live” of one of its alumni leaders, who—emboldened by recent events and egged on by over 200 supporters who were baying for blood—presided over what was effectively a Struggle Session against one of his former classmates. It was one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed, and I do not say this lightly.

The bit in bold was Katz’s undoing, particularly the phrase “terrorist group”, though the “struggle session” was against a black student and other witnesses say that that usage is accurate.

2.) Princeton put Katz’s statement—missing a crucial bit—on an official document, “To Be Known and Heard“, which recounts the racist background and nature of Princeton. This document is used didactically for new students. Also, via President Eisgruber, Princeton issued statements assailing Katz’s piece in Quillette. Again, this would be a violation of my own University’s Kalven Report: an official damning of a professor for his/her political views.

3.) In the “To Be Known and Heard” document, Princeton left out, in their quote, the parenthetical “(including many black students)”. As Tablet notes,

In order to damage Katz’s reputation as much as possible, the creators of Princeton’s rogues’ gallery of racists, an official document that bears the copyright of the university’s Board of Trustees, omitted the parenthetical words “(including the many black students).” Keep in mind that any student who had doctored a quotation, especially intentionally and with malice, would likely have been suspended.

The gallery omits any mention of Katz’s response when he was asked by The Daily Princetonian to clarify what he meant by “terrorist” and “Struggle Session,” or what he has said about these matters elsewhere. This is what Katz wrote:

… the BJL went after one fellow black student with particular vigor, verbally vilifying her in public at every possible opportunity, calling her all sorts of unsavory epithets and accusing her of “performing white supremacy.” Other students, as well as faculty and administrators, were accused, without evidence, of being “racists” and “white supremacists.”

4.) Katz is thus now a permanent part of an official Princeton “rogue gallery” of racists and racist acts. That gallery would not be allowed at the University of Chicago because it’s an official university document containing arguable contentions as well as implicitly punishing out a university professor for his speech.

5.) Respected organizations defending academic freedom called on Princeton and Eisgruber to rescind Katz’s treatment. From Tablet:

The treatment of Katz in the mandatory freshmen orientation has generated a lot of criticism, most notably from the three most prestigious American organizations dedicated to academic freedom: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and the Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA). (I am a founding member of the AFA, as is Katz.) In his letter to Eisgruber, Keith Whittington, the chair of the academic committee of the AFA and a professor of Politics at Princeton, writes, “We are not aware of any other example of a university systematically denouncing a sitting member of its own faculty in such a way. … We call on the university to refrain from using its administrative resources to target Professor Katz or other members of the faculty in its official activities and programming.”

The AFA letter (pdf here) is especially good. A quote from it:

The university climate would quickly become poisonous and intolerable if administrative units on campus made it a practice to hold up dissenting members of the faculty for ritual condemnation and if the precedent now being set were followed in the future. If the Office of the Vice President for Campus Life uses its administrative position on campus to organize official university programming for the purpose of heaping opprobrium on faculty for expressing disfavored personal political opinions, the risks of chilling speech on campus are severe. The university can hardly create a climate welcoming of heterodox opinions if it creates an administrative apparatus to target the heterodox and stamp them as campus pariahs.

. . . Professors expressing controversial political opinions should expect criticism from members of the campus community, and if those views are unpopular then no doubt such criticism will be loud. However, professors should not have to anticipate that the university administration will adopt those criticisms as its own and place members of its faculty in the pillory as an object lesson for each class of entering students to learn where the boundaries of acceptable speech can be found.

6.) Did Princeton give any credence to any of these letters? It did not. In fact, it accused these organizations of demanding that Princeton violate its own freedom of speech by withholding official criticism of Katz. This is unbelievable:

The university has not yet responded to the accusations—the latter two of which are especially broad—of FIRE, ACTA, or PFS. Eisgruber did, however, reply speedily to Whittington, feigning concern that what the AFA is asking for is contrary to academic freedom and amounts to censorship.

“Are you asking that I censor the website?” Eisgruber inquired. “If so, I find that request” (which is similar to the requests of FIRE, ACTA, and PFS) ”troubling, and I would need to understand better how you reconcile it with the principles of academic freedom and free speech that you champion. I am certain that you would agree that, on a University campus, censorship, including via the compelled removal of information from a website, is a strongly disfavored response to controversial speech.”

In defending the shameful treatment of Katz though such scholastic gymnastics, Princeton’s president seems to be advancing the bizarre notion that somehow the free speech protections enshrined in the university’s rules and regulations extend to administrators in situations where they exercise their official power in order to denounce, harass, and otherwise discredit and threaten individual members of the academic community.

This is a bit like saying that, in denouncing would-be traitors of the Soviet Union on trumped-up charges, Andrey Vyshinsky, the main prosecutor of Stalin’s Moscow trials in the 1930s, was simply exercising his freedom of speech. Or that Joseph McCarthy was merely exercising his right to free speech when he launched his campaign in the 1950s to unearth hidden Communists in Hollywood. Or that the Cultural Revolutionaries in China who denounced their countrymen for imaginary crimes were free speech heroes.

A University has no “freedom of speech” to officially punish a professor who exercises his own freedom of speech.

7.) Complaints to other Princeton administrators have met with the same kind of pushback. The Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity, Michele Minter, argued that the “To Be Known and Heard” website “is not an official university document” (it is; it’s on a princeton.edu site and has been called “teaching material” by President Eisgruber). Further, Minter claims that Katz isn’t a member of a “protected class”, which is irrelevant, though I think he’s probably Jewish.

And so Princeton, while espousing free speech, has created a climate in which a professor who exercises that right is officially damned by the the University and held up to the students as an example of racism. If that’s not punishment for speech, I don’t know what is.

Two comments. First, Princeton’s twisted construal of free speech appears to be a form espoused by one faculty member quoted in the Tablet article (the professor turns out to be Padilla Peralta, whom we’ve met before):

Instead, freshmen were informed by a professor that he “envision[s] a free speech and academic discourse that is flexed to one specific aim, and that aim is the promotion of social justice, and an anti-racist social justice at that.”

And here’s a reaction to the Princeton mishigass by a fellow academic:

[Eisgruber] is a spineless toady to the woke mob that has taken over Princeton.

You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie!

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ denial

April 13, 2022 • 9:15 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “setback,” came with the note, “It’s a tough one to spin.”  Once again the Crucifixion story comes up, and once again I’m still baffled by it. At least Jesus admits it’s a post facto confabulation, but the whole story, even after explanations from the readers here, doesn’t make sense to me. If God wanted to separated the sheep from the lambs, isn’t there an easier way to do it? How about looking into people’s hearts, which presumably He can do?