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In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “clearly,” each member of the Divine Duo calls the other one out for untrue beliefs. It’s a miracle that they’re able to share a Guinness, much less live together (and sleep together):

Today’s photos come from reader and UK resident Stephen Warren, and includes, arguagly, what is the world’s tallest waterfall.  Stephen’s photos are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.

Tugela Falls via the chainladders

Tugela Falls is a stream that plunges over the Amphitheatre escarpment in the Drakensberg mountains, located in South Africa just to the East of the border with Lesotho. It is usually listed as the second tallest waterfall in the world in terms of total drop, after Angel Falls in Venezuela, which also holds the record for the greatest single drop. However as noted here, recent measurements indicate that Tulgela Falls may actually be taller than Angel Falls for total drop.

The Amphitheatre is an escarpment 5km long with a cliff some 4000 ft high over much of its length followed by a more gentle descent into the valley. As you can see, and some may remember, it was used as the backdrop to the film “Zulu”, which depicted the battle of Rorke’s Drift. That’s not unreasonable because Rorke’s Drift (and Isandlwana) is only 60 miles away. The big knob on the right hand side is the Sentinel and the walk cuts across the bottom and reaches the plateau at the top, at 9700 ft elevation. from the RH side.

We stayed at the Witsieshoek Mountain Lodge, which on a good day has a spectacular view of the Amphitheatre, but the weather was cloudy for much of our visit, and I have had to string together the best pics taken at different times They are a bit mediocre, but I think convey the thrill of the walk. Here is the view from the Lodge. The lodge is near the town of Phuthaditjhaba, formerly named Witsieshoek:

The lodge was built to facilitate the hike to the top of Tugela Falls, although there are many alternative attractive hikes to try. The route starts at the Sentinel car park, at 8200 ft elevation, and involves a fairly easy climb of some 1500 ft, until you get to the exhilarating chainladders. These involve two vertical pitches of some 80ft and 50ft. You need a cool head for these, particularly the first one, although everyone I spoke to who had done the walk insisted they found it terribly easy!

The Lodge provide a lift to the Sentinel car park in a 4WD. The road is in terrible shape and it was a very uncomfortable ride. Here is the start of the walk, looking up to the Sentinel. I did the walk with my son George, who you will see in some of the pictures:

I was surprised to see native flowers on the route that I have in my garden. This is a Nerine:

This, I think, is an Osteospermum:

. . . and this is a Lobelia:

On the drive from Bloemfontein to the lodge (4.5h) we frequently saw Cosmos in the fields. So I checked, and Cosmos is in fact native to the Americas, and it came to South Africa in contaminated horsefeed in the 2nd Boer War.The first part of the walk was paved, but once we got into the rocky parts it was still never hard going, and we didn’t suffer from the elevation either. We eventually reached the chainladders, by which time we were in the clouds. Here is a view from the bottom of the first pitch (this was actually taken on the way down),

. . . and then a picture take from the top of the first pitch.

The top is a plateau, and it is a gentle 25min walk over to the top of Tugela Falls. The stream is only small:

Finally, my son George at the top of (probably) the tallest waterfall in the world, but we couldn’t see much of it:

Here is a great picture from the Tugela Falls wiki page to get a better idea:

Juniper339, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We did the whole walk in 4.5h, up and down.

Today’s wildlife photos are by Rodney Graetz from Australia. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Mornings by a Wetland

An adult Purple Swamp Hen (Porphyrio porphyrio) using its foot to hold back the long grass and let its two chicks begin the day.  Their grassy cave was not a nest, just an overnight camp.  Likely about 2+ weeks old, the chicks will now be supervised to forage along the water’s edge, but not out on it.  Adult Swamp Hens can swim, but pin-feathered chicks cannot.

Cattle in peak condition are described by cattlemen as ‘fat and shiny’.  We would describe this adult Dusky Moorhen (Gallinula tenebrosa) as ‘fat and shiny’.  Bright-eyed, bright coloured, with chest plumage freshly groomed, standing on a small raft of Cumbungi (Typha sp.), surrounded by wetland and grassland full of insects.  Its world is looking good.

A wren in non-breeding plumage: most likely a female Superb Fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus).  Unusual to have stayed perched long enough to be photographed.  Their typical foraging and socialising activities are best described as feverish: one of continuous, high speed, flitting movement.

An adult Black Swan (Cygnus atratus) sublimely cruising offshore.  It is a female, judging by the neck length and the mass of curled ‘bustle’ feathers on its rump.  So far, this year, no (creamy white) cygnets have been sighted.

A Straw-necked Ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis) with a cape of iridescent feathers captured with bunched toes doing a wing stretch.  The ‘straw’ chest display involves specialised coloured and shaped feathers.  If you look closely, the deep ‘Saturday Night Fever’ vee-shaped gap in them indicates it is a male bird.  Spectacular formation fliers, they are great nomads.

Aware that the bird photo encyclopedist, John Avise, recently posted his photos of Australasian Darters (Anhinga novaehollandiae), we add a complementary one of a adult female stretching its surprisingly large gape, given its needle-like beak.  One can imagine the size of the fish that could be swallowed.

This Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is also ‘fat and shiny’ and in the breeding plumage of the bright yellow beak surrounds, and a barely visible crest low on the head and neck.  It is Australia’s largest cormorant species with a wingspan of 80+ cm (30+ inches).  It has a small feather stuck on its beak from an interrupted grooming.

We have posted this photo of an Australian Wood Duck (Chenonetta jubata) family before.  We repeat it here to contrast the next two puzzling photos.  The takeaway impression here is the close supervision of the 10 ducklings by both parents, especially the ever alert male: behaviour that makes this species a very successful breeder.  With this in mind, go to the next photo.

A cluster of 11 (Wood Duck) ducklings, aged 4+ weeks, instinctively huddled together for warmth and security.  Missing are any adult parents: a critical absence that we have never seen before.  These ducklings look ragged and stressed, so our conclusion is they have been orphaned.  But how?  All possible predators of just the adult birds – people, fox, native water rat – are implausible, plus there were no signs of struggle, feathers, etc.  We can’t accept that they were just deserted.

The cluster spontaneously but listlessly moved out onto the water to sit there, seemingly bewildered, and obviously lethargic.  Where now is safety at night: on land or on water?  On land would be most comfortable but unsafe, and ducks are reputed to never sleep on water.  Their future?  We’ve unsuccessfully searched for them since.  A mystery, still.

From Jerry: The abandoned ducklings broke my heart.

Comedian Andrew Doyle was of course the creator of Titania McGrath, the entitled Wokestress whom many people took seriously. Yet she was amazingly prescient, with many of her spoofs of the woke eventually becoming true, with life imitating art. Click on the video below, and enlarge it, to see eight minutes of Titania’s prescience.

I won’t be able to post much (except for a huge post tomorrow a.m.) until Thursday, but this should fill some of that lacuna. Enjoy.

Titania McGrath predicted much of today’s woke madness.

Was she giving them ideas? pic.twitter.com/4gLHDWGEDp

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) March 23, 2024

Well, I certainly encountered Coleman Hughes on his way up when he interviewed me for a YouTube video. Now he’s he’s hit the big time with a gig as a staff writer for The Free Press and an analyst for CNN, a new book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, which is doing very well on Amazon, a podcast called “Conversations with Coleman,” a YouTube channel, and the ultimate achievement, a stint on The View, in which Whoopi Goldberg asks him to explain his thesis. The ten-minute piece is below.

His thesis, which you’ll see, is that we should use class-based categories rather than racial ones to reduce poverty. Another one of The View women (I don’t recognize her) pushes back hard on Coleman, using quotes from Dr. King that seem to have walked back King’s own famous “colorblind” quote from his “I have a dream” speech.  Coleman keeps his cool in the face of some hostility, and remains as eloquent as ever.  He might be thought of as a younger version of John McWhorter.

He’ll go a lot further, even though what he says doesn’t conform to What Black People Should Be Saying.

It would seem superfluous now to argue that women and men are equally competitive in athletics and thus there should be no sex-spcific categories.  We know that, with puberty, comes differences in may traits involved in athletic success, including muscles mass, bone density, grip strength, throwing speed, and so on. (Equestrian sports may be one in which women have either no disadvantage or even an advantage, but I haven’t looked for the data.)  This intersexual difference in athletic ability is in fact why we have separate men’s versus women’s leagues. I was surprised to find, in the Lundberg et al. paper below, that even before puberty boys have significant athletic advantages over girls, which one has to consider when deciding whether to separate the sexes in secondary-school competitions.

But the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which a few years ago punted in a general policy for its athletes, deciding that each sport has to set its own rules, has led to the publication of the Lundberg et al. paper, reiterating again that there seems to be no physical sport in which men don’t have an inherent, sex-related advantage (largely coming from testosterone), so the Bayesian presumption is that there will be a difference. The paper’s publication was apparently prompted by the IOC’s abandoning standards. As the authors note, “The IOC framework does not provide suitable guidance to sports authorities to protect the female category in sports.”

But of course the burning question now is whether or not transgender women (natal men), even under testosterone suppression, retain athletic advantages over natal women, and, if so, whether those advantages disappear over time. And Lundberg et al. paper says that advantages remain and do not go away with time. (We’ve had evidence for this for a long time.)

In classifying individuals for athletics, then, “transgender women don’t count as women”, a fact that goes against all the mantras of gender activism. Nevertheless, truth is stronger than mantras, and the data show that, in those sports that have been examined, transgender women have a similar (but smaller) advantage over natal women as do natal men do over natal women.  The authors (and I) see the inclusion of natal men in women’s sports, then, as unfair. But others disagree, thinking that inclusivity trumps fairness. Since all of us think that those who want to compete athletically should have a way to do so, some hard thinking is involved. Should we have “open” categories, in which only a few will compete? Or should trans women compete only in men’s sports? I have no solution, but surely we need to know the facts before we make a decision like this.

I found the Lundberg paper because a reader sent me an article from the conservative Federalist that linked to it. And yes, the Federalist does accurately characterize the paper. You can read the Federalist by clicking below, but if you want a deeper dive in to the data, one with lots of references, click on the second headline too (get the pdf here). All access is free

Excerpts from the link above:

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) developed its 2021 framework on sex and “gender” around the concepts of fairness, inclusion, and non-discrimination. This framework leaves it to each sport’s governing body “to determine how an athlete may be at a disproportionate advantage against their peers.” However, they admonish sports organizations against “targeted testing … aimed at determining [athletes’] sex, gender identity and/or sex variations.” Instead, it’s up to each sport to “[provide] confidence that no athlete within a category has an unfair and disproportionate competitive advantage.”

The IOC’s sophistic gymnastics to deny sex-based categories in sport prompted 26 researchers from around the world to rebut the IOC’s framework. Their paper, published last week in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, is the latest peer-reviewed study providing evidence of the obvious about sex in sports.

The researchers reviewed studies from “evolutionary and developmental biology, zoology, physiology, endocrinology, medicine, sport and exercise science, [and] athletic performance results within male and female sport” to refute the IOC’s position that male athletes warrant “no presumption of advantage” over female athletes based on “biological or physiological characteristics.”

That statement “is ridiculous on its face,” says Kim Jones, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS). “This is the basic knowledge we all understand and see play out in front of our eyes every day. [This new] paper is brilliant at laying out how clear the differences are between men and women. There are thousands of differences between male and female development in humans across the entire maturity path that result in these huge performance gaps.”

John Armstrong, a mathematician at King’s College London who was not affiliated with this research, highlights this “central flaw” of the IOC’s framework. “To say we should not presume male advantage in a sport unless we have specific data for that sport is like saying that just because most of the apples in a tree have fallen to the ground, one shouldn’t presume the remaining apples are also subject to gravity,” he said.

“There is overwhelming evidence of male advantage from across different sports and there is little to be gained from demonstrating this again and again, sport by sport,” Armstrong noted.

So much for untreated natal men versus untreated natal women. What about when testosterone is suppressed?

But even sports that have copious research into sex differences in performance have permitted males to compete in the female category at all levels of competition and age. One path has been through misguided policies based on testosterone levels.

Over the last decade, various sports governing bodies — including the IOC and USA Boxing — have attempted to define females through testosterone levels. Those organizations relied heavily on a publication by Joanna Harper, a trans-identifying male medical physicist. The paper consisted of eight self-reports by trans-identifying male recreational runners who had suppressed their testosterone pharmacologically and recalled that they ran slower after doing so. Harper excluded the one respondent who said he ran faster and then concluded that males who were suppressing their testosterone could compete fairly in the female category.

Read the paper if you want to see how weak Harper’s evidence was, yet was used to buttress allowing transgender women to run against natal women. The subjects, whose times were self-reported, weren’t even athletes.  But I digress:

Last week’s paper builds on research by lead authors Tommy Lundberg, Emma Hilton, and others who demonstrate the persistence of male advantage after testosterone suppression.

While testosterone suppression decreases various measures of anatomy, physiology, and physical performance, those changes are a small fraction of the differences between men and women on these metrics. A testosterone-suppressed male will have less muscle mass than his former self, but as a category, testosterone-suppressed men remain larger and stronger than women. Further, testosterone suppression does not change attributes like height, bone length, or hip and shoulder width.

And the part below surprised me, as I always thought athletic differences became significant almost entirely after puberty, which could justify having only a single league for younger kids. I’m not so sure now, but remember that winning may not be as important for younger kids than for high-school, college, or professional athletes, so combined leagues may still be considered “fair” in, say, elementary or some secondary schools.

Even before puberty, though, males outperform females in athletic competitions. Greg Brown is an exercise physiologist at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and was a co-author on the Lundberg paper. Brown recently published research based on national youth track and field championships. He found that by age 8, the boys ran faster in their final rounds than the girls did in theirs, at race distances from 100 meters to 1,500 meters.

Again, click to read:

 

Here’s the paper’s abstract with the IOC’s unjustified conclusion and the data from transwomen (my bolding). Note that what they consider most fair is disallowing transwomen from competing against natal women.

ABSTRACT

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently published a framework on fairness, inclusion, and nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations. Although we appreciate the IOC’s recognition of the role of sports science and medicine in policy development, we disagree with the assertion that the IOC framework is consistent with existing scientific and medical evidence and question its recommendations for implementation. Testosterone exposure during male development results in physical differences between male and female bodies; this process underpins male athletic advantage in muscle mass, strength and power, and endurance and aerobic capacity. The IOC’s “no presumption of advantage” principle disregards this reality. Studies show that transgender women (male-born individuals who identify as women) with suppressed testosterone retain muscle mass, strength, and other physical advantages compared to females; male performance advantage cannot be eliminated with testosterone suppression. The IOC’s concept of “meaningful competition” is flawed because fairness of category does not hinge on closely matched performances. The female category ensures fair competition for female athletes by excluding male advantages. Case-by-case testing for transgender women may lead to stigmatization and cannot be robustly managed in practice. We argue that eligibility criteria for female competition must consider male development rather than relying on current testosterone levels. Female athletes should be recognized as the key stakeholders in the consultation and decision-making processes. We urge the IOC to reevaluate the recommendations of their Framework to include a comprehensive understanding of the biological advantages of male development to ensure fairness and safety in female sports.

Finally, the data on transwomen athletes.  I’ve left the references in showing the plethora of studies concluding that testosterone suppression doesn’t eliminate male advantage. Bolding in the text is mine

4. TESTOSTERONE SUPPRESSION POST-PUBERTY DOES NOT NEGATE MALE PERFORMANCE ADVANTAGE:

The IOC framework suggests that testosterone concentrations could be investigated as a means to mitigate performance in transgender women. However, no study has demonstrated that transgender women with suppressed testosterone levels after puberty reach biological or physical parity with females. Conversely, numerous studies have shown that biological differences persist after testosterone is suppressed,25, 44, 46 with physical performance implications. There is no plausible biological mechanism by which testosterone suppression could reduce height and associated skeletal measurements (e.g., bone length and hip or shoulder width) that may confer a discipline-dependent performance advantage. Consequently, no study has reported reductions in skeletal advantages in transgender women who suppress testosterone after puberty.25

Twelve controlled longitudinal studies44, 47–57 collectively following more than 800 untrained or moderately trained transgender women have shown that testosterone suppression for 1 year induces only a 5% loss of pre-transition muscle mass/strength. This loss accounts for only a fraction (one-fifth or less) of typically observed male versus female muscle mass and strength differences.25, 26, 58 For example, in the study by Wiik et al.,44 thigh muscle volume differences of 39% between transgender men and women were reduced only marginally with 1 year of testosterone suppression, and 83% percent of the initial male advantage was retained. The result is higher levels of muscle mass and strength in transgender women compared to females for at least 3 years after testosterone suppression (i.e., the longest sampling duration of current longitudinal studies), with male advantage still evident in cross-sectional studies of transgender women who suppressed testosterone for up to 14 years.59–61

Note, however, that factors affecting endurance performance, like supermarathon running, have not been tested sufficiently to come to any conclusion. It may turn out that in these endurance sports transwomen are on par with men. But certainly this isn’t the case for marathon running.

The effects of testosterone suppression on biological factors underlying endurance performance are less well explored than those of strength and power. Nonetheless, untrained or moderately trained transgender women who have successfully suppressed testosterone after puberty achieved female-typical hemoglobin concentrations within 3–6 months.44, 46 In contrast, the effect on hemoglobin mass, which, unlike hemoglobin concentration, is strongly related to VO2max,39, 62 is unknown, and other factors related to endurance performance, such as work economy and fractional utilization, have not been studied.

We argue that the existing literature on physical changes induced by testosterone suppression constitutes the most robust dataset currently available, and is relevant for elite athletes, because it confirms the principle of persistence of biological characteristics even in the absence of training. These longitudinal studies are then complemented by studies in which testosterone suppression in males has been accompanied by exercise training, which demonstrate that training can partly, or even completely, attenuate reductions in muscle mass and strength.63, 64 Therefore, a rational hypothesis based on current evidence would be that retained male advantage would be larger, not smaller, in highly trained transgender women if they continued to train during testosterone suppression, compared with untrained or moderately trained individuals. This hypothesis is also supported by the observation that sex-specific differences in athletic performance are at least equally pronounced in elite athletes compared to untrained or moderately trained individuals.26

The findings documented in the scientific literature, and the hypothesis that retained male advantage would be larger in athletes, predict that the relative ranking of transgender women in competitive sports would improve significantly after they switch from the male to the female category. This is illustrated by a case study of an American transgender swimmer, who achieved significant National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ranking improvements (from middle to top) across a range of events after switching from the male to the female category.65 This occurred as a result of performance decreases that were significantly smaller than male versus female performance differences, supporting the retention of male biological advantage and illustrating the resultant unfairness.

The swimmer referred to above is certainly Lia Thomas. At any rate, 12 women athletes are suing the NCAA for forcing them to compete against trans women. You can read about the suit at the Free Press, by clicking the link below. Again, Lia Thomas seems to have been the spur for this suit (article archived here). The unarchived piece has a YouTube discussion of the lawsuit by two of the plaintiffs, Riley Gaines and Réka György:

 

Ibram X. Kendi (née Ibram Henry Rogers) has a short article in The Atlantic whose thesis is summed up in the subtitle below. And I think his thesis is both self-pitying and, worse, wrong.  I am not a Kendi expert, though I have read his book How to Be An Antiracist (not that impressive: a strange gemisch of autobiography and strong antiracism that brands everyone not actively working against racism as a racist). I’m told, though, that his earlier book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, is good.

But this essay is not good. It’s full of false claims about how nobody but straight white Christian men ever counted as “intellectuals”.   No blacks, no gays, no Jews, and no women.  Frankly, I’m surprised that The Atlantic published it, but it’s Kendi, Jake! (I suspect the magazine needs a fact checker for stuff like this.)

Click below to read it, or find it archived here:Kendi’s claim is that the term “intellectual” explicitly includes (and historically included) only white males who assume the mantle of objectivity, denigrate “lived experience”, and engage in work that deliberately avoids discussing or trying to solve what Kendi sees as the most pressing problems of society. Kendi came to this notion, he says, when he was writing How to Be An Antiracist, and worried that his style might not place him among “intellectuals.”

 

Some quotes to demonstrate what he sees as who counts as an “intellectual” (indented):

The intellectual has been traditionally framed as measured, objective, ideologically neutral, and apolitical, superior to ordinary people who allow emotion, subjectivity, ideology, and their own lived experiences to cloud their reason. Group inequality has traditionally been reasoned to stem from group hierarchy. Those who advance anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, and anti-homophobic ideas have historically been framed as anti-intellectual.

The traditional construct of the intellectual has produced and reinforced bigoted ideas of group hierarchy—the most anti-intellectual constructs existing. But this framing is crumbling, leading to the crisis of the intellectual.

The crisis isn’t really mentioned further: it appears to be a crisis in Kendi’s own head, about whether he or people like him count as an intellectual/

Forty-six years later, when intellectuals of all races produce work on matters primarily affecting white people, the assumed subject of intellectual pursuits, these thinkers are seldom accused of engaging in identity politics. Their work isn’t considered dangerous. These thinkers are not framed as divisive and political. Instead, they are praised for example, for exposing the opioid crisis in white America, praised for pushing back against blaming the addicted for their addictions, praised for enriching their work with lived experiences, praised for uncovering the corporations behind the crisis, praised for advocating research-based policy solutions, praised for seeking truth based on evidence, praised for being intellectuals. As they all should be. But when anti-racist intellectuals expose the crisis of racism, push back against efforts to problematize people of color in the face of racial inequities, enrich our essays with lived experiences, point to racist power and policies as the problem, and advocate for research-based anti-racist policy solutions, the reactions couldn’t be more different. We are told that “truth seeking” and “activism” don’t mix.

I’m wondering who said that “truth seeking” and “activism” don’t mix? There is a whole tradition of people who seek the truth but also had the explicit aim of achieving social justice (in the proper sense). They are most notable in feminism, including Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler, Camille Paglia, bell hooks, Virginia Woolf, Betty Friedan, and so on. These women were intellectuals and activists at the same time. The same goes for gay and black thinkers, including James Baldwin (black and gay), Frederick Douglass, Angela Davis, Cornel West, Langston Hughes, and, on the working people’s side, Eric Hoffer.  And yet Kendi says this, which is so palpably false that I’ve put it in bold:

Intellectuals who are people of color, women, non-Christian, LGBTQ, or working class—indeed intellectuals of all identities who have challenged the status quo, especially traditional and bigoted conventions—have historically been cast aside as nonintellectuals.

To support this claim, Kendi cites a few people who have dismissed the work of people like W. E. B. Du Boois or Carter Woodson. But citing a few detractors (of the work, not of the identity) does not show that these people have been “cast aside”.  If they have been, how come they’re still read—and taught on college campuses—today?

As for “non-Christian” intellectuals, well, I’ll omit a list of Jewish or atheist thinkers, starting from Spinoza, because you should be able to think of them (Spinoza, Marx, etc.)   And when you read a paragraph like this, from Kendi, you sense that his definition of a “true intellectual” is “someone like Kendi.” (It’s the “No True Kendi” hypothesis):

American traditions do not breed intellectuals; they breed propagandists and careerists focusing their gaze on the prominent and privileged and powerful and on whatever challenges are afflicting them. Intellectuals today, when focused on the oppression of our own groups—as embodied in the emergence of Queer Studies, Women’s Studies, African American Studies, Native American Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, Disability Studies, Latino Studies, Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Asian American Studies—are ridiculed for pursuing fields that lack “educational value,” and our books, courses, programs, and departments are shut down and banned by the action of Republicans and the inaction of Democrats. We are told to research, think, and write about people, meaning not our people. We are told to let our people die. We are told to die.

Who, exactly, tells people to die? That’s pure histrionics.

Insofar as the “studies” courses are criticized—and yes, some of these are valid and worthwhile—they are criticized in academia precisely because they do not involve the search for truth. They involve instead the inculcation of propaganda and the denigration of “heterodox” thought.  But seriously, for Kendi to say that these programs, or what he sees as faux intellectuals, argue to let “our people” die, or tell people to die (presumably blacks, LGBTQ people, women, Jews, and so on; see below) is hyperbolic and, in fact, a lie—unless I misconstrue the meaning of the word “die”.

And he says it again:

We are told not to change the inequitable present, and not to expect anything to change in the future. We are told to look away as the past rains down furiously on the present. Or we are told that intellectuals should focus only on how society has progressed, a suicidal and illogical act when a tornado is ravaging your community. Yet again, we are told to let our people die. We are told to die.

He may be referring to Pinker here, who if course has never told anybody or any group to die, but the “die” thing is just unhinged.

In the end, this article feels like a long whine, one in which Kendi, who apparently has faced charges of not being an intellectual (and his antiracism book doesn’t seem very intellectual), wants to change the meaning of “intellectual” to “someone who rationally seeks the truth in their work, but also prizes ‘lived experience”‘and, above all, has the aim of changing society in ways Kendi approves of”. But has he forgotten about Karl Marx, an intellectual by anybody’s account, whose explicit aim was to change society to make it more egalitarian, and is the author of these famous words (inscribed on his tombstone):

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

Here’s Kendi wanting to be seen as both an intellectual and an antiracist (he sees the terms as nearly synonymous), while beefing that he hasn’t yet acquired the patina of an intellectual:

Traditional notions of the intellectual were never meant to include people who looked like me or who had a background like mine, who came from a non-elite academic pedigree, emerged proudly from a historically Black university, earned a doctorate in African American Studies. Traditional notions of the intellectual were never meant to include people who researched like me, thought like me, wrote like me—or who researched, thought, or wrote for people like me. Traditional notions of the intellectual were never meant to include people who are not ranking groups of people in the face of inequity and injustice. Traditional notions of the intellectual were never meant to include those of us who are fixated and focused wholly and totally on uncovering and clarifying complex truths that can radically improve the human condition. Traditional notions of the intellectual were never meant to include our conception of the intellectual.

Well, the Oxford English Dictionary disagrees, but really, who cares? (I’ve chosen a few of many definitions that seem to be what Kendi’s talking about.)

(“Intellectual” an adjective) Possessing a high degree of understanding or intelligence; given to pursuits that exercise the intellect; spec. devoted to academic or cultural interests.

(“Intellectual” as a noun): An intellectual being; a person of superior or supposedly superior intellect; spec. (a) a highly intelligent person who pursues academic interests; (b) a person who cultivates the mind or mental powers and pursues learning and cultural interests.

Note the word “cultural” in both definitions. At any rate, here’s some beefing by Kendi about how he thought his antiracism book would be received:

When the traditionalists today disagree with the evidence-based findings of intellectuals—or envy the prominence of our work—too often they do not contest our findings with their own evidence. They do not usually engage in intellectual activity. They misrepresent our work. They play up minor typos or small miscues to take down major theses. They call us names they never define, like “leftist” or “Marxist” or “woke” or “socialist” or “prophet” or “grifter” or “political” or “racist.” All to attack our credibility as intellectuals—to reassert their own credibility. In politics, they say, when you can’t win on policy, you smear the candidate. In intellectualism, when you can’t win on evidence, you smear the intellectual.

 

I knew the smears were coming, because I knew history. What blocked my writing bound my intellectualism. What finally set me free to be an intellectual was the face of death, a face I still stare at to amass the courage to be an intellectual.

Although Kendi is not explicit about what the “crisis” of the intellectual is, it seems to be that people like Kendi, who aspire to be both a rational thinker but also someone with an explicit social agenda, don’t count as intellectuals. It may also sting him that Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University (he founded it and runs it) is in trouble. It has produced virtually no intellectual work, has laid off staff, and Kendi himself has been repeatedly accused of mismanagement. Kendi and the Center remain under investigation.

But I find it bizarre that Kendi even worries about whether he’s seen as an intellectual. Certainly his first two books have had a profound effect on society, whether for good or ill. They are part of the modern canon of Social Justice literature. So yes, he’s changed the thinking of many Americans, even though I see Kendi’s views as misguided and his effect on society neutral at best, malign at worst.  With the fame this young man (he’s only 41) has accrued, why this beef about intellectuals? After all, he’s accomplished what he says intellectuals are supposed to do.

At any rate, I find the ending of the piece ineffably sad, for when I read in his antiracism book that he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2018, I thought, “Uh oh—this guy is a goner.” Fortunately, he’s still with us, as I wouldn’t want anybody, including an intellectual opponent, to go through that and die. Here’s his ending:

It took me all of 2017 to write six chapters of How to Be an Antiracist. A slog. But when doctors diagnosed me with Stage 4 colon cancer in January 2018, when I figured I probably wouldn’t survive a disease that kills 86 percent of people in five years, when I decided that this book would be my last major will and testament to the world, everything that blocked my writing wilted away, along with my prospects for living. I no longer cared about those traditional conceptions of the intellectual—just like I no longer cared about the orthodoxy of racial thinking. I no longer cared about the backlash that was likely to come. All I cared about was telling the truth through the lens of research and evidence, reaction be damned. And just like that, between chemotherapy treatments, the words started flowing, furiously: 13 chapters in a few months.

Since I wasn’t going to live, I wanted to write a book that could help prevent our people from dying at the hands of racism. Yes, I was told I would die, but I wanted to tell my people to live. Like an intellectual.

It looks like he survived, even if he isn’t seen as an “intellectual” in the way he wants.  Were I to chararacterize him, I’d call him an “activist.”

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Karl Marx’s tomb at Highgate Cemetery, London. I’ve put a rectangle above the famous quote (note: Marx was a “non-Christian”, born of Jewish origin and later a diehard atheist.

From Wikimedia Commons

Bill Maher’s latest monologue, “Stuck on stupid,” takes out after what he sees as overreactions to the covid pandemic (including closing schools and denying flatly that the virus came from a Wuhan lab),  I remember disinfecting groceries with alcohol and staying a long distance away from people, and, seriously I don’t think that Maher is correct to say that those behaviors were simply stupid. After all, remember that people were dying of a virus that we didn’t understand, and a lot of people hadn’t yet been vaccinated.

So I think here Maher is being snarky with the wisdom of hindsight. He even seems to diss vaccinations!

And yes, we have learned some stuff: how to make RNA vaccines, that those vaccines work, and that, right now, we don’t really need to have our sixth booster unless we’re immunocompromised.

This ain’t one of Maher’s better efforts. I didn’t follow his opinions at the beginning of the pandemic, but I know some reader did, so please weigh in below.

Many of you may have seen the 1988 movie “My Neighbor Totoro“, directed and written by written and directed by the immensely creative Hayao Miyazaki and made into an animation by the fantastic Studio Ghibli (see it!). In one scene sisters Satsuki and Mei stand by as their friend, a large catlike spirit animal named Totoro, boards the Cat Bus. Shaped like a cat and able to fly, it’s amazing, and a great imaginative creation. Here’s the scene where the Cat Bus first appears. (It also appears later in the film.)

Now, by clicking on the two-page article from Toyota Times below, you can learn how Toyota created a drive-able Cat Bus. (All photos from Studio Ghibli.)

Indented text from the Toyota site:

Toyota’s APM Cat Bus was unveiled to the press in a ceremony on February 27, 2024.

It was modeled on the iconic bus in which Satsuki and Mei hurtle through the night sky in the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro.

The design is based on Toyota’s Accessible People Mover (APM), a low-speed, short-distance BEV used at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But let’s jump right into the details.

You can’t help but smile. This whimsical design is the work of Naoki Nagatsu, Professional Partner at Toyota’s Vision Design Division, and his team, in close communication with Studio Ghibli director Goro Miyazaki.

The tail end and insidewith furry seats:

 

The concept for the APM Cat Bus was “fantastical feline shapeshifts into APM.” Bringing out the details required the unique carmaking skills of veteran designers.

Director Goro Miyazaki placed particular importance on those otherworldly eyes. [Miyazaki is shown below, and his words are doubly indented.]

The two eyes don’t actually face forward but slightly out to the sides. This was Miyazaki’s advice for achieving that supernatural look, but positioning the left and right pupils nicely on the spherical eyeballs was difficult.

To begin with, we had to get the car sitting perfectly level.

Incidentally, the APM Cat Bus’s steering wheel is centered in the vehicle—not placed on one side, as is usual—because the weight difference would cause a slight lean if the tire pressure were not adjusted. Now that’s fine-tuned craftsmanship.

The caption: “Four mice adorn the roof, peeking out so that they are visible from the eye line of a 100cm-tall child.”

One of the Cat Bus’s standout features is eyes that shine in the dark. How were they brought to life?

The team crafted eyes in many color and shape variations, repeatedly testing how they lit up indoors, under natural light, and in the dark. When the APM Cat Bus is actually operating, most people will see it during the day. That makes the nighttime cat eyes all the more special.

The APM Cat Bus is based on the Accessible People Mover, which was designed to accommodate seniors, mobility-impaired passengers, pregnant women, and parents with young children.

As such, it is configured to provide easy access for all types of people, with a ramp that can be deployed in just 10 seconds.

It allows a wheelchair user and their companion to board from opposite sides. Another basic APM feature is the raised driver’s seat, which makes it easy to turn around and check that the passengers are safe when setting off.

Where can you see it?

Ghibli Park visitors can catch the Cat Bus for themselves at Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park (Nagakute, Aichi) from March 16, with tickets featuring illustrations by director Hayao Miyazaki.

There’s also a Ghibli Museum in suburban Tokyo.

I’ve loved all the Ghibli animations, and now there’s a new one I haven’t seen, “The Boy and the Heron,” which is highly acclaimed, and nabbed a 97% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I can’t wait to see it. “Spirited Away,” from 2001 and another of Miyazaki’s films, was a fantastic animated story.

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From the Washington Post, we have the story of a cat purloined as it was inside a stolen truck.  Citizens went up in arms to recover the moggy. Click to read:

Susie Heffernan dashed into a store to purchase some pet food, and left her cat, Dundee, in her truck. A winter storm was coming, and Heffernan wanted to stock up on food for her animals before an expected blizzard hit the area.

When she came out a few minutes later, her truck — and cat — had vanished.

“I don’t ever usually leave an animal in the car, but I thought he was perfectly safe,” said Heffernan, explaining that she had just taken Dundee to the veterinarian and she left him in her truck because it was too cold to bring him out, and she knew she could run her errand fast. She locked the doors.

“This can’t really be happening,” Heffernan thought to herself, as she stood in a Tractor Supply store parking lot in Paradise, Calif., on Feb. 28.

While she was concerned about losing her 2000 Ford F-250, she was far more worried about Dundee — an 8-year-old Siamese whom Heffernan rescued off the streets in 2018. He was in a carrier in the passenger seat.

Heffernan immediately ran back into the store and called the police. Although Tractor Supply did not have video footage of the theft, the store next door did. It showed a gray vehicle dropping off a person nearher truck. A figure then entered her truck, Heffernan said, and both vehicles drove off around 12:25 p.m.

Strangers came out, searched, and even donated money for a reward. The truck was found the next day, but Dundee was missing (his medication, which he requires, was still in the car):

They picked up Heffernan at the store, and a group of about a half-dozen neighbors spent from 1 p.m. to around 3 a.m. searching the streets for Dundee, who has a thyroid condition and needs daily medication. They also contacted Pamela Bezley, another neighbor who runs a cat rescue group, and she began searching, too.

News of the stolen cat spread rapidly on social media, with people posting in several Facebook groups to be on the lookout for Dundee. Many strangers joined the search.

“People just came out in droves,” Curtis said.

Heffernan said she received hundreds of messages with words of support and potential leads, and people pushed to get the story covered by local news outlets.

“The offers that were coming in from strangers were just incredible,” said Heffernan, noting that people pitched in reward money for Dundee’s safe return. One man pledged $1,000, but Heffernan capped the total at $500 to prevent the thief from holding out for more money.

The day after the truck disappeared, police found it in Chico, about 15 miles from where it was stolen. Dundee was nowhere in sight.

The truck was stripped and was missing the ignition and catalytic converter. The locks were damaged, and the dashboard was pulled out. The thieves placed Dundee’s medication, which was on the floorboard in front of the crate, in the glove box.

Finally, someone said he had the cat and nabbed the $600 reward:

Finally, someone called and said they had Dundee. Heffernan promised to keep their identity secret and vowed to take a no-questions-asked approach. Heffernan — along with Curtis and Bezley, who runs Concow Feline Rescue — met the person at an apartment complex in Chico. They gave the person the $500 reward, plus an extra $100, and took Dundee home. Heffernan said she does not know whether the person was responsible for stealing the truck and believes they saw the torrent of posts on social media about the reward.

It’s a bit weird that the person who probably stole the cat got all the dosh for a reward. But of course what cat lover would mind that? The important thing is to get your moggy back!   But now the cops should investigate the person who had the cat to see if he stole car + cat!

Here’s a 2½-minute news piece about Dundee’s rescue, and showing the cat.

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If you’re around Pasadena in early August, they’re having a big two-day Cat Convention, which you can read about by clicking on the poster below. Tickets run from $35 to the VIP special tickets at $175 with apparently lots of cat perks.  Unfortunately, the schedule, which is here, says that things won’t be finalized until the summer, but stay tuned.

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Lagniappe: I took a photo of this sign in mid-March. They’re fixing up the south facade of Rockefeller Chapel, barely visible to the left. and the whole facade is covered in Black Cat scaffolding. The company is apparently in Chicago, and they have hats and tee shirts for sale, but sadly, the wonderful tee shirts are sold out.

h/t: Debra

We have an interesting botanical contribution from Robert Woolley. who lives in Asheville, North Carolina. His narrative, about a single flower, is indented, and you can enlarge the flower by clicking on the photos.  This was sent on March 11.

Back in November, you posted about a “corpse flower” (Amorphophallus titanum) blooming in the Appalachian State University greenhouse, a couple hours away from my home in Asheville. So I drove up there the next day to see it. Unfortunately, it barely had any scent at all, not living up to its reputation—but it was still a thrill to see it in bloom.

So I was excited yesterday when a friend told me that there was another corpse flower blooming right here in Asheville, at the North Carolina Arboretum. I went there today—and it’s not quite true. It’s a giant-sized flower with allegedly similar “rotting flesh” smell, but completely unrelated phylogenetically. Still, it’s quite a striking thing.

It’s a “Voodoo Lily,” Amorphophallus konjac. You can read all about this species here.

It had so little scent that I wasn’t even sure if I was smelling it or just the background smell of all the other vegetation in the greenhouse. Even with my nose down inside it, I detected nothing like rotting flesh. So another round of disappointment, but tempered by the fact that it’s just a really cool-looking plant, unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.

 

Here’s a lovely video showing wildlife photographers having unexpected and often delightful encounters with their subjects, ranging from peaceful meerkats to threatening lions.  No worries: no animals nor humans were injured (well, one human was head-butted in the testicles by a sheep) in the making of this video. I think the cheetah cubs are my favorite.

Happy (Good) Friday!

I told you so! Rock reached its apogee in the Sixties and has been going downhill ever since.  Today’s popular music for young people is pathetic: autotuned, repetitive, trite, and without much creativity or inventivity. Look at the Billboard Top Ten this week, featuring Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift.  Yes, readers send me groups that, they claim, are as good as the Beatles. They often are okay, but they are definitely not as good as the Beatles. Or The Band, or Hendrix, or Clapton, or Joni Mitchell, or Steely Dan, or. . . . ad infinitum.

But don’t take my word for it; I’ve already defended my views extensively. Now SCIENCE itself proves the decline of rock, summarized in the article in the Guardian below, and based in a paper in the respectable journal Nature. You can read both by clicking below:

I’ll simply provide an excerpt of the Guardian article:

You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky ageing music fans everywhere.

A team of European researchers analysed the words in more than 12,000 English-language songs across the genres of rap, country, pop, R&B and rock from 1980 to 2020.

Before detailing how lyrics have become more basic, the study pointed out that US singer-songwriting legend Bob Dylan – who rose to fame in the 1960s – has won a Nobel prize in literature.

. . . . “What we have also been witnessing in the last 40 years is a drastic change in the music landscape – from how music is sold to how music is produced,” Zangerle said.

Over the 40 years studied, there was repeated upheaval in how people listened to music. The vinyl records and cassette tapes of the 1980s gave way to the CDs of the 90s, then the arrival of the internet led to the algorithm-driven streaming platforms of today.

For the study in the journal [Nature] Scientific Reports, the researchers looked at the emotions expressed in lyrics, how many different and complicated words were used, and how often they were repeated.

“Across all genres, lyrics had a tendency to become more simple and more repetitive,” Zangerle summarised.

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

Lyrics have also become much more self-obsessed, with words such as “me” or “mine” becoming much more popular.

The number of repeated lines rose most in rap over the decades, Zangerle said – adding that it obviously had the most lines to begin with.

“Rap music has become more angry than the other genres,” she added.

The researchers also investigated which songs the fans of different genres looked up on the lyric website Genius.

Unlike other genres, rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.

Rock has tumbled down the charts in recent decades, and this could suggest fans are increasingly looking back to the genre’s heyday, rather than its present.

Another way that music has changed is that “the first 10-15 seconds are highly decisive for whether we skip the song or not,” Zangerle said.

Previous research has also suggested that people tend to listen to music more in the background these days, she added.

There you go. If self-obsessed, angry, repetitive, and simpler songs are better songs, then you don’t have ears to hear. Further, “rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.”

My prediction is that “oldies” stations will continue to play music of the sixties and early seventies, and you won’t be hearing Ariana Grande even when the kids in Generation Z or Generation Alpha grow up.  Yes, people may prefer the tunes of their youth, for that was the musical background for their growing up, but it so happens that my youth happened to coincide with the greatest flowering of rock music. (Purely a coincidence, I assure you.) Like art, classical music, and opera, genres of art tend to wear themselves out and become senescent. Nowhere is this more evident than rock music.

I found the article in Nature Scientific Reports on which the piece above was based. Click to read; I’ll not go through it as it’s long and complicated:

The abstract:

Abstract

Music is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, and lyrics play an integral role when we listen to music. The complex relationships between lyrical content, its temporal evolution over the last decades, and genre-specific variations, however, are yet to be fully understood. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of English lyrics of Western, popular music over five decades and five genres, using a wide set of lyrics descriptors, including lyrical complexity, structure, emotion, and popularity. We find that pop music lyrics have become simpler and easier to comprehend over time: not only does the lexical complexity of lyrics decrease (for instance, captured by vocabulary richness or readability of lyrics), but we also observe that the structural complexity (for instance, the repetitiveness of lyrics) has decreased. In addition, we confirm previous analyses showing that the emotion described by lyrics has become more negative and that lyrics have become more personal over the last five decades. Finally, a comparison of lyrics view counts and listening counts shows that when it comes to the listeners’ interest in lyrics, for instance, rock fans mostly enjoy lyrics from older songs; country fans are more interested in new songs’ lyrics.

QED.

h/t: Jez

 

The battle continues between truth (or merit) and social justice, exemplified in John Haidt’s famous lecture at Duke on the two types of approaches to education, continues. This time it’s in an article in the new Science urging expansion of DEI initiatives in STEMM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine).

The article is by Shirley Malcolm, whose associated bio is this:

Shirley Malcolm is a senior advisor and director of the STEM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change initiative at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science), Washington, DC, USA.

Since the AAAS funds a whole unit on “STEM Equity Achievement Change,” it’s not surprising that they’re defending DEI at a time when the Supreme Court has banned race-based admissions and DEI is waning everywhere—not just in academic but in the corporate world. Malcolm says she’s explicitly fighting back against this tendency/

Click to read.

None of us want a country where there is bigotry against women or members of different ethnic groups, and all of us want a country where everyone has equal opportunity to rise as high as they can (the latter is far harder to achieve).  We want a country where the net for positions is cast as widely as possible, to get talent wherever it lies and to make sure that everybody’s in the net.

But this is not DEI.  To me, DEI stands for extreme forms of affirmative action, and I generally oppose it for the  reasons below. Malcolm’s quotes are indented.

1.)  It favors not equality of opportunity but equity: the proportional representation of all groups in a population in an endeavor—STEMM in this case. This is made explicit in Malcolm’s article:

STEMM should ideally benefit all of society. However, this will not happen until the country creates a STEMM community as diverse as the population it should serve.

This neglects the view that different groups may have different preferences; for example, it’s likely that in medicine women tend to go into “people oriented” fields, like pediatrics, family medicine, and OB-GYN, while most surgeons are men.  This appears to be due not to salary differentials but to preference, and is seen in countries, like those of northern Europe, which have the highest ratings for gender equality. (In fact, in more gender-equal countries, women are less likely to go into STEMM, for reasons probably connected with the freedom to exercise preference and make career choices.) Which leads us to the second problem.

2.) Differences in equity are imputed by DEI to systemic racism, not to differences preference or merit. Over and over again, we find that underrepresentation of groups are not due to people trying to keep others out of their fields, but to the fact that preference has controlled people’s movement into fields, or different groups are over- or under-represented because of differences in merit. Here we have Malcolm touting “inclusion and respect” as an important aspect of STEMM firled

The success of STEMM is measured not only by publications and head counts of underrepresented groups in STEMM fields but also by creating a culture of inclusion and respect.

3.) Systemic racism/sexism is said to have reduced equity in different STEMM fields, but there’s precious little evidence for that. In fact, STEMM fields and departments are desperate to hire minorities and women, which, because of affirmative action, actually now have an advantage in entering STEMM.

4.)  Because identity trumps merit (something not good for science), differences in merit are to be either effaced or reduced using with strong affirmative action. For example, standardized tests have been largely eliminated, DEI statements prevail in hiring and promotion (and, in covert forms, in college admissions essays), and “holistic” admissions are used to circumvent legal bans on sex-based or race-based hiring.

Instead of using these stopgap measures that result in more equity, but at the expense of the quality of science produced, we should be working (in society, not in science) on bestowing equality of opportunity from birth. That’s a hard problem, of course, but solving it ensures that the quality of scientists is the overweening criterion for evaluating them (of course there’s teaching and service, too). And everybody wants science to be the best it can, especially, of course, when it comes to medical science.

The emphasis on merit as opposed to identity has been embodied in the University of Chicago’s Shils Report, which states this:

 The Shils report dictates that faculty at the University of Chicago must display distinguished performance in each of the following criteria when being considered for promotion:

• Research
• Teaching and Training, including the supervision of graduate students
• Contribution to intellectual community
• Service

“Promotion” also includes hiring. We do not use DEI statements when hiring (though some departments try to do it on the sly), so that hiring as well as promotion is based on the criteria above, but mainly, because new professors don’t have a record of service or teaching, on research and contribution to the intellectual community.

I won’t bore you by quoting Malcolm at length, because it’s simply a boilerplate defense of DEI neglecting all the points above. The only remotely cogent point she makes is this:

For example, one study reports that women researchers in the United States are more likely to make innovations that benefit women as a whole but are less likely to participate in commercial patenting. Their relative absence is a loss for women and for the world economy. Critics imply that DEI promotes mediocrity, whereas research shows the exact opposite.

The link indeed shows what Malcolm says, except she doesn’t mention that the innovations are “patents for biomedical innovations”, but of course those reflect a sex-ratio bias inherited from the old days. and, more important, there is no bias in hiring, promotion or funding grants of women these days. As I said, departments are competing fiercely for good female talent, and the proportion of women in biomedical research is increasing. It will increase up to the point where representation reflects female merit and preference—I suspect this may be more than 50%.   And this will happen naturally, so long as there’s no systemic misogyny, something that no biologist I know has seen. Here’s a table of recent Ph.D.s conferred in various fields: look at biology and at “health and medical sciences; the latter is 71.4% female!

In the end, the invidious effects of DEI, with its misguided emphasis on equity and systemic racism, and its devaluing of merit in favor of social justice, is not good for science.  And yet the AAAS itself, and the journal Science, has been ideologically captured, as have nearly all scientific organizations. As Luana Maroja and I predicted, the nature of science has already changed in the past five years, and may be almost unrecognizable in another ten:

And because it’s “progressive,” and because most scientists are liberals, few of us dare oppose these restrictions on our freedom. Unless there is a change in the Zeitgeist, and unless scientists finally find the courage to speak up against the toxic effects of ideology on their field, in a few decades science will be very different from what it is now. Indeed, it’s doubtful that we’d recognize it as science at all.

We were accused of hyperbole for saying that. And yet it’s happening, as scientific journals have science articles increasingly replaced by statements like the above, by “invited” papers on progressive issues and bias, and by ideologically-based papers accepted to reinforce a preferred ideology.

And the new science, needless to say, will not produce as much understanding of the world as science that leaves ideology at the door of the lab.

Posting may be light today as I have an event to attend. But please send in your photos. I have about two batches left, and today I’m featuring the work of people who sent me only one or a few photos.  Their comments are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

From Lee Jussim

A young muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) dining among pondscum:

Three from Claudia Baker.

On a winter’s walk one day last year, I came across this barred owl (Strix varia) high up in the branches of a tree. Just out there in the bright sunshine, having a snooze, open for anyone to snap a picture. What a beautiful sight. Made my day. The interweb says “originally a bird of the east (where I live), during the twentieth century it spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward to California”. They are fairly prolific around here (Ontario) and, according to a birding friend of mine, they are crowding out the other owls, especially the Barn Owl.

On an old spruce stump along my road, I spotted this fungus. When I tried to identify it, it was very confusing as there are so many. I think it is a Ganoderma lucidum, but I’m not sure. Perhaps a reader can weigh in. Sure are beautiful.

From Jon Alexander:

I just stumbled on some photos of a pigeon (Columba livia domestica) I took in 2013 from the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. (I straightened a couple today.) Not exactly the best photos of wildlife, but I like them. I don’t remember if I put a cracker there or if someone else put it there. But I imagine that some pigeons may have learned that crackers might be had with a little effort (or an updraft).

This is from Richard Pieniakowski.  I have many good pictures from him, but must download them from a Google Drive. This is from October, and a barred owl, like the one pictures above.

I just wanted to share this photo of a Barred Owl I captured the other day with you. I think that readers would appreciate looking at this silent hunter.

And from Reese Vaughn, a duck (I think it’s a mallard hen, Anas platyrhychos):

Betty Brown Duck graces the deck on the resaca in Brownsville, Texas. The Williamsons, Kay and John, are her staff. I have asked if she is a mallard hen and how long they have been feeding her — she swims up for food on an elaborate deck that belongs to my friends Kay and John Williamson and they call her Betty Brown Duck. They may be able to send more pictures. Every morning they feed a swarm of nutria, fish, and water birds.

This article in The Atlantic, a very good piece, is written by Theo Baker, who, only a sophomore, is already a skilled journalist. (His reporting also helped bring down Stanford’s President for promulgating bogus research.)  The article is long but engrossing, and describes the intense friction between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli (mostly Jewish) students at Stanford, a school that in recent years has been damaged by an infestation of ideology. (Remember the deplatforming of conservative Judge Duncan, which led to the firing of Stanford’s equity dean?)

Baker takes the trouble to interview almost everyone concerned, including Stanford’s President Saller and Provost Martinez, as well as a number of students on both sides, and in the end manages to convey the view that, as it is here in Chicago, most of the trouble is being fomented by aggressive, angry, and loud pro-Palestinian students. (Baker seems to be Jewish.) But the incidents he describes are fascinating and well researched.

You might be able to read the article by clicking below, but if it’s paywalled you can find it archived here. 

I’ll give just one excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing. If I don’t miss my guess, Baker has a good career in front of him.

Zionists, and indeed Jewish students of all political beliefs, have been given good reason to fear for their safety. They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets. At least one was told he was a “dirty Jew.” At least twice, mezuzahs have been ripped from students’ doors, and swastikas have been drawn in dorms. Arab and Muslim students also face alarming threats. The computer-science section leader, El Boudali, a pro-Palestine activist, told me he felt “safe personally,” but knew others who did not: “Some people have reported feeling like they’re followed, especially women who wear the hijab.”

In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism. In January, Jewish students organized an event dedicated to ameliorating anti-Semitism. It marked one of  [temporary President] Saller’s first public appearances in the new year. Its topic seemed uncontroversial, and I thought it would generate little backlash.

Protests began before the panel discussion even started, with activists lining the stairs leading to the auditorium. During the event they drowned out the panelists, one of whom was Israel’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, by demanding a cease-fire. After participants began cycling out into the dark, things got ugly.

Activists, their faces covered by keffiyehs or medical masks, confronted attendees. “Go back to Brooklyn!” a young woman shouted at Jewish students. One protester, who emerged as the leader of the group, said that she and her compatriots would “take all of your places and ensure Israel falls.” She told attendees to get “off our fucking campus” and launched into conspiracy theories about Jews being involved in “child trafficking.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event, protesters pursued him, chanting, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!”

At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, “We know your names and we know where you work.” The ringleader added: “And we’ll soon find out where you live.” The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.

Saller avoided the protest by leaving through another door. Early that morning, his private residence had been vandalized. Protesters frequently tell him he “can’t hide” and shout him down. “We charge you with genocide!” they chant, demanding that Stanford divest from Israel. (When asked whether Stanford actually invested in Israel, a spokesperson replied that, beyond small exposures from passive funds that track indexes such as the S&P 500, the university’s endowment “has no direct holdings in Israeli companies, or direct holdings in defense contractors.”)

The image of a rabbi and imam, weeping as they’re trying together to protect the Jewish students, is unforgettable. It reminds me a bit of the Four Chaplains during World War II who went down with their ship.

h/t: Susan

Luana and I have been trying to get an accurate figure for the difference in VOLUME between a human sperm and egg, which of course reflects a difference in metabolic investment in making them.  I’m talking now about cytoplasmic volume, not length, as the disparity in length isn’t that relevant (in some flies, the sperm are longer than the fly!).

The figure bandied about is a volume difference of ten million, but I don’t believe that. All these figures trace back to one assertion on a Northwestern University site, but the paper it cites doesn’t give any such figure (or any figure).  Everybody quotes that figure, but it seems way too large for me. However, it might be accurate.

So, I’m crowdsourcing the answer. I have no prize here except for approbation (and I’ll put the winner and correct answer below).

Question: What is the difference in cytoplasmic volume between a human sperm and a human egg?  A reference to a respectable source must be included.

Thank you!

There’s more DNA-dissing is going on, this time in a piece in Aeon arguing that it is bad for society and for biology to think of the cell as an assembly line of molecules controlled by a “boss” in the nucleus. The cell, after all, is more socialistic!

Author Charudatta Navare, whose short bio is given below after his name, advances his thesis that the cell is NOT an entity “controlled” from the top down by the capitalistic nucleus, as if the cell were a “factory” with its sweating workers—the contents of the cell—lashed by the whip of the nuclear DNA.  To Navare, that’s simply an invidious capitalistic/patriarchal/classist metaphor. Instead, the “workers”, including everything in the cytoplasm like the ribosomes, mitochondria, vacuoles, vesicles, endoplasmic reticulum, and ribosomes, are independent entities with their own heredity, all cooperating in a genial manner to make the cell function smoothly. As Navare asserts, “the nucleus is only a tiny subset of the hereditary material.” The cell, it seems, is more like a collective farm than a car factory.

The message, which Navare repeats at length, is THE CELL IS NOT A HIERARCHY.  The motivation for the misguided view that the Big Boss Nucleus controls the workers is, consciously or not, to read into nature the  hierarchy of modern patriarchal society. To Navare, the hierarchical view of the cell not only buttresses a maladaptively structured society, but, most of all damages biology by distorting our understanding.

Navare’s big mistake is this: the nucleus, which contains the genes, really is the boss. Even the mitochondria, which replicate themselves and contain their own genes, interact intimately with the nucleus to perform a number of functions. (The mitochondria, as you may know, are derived from original endosymbiotic bacteria that have, though evolution, been integrated into the cell as an essential organelle. Chloroplasts, essential for photosynthesis, have a similar origin and interact with the nuclear in the same way.) But both of these organelles can function only with the help of nuclear genes. And they’re the sole exception to the notion that prganismal DNA is the recipe for the cell and the organism.

The rest of the organelles in the cytoplasm, then, ultimately derive from genes, as does the spatial organization of the egg that helps set off development. This is not to say that random factors, like chemical concentration in different parts of the egg, can influence development, but at bottom, yes, everything in the cell save the mitochondria and chloroplasts ultimately come from the DNA in the nucleus. Without the Nuclear Boss, the workers lose their jobs and the factory goes kaput.  Figuring out how this all evolved, of course, is a difficult issue. But evolve it did, via changes in the DNA.

Click below to read the article in Aeon:

Here’s the thesis (Navare’s words are indenteed):

In short, the textbooks paint a picture of a cellular ‘assembly line’ where genes issue instructions for the manufacture of proteins that do the work of the body from day to day. This textbook description of the cell matches, almost word for word, a social institution. The picture of the cytoplasm and its organelles performing the work of ‘manufacturing’, ‘packaging’ and ‘shipping’ molecules according to ‘instructions’ from the genes eerily evokes the social hierarchy of executives ordering the manual labour of toiling masses. The only problem is that the cell is not a ‘factory’. It does not have a ‘control centre’. As the feminist scholar Emily Martin observes, the assumption of centralised control distorts our understanding of the cell.

A wealth of research in biology suggests that ‘control’ and ‘information’ are not restricted at the ‘top’ bu

t present throughout the cell. The cellular organelles do not just form a linear ‘assembly line’ but interact with each other in complex ways. Nor is the cell obsessed with the economically significant work of ‘manufacturing’ that the metaphor of ‘factory’ would have us believe. Instead, much of the work that the cell does can be thought of as maintaining itself and taking ‘care’ of other cells.

Why, then, do the standard textbooks continue to portray the cell as a hierarchy? Why do they invoke a centralised authority to explain how each cell functions? And why is the imagery so industrially loaded?

It’s capitalism and the patriarchy, Jack! But in fact, the textbooks make DNA the boss because it is the boss. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself:

All of this coded information in the cytoplasm leads us to ask: why do modern textbooks, which are supposed to present the standard, well-accepted knowledge of the day, continue to portray the cell as hierarchical in structure? Why do science journalists continue to refer to the codes and programs of genes in the nucleus when discussing how life develops and evolves?

I believe that the hold of the centralised view comes from how it resonates with the human social order. The nucleus providing instructions and the cytoplasm performing the labour of ‘nurturing’ sounds ‘natural’ and even ‘obvious’ in a patriarchal society. The central nucleus ordering its ‘underling’ cytoplasm to actually carry out tasks sounds obvious in a class-stratified society.

. . .The reason we find centralised functioning everywhere is not necessarily because it is everywhere. It just appears to be everywhere because of the lens through which we view the world. When scientific narratives, using all the authority of science, project the social hierarchy onto nature, they can reinforce the same hierarchy as ‘natural’. The centralised model from cells to animal social groups suggests that everything in nature is centralised, and that centralisation works. The ‘truth’ about nature is influenced by our values, and this ‘truth’ can then play a role in doubling down and reinforcing the same social values in the world.

. . . I believe that the hold of the centralised view comes from how it resonates with the human social order. The nucleus providing instructions and the cytoplasm performing the labour of ‘nurturing’ sounds ‘natural’ and even ‘obvious’ in a patriarchal society. The central nucleus ordering its ‘underling’ cytoplasm to actually carry out tasks sounds obvious in a class-stratified society.

And this metaphor, says Navare, damages our understanding of biology. I can’t think of how, since scientists have been beavering away at understanding the cell, and I haven’t sees them impeded by a bad metaphor. Perhaps they have, but I can’t think of one example.  Navare keeps saying that the view is an impediment, but gives no examples of how.  Here are more of his lucubrations:

How science conceptualises the cell also gives us insight into how we think of scientific objectivity. We often think that, when values interfere with science, the quest for truth and accuracy is put at risk. Scientists are supposed to leave their values and beliefs outside their labs. However, research in feminist science studies suggests otherwise. One does not necessarily need to be free of values to do good science, but denying their influence undermines the quality of scientific work. Instead of denial, reflecting on values and biases would help researchers steer clear of the pitfalls. Self-reflection can help scientists identify how their values are shaping their science, and think of better experimental designs that could ‘catch’ their assumptions before they compromise results.

. . .But the trouble with doubling down on this kind of metaphor as a stand-in for science is that assumptions about how a cell ought to function prevent us from understanding how the cell really functions. What is more, when science projects social hierarchies onto the cell, it also reinforces the notion that social hierarchies are ‘natural’.

In fact, Navare says that there are other metaphors that could serve equally well:

. . .Unfortunately, the centralised and hierarchical metaphor, so pervasive in textbooks, is often the only one for the internal workings of the cell.

One alternative metaphor for the cell nucleus, I tentatively suggest, could be a ‘collaborative notebook’. The cell keeps this notebook, and all the cell’s components use it to keep track of their activities and help maintain the cell. The cell ‘writes’ in the notebook, writes in the ‘margins’ and ‘refers’ to its own notes. Cellular organelles sense each other’s needs and take ‘care’ of each other. While the ‘factory’ metaphor attributes control and information to the nucleus, the ‘nucleus as a collaborative notebook’ shows agency on the part of the cell. While the factory metaphor makes the cell seem obsessed with ‘production’, alternative metaphors can highlight the mutual aid among the cellular components and the labour of maintaining the cell.

Try as I might, I fail to see how the Notebook Metaphor is more helpful than the “factory”metaphor, but of course it fits right into the Kropotkin-esque tendency to see mutual helpfulness (one could also see it reflectiong socialism). But truth be told, I’m not that enamored of the factory metaphor, either. All I care about is how the cell works, and you can’t do that without appreciating the overweening effects of genes whose action produces almost everything in the cell, influences how the organism develops, and is, in the end, the result of the selection among genes. Every adaptive aspect of development, including cell structure and function, depends on adaptive changes in the DNA put in place by natural selection (this holds also for how the mitochondria and cytoplasm interact with nuclear DNA).

Here’s how Navare minimizes the effects of genes.

The nucleus, of course, does make some hereditary contribution, and we understand it in great detail. But the nucleus is only a tiny subset of the hereditary material. If we don’t even search for hereditary information in the egg cell – if we never describe that information as hereditary – we will keep propagating the idea that biological inheritance is restricted to the nucleus alone. Now I’m not sure what he means by “hereditary material.” Yes, the mitochondria and cytoplasm do replicate themselves by fission (and duplication of their DNAz0, but none of the other organelles are self-replicating, or “hereditary” in that sense. The organelles and cytoplasmic constituents, like vacuoles and ribosomes, are made by recipes written in the DNA (ribosomes, for example, the site of protein synthesis,m are largely made of RNA sent out from the nucleus). Without the DNA coding for proteins, we have no enzymatic pathways, no means of constructing organelles, and no way of building up the constituents of a cell.

Now this is not to say that the construction of a cell or an embryo doesn’t require anything other DNA, but it does require the products of DNA. For example, how does a fertilized egg know which end is going to be the head end and which the tail? And given that, what about the back from front? (Once these are determined, of course, left versus right has already been specified.) It is because the mother’s DNA makes RNAs that are distributed asymmetrically in the egg, and those differential distributions of RNA, via the proteins they make, are what starts the anterior-posterior and dorso-ventral axes from forming. Now these RNAs are moved through the egg cell by microtubules, part of the “cytoskeleton”, so the microtubules must also be there in the egg. But ultimately, it’s the DNA that contains the recipe for these microtubules—and of course the axis-forming RNA.

And all of this has evolved by natural selection causing the differential proliferation—of genes.  In the end, everything save some parts of the mitochondria and chloroplasts, is the product of evolution, and that means of changes in DNA.  In both evolution and development, it’s DNA all the way down. Even the response of an organism to its environment, like cats growing longer hair in the winter, is an evolved response based on changes in genes in the DNA. The environment is the cue, but the response lies in the genome.

One more example of gene-dissing:

We are told that the genes contain blueprints to make proteins. However, genes do not contain all the information needed to make proteins. They only specify a one-dimensional protein chain; the three-dimensional structure that the proteins take, which is vital for their function, is determined by the cellular environment as well. Further, the way proteins behave also varies with where they are in the cytoplasm. The genetic ‘information’, on its own, is nowhere near enough for the cell to function.

No the proteins largely fold on their own once they are made. But does Navare not realize that the information that makes the linear structure of a protein into a three-dimensional structure rests largely already in the linear arrangement of amino acids, which creates the linear structure of a protein? Once that’s made, the proteins largely fold spontaneously into the appropriate three-dimensional structure, which is of course crucial for enzymes to work and proteins like hemoglobin to function. But without the correct linear structure, specified by the DNA, the right spontaneous folding won’t happen. So again the DNA is largely the boss, and has evolved to produce proteins that fold up the right way. The DNA is even more bossy because sometimes proteins are helped in their folding, or retain their folding, through their interaction with enzymes. What are enzymes? Proteins made by DNA.  Again, it’s DNA all the way down.

That aside, Navare manages to get in a timely word for how DEI can help our understanding as well:

Science is undoubtedly a human endeavour. The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway describes science as a conversation between partial perspectives that each individual gets from the vantage point of their position. As Just’s science shows, people with different life experiences might have different perspectives and may ask different questions. [JAC: E. E. Just, one of the only well known black scientists working in the early 20th century, made notable contributions to understanding the cell.] Admittedly, the connections between scientists’ backgrounds and their work are not always so direct. But the social position of scientists can still serve as one of the factors that influence their work. We often say science is self-correcting. We think that science changes its views when new information comes to light. But this new information doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. It doesn’t emerge only from new techniques. It is also generated when diversity and representation are important in their own right from the perspective of equity, diverse perspectives would benefit science most of all. Objectivity is not an individual burden but a collective one. While diversity and representation are important in their own right from the perspective of equity, diverse perspectives would benefit science most of all. Objectivity is not an individual burden but a collective one.

And clearly class has conditioned our view of the cell as well:

Historically, the majority of scientists have been male, upper class, and belonging to the dominant castes and races. It is possible that the social position of scientists helped them relate to the notion of a nucleus that continues discharging instructions while taking for granted the knowledge and skills required in actually doing the work. The Nobel laureate David Baltimore described genes as the ‘executive suite’ and the cytoplasm as the ‘factory floor’. The executive suite appears more valuable and deserving of more remuneration, while the toiling masses on the factory floor are thought to be merely executing the instructions, undervaluing the wealth of explicit and tacit knowledge and skill.

Poor Baltimore, bamboozled by a view of the cell. I guess it was all the dosh that comes with a Nobel Prize that has warped his viewpoint.

There’s a feminist point of view, too, one that presumably sees the cell as more cooperative than a patriarchy would make us think:

Science is often described as objective and value-free, but philosophers of science have pointed out that values can guide the questions that scientists ask, the hypotheses they make, and the way they interpret their results. The field of feminist science studies, in particular, has called into question the sole role of the nucleus where heredity is concerned.

. . . . How science conceptualises the cell also gives us insight into how we think of scientific objectivity. We often think that, when values interfere with science, the quest for truth and accuracy is put at risk. Scientists are supposed to leave their values and beliefs outside their labs. However, research in feminist science studies suggests otherwise.

There are no references for either of these statements.  My own view is that we need to draw scientists from throughout society (giving everyone equal opportunities to suceed), but concentrating on merit, which also includes the ability to “think outside the box”. That said, with one exception I haven’t seen fruitful sex-, class- or race-specific ways of approaching biology. The one exception my feeling that women evolutionists helped us concentrate more on female preference as opposed to male traits in sexual selection.

Finally, Navare issues a dire warning of the dangers inherent in a metaphor that, in the end, is only a metaphor. (Bolding is mine.)

If we are unable to conceive of the cell, the basic unit of organisms like ours, without coercive hierarchies, we will never fully appreciate the complexity of nature. If we fail to imagine society without a centralised authority, we will find it difficult to understand or empower the oppressed. Unless we reflect on our assumptions, our science will be loaded with so many landmines it may never unravel all the mysteries of life.

In the end, Navare manages to connect the “factory” view of the cell with oppression in society.  We can only free workers from their chains if we free our view of the cell as having a DNA Boss. This, of course, is music to the ears of “progressives”.

Sorry, I can’t agree. If you can find one example of how our understanding of life has been impeded by the “factory” metaphor—which after all isn’t something that biologists hold in their heads as a controlling mantra while they do research—do let me know.

Scotland has passed a new hate crime act, formally called the Hate Crime and Public Order Act 2021, which takes effect, appropriately, on April Fool’s Day (April 1).  It was passed in 2021, though, which accounts for its name.

The whole law is here, and part 3 is the most contentious part, including this (click to enlarge).

Note that it is a crime to make statements about age, disability, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or “variation in sex characteristics”, stuff that a “reasonable person” would find “threatening”, “abusive”, and even “insulting”.  You don’t even have to have the intent of stirring up hatred.

Further, look at (2)aii above. You are committing a crime even if you “communicate to another person material that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive”.  So, for example, if you email a friend that a guy you don’t like “must have a small dick” (a common insult for males, but also abusive because it makes fun of “variation in a sex characteristic”), or say to someone “Jack is a dotty old codger”, which insults someone on the grounds of age, then those might be offenses.

Also, as one reader said, “Part of the reason why people are so worried is that the guidance that Police Scotland have issued seems to be somewhat different from what the law itself says. It’s a download document 29 pages long.”  Looking at it briefly, I find two things extra worrying.

First, even if what you do doesn’t amount to a “crime,” it’s supposed to be reported and the coppers will investigate it, probably putting your name on the record (bolding below is mine):

While it is accepted that not every hate report will amount to criminality, officers are required to take preventative and protective measures even when a non-criminal offence is apparent. Seemingly low level or minor events may in fact have a significant impact on the victim. Crime type alone does not necessarily dictate impact or consequences of the action. Repeated targeting of a person, whether by the same perpetrator or not, can lead to what is known as the ‘drip drip’ effect i.e. although seemingly minor incidents, the repeated nature could affect the person’s ability to cope. Each individual will be affected differently.

Further, as implied above, intent doesn’t matter; it’s the effect that does.  And that, of course, leaves the act open to all kinds of “I’m insulted” complaints:

For recording purposes, the perception of the victim or any other person is the defining factor in determining whether an incident is a hate incident or in recognising the malice element of a crime. The perception of the victim should always be explored, however they do not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief and police officers or staff members should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of malice and ill-will is not required for a hate crime or hate incident to be recorded and thereafter investigated as a hate crime or hate incident by police.

If you want an example of something that creates a slippery slope of crime, the bit above is it. For what is seen as “threatening”, “abusive”, and especially “insulting”, will depend on the “victim’s” perception.. Especially ridiculous is the (2)aii provision that restricts your freedom to insult a person to someone else, without insulting the “victim” directly. This is going to create a mess, and I hope it’s tested in the courts soon after it goes into effect.

I’m hoping this ludicrous law won’t be enforced as written, or really enforced at all, for in America this law would violate the First Amendment, except insofar as you harass someone repeatedly, defame them, create an atmosphere bigotry in the workplace, or say something publicly that incited “imminent and lawless action.”

Another reader said this, though I haven’t checked on the assertion:

“In the meantime, Police Scotland have published a list of third-party locations where people will be able to report hate crimes – it includes a sex shop in Glasgow, a mushroom farm, and the address of a council office block that was demolished a few years ago… What could possibly go wrong?”

The police, trying to explain to a befuddled public how the law will work, have confected an example that involves, of all people, J. K. Rowling, who has committed NO hate crimes.  Read the Torygraph report by clicking the headline below (probably paywalled), or find the piece archived here:

 

Excerpts from the Torygraph are indented. The picture above was part of the article and was surely not part of the police example, and I’m not certain about the decorative part on the left. But, based on the story below, I take the text on the left to be accurate.

Police officers who invented a trans-hating “parody” of JK Rowling [above] must be stripped of any role in enforcing new hate crime laws, more than 200 women have said.

In an open letter, female signatories expressed “disgust” that a fictional character called “Jo”, alleged to be modelled on the Harry Potter writer who called for trans people to be sent to gas chambers, had been created by serving Police Scotland officers.

Of course Rowling hasn’t come close to posting videos urging putting LGBT people in gas chambers, much less asserting that they all have “mental health conditions.” This example comes close, in my view, to defaming Rowling. But let’s read on:

They said the revelation had left their confidence in police to fairly enforce hate crime legislation at “rock bottom” and claimed the narrative created reinforced offensive “tropes” that gender critical women were comparable to Nazis.

At an official police “youth engagement” hate crime event last month, attendees were presented with a “scenario” in which Jo, an “online influencer” with a large social media following, is “passionate” about her beliefs such as there being only two genders.

“Jo” is what Rowlings friends call her, but is also the derisive name that her haters use.

The story escalates with “Jo” stating that trans people “all belong in the gas chambers”. Attendees were then asked to consider whether “Jo” had committed a hate crime.

The letter, signed by high-profile political figures, academics and gender-critical campaigners, said the story reinforced offensive claims about women who believe biological sex should take precedence over self-declared gender identity.

Such women are often compared by trans rights activists to racists while they also regularly face unfounded accusations of having links to the far-Right.

 

In a letter, the women said the “Jo” character had clearly been “a thinly veiled parody of the author JK Rowling, who in recent years has championed the sex-based rights of women and girls”.

“We write to you to express our disgust that public servants, not least those charged with enforcing the new offences created by the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, were responsible for this material,” the women’s letter, to Jo Farrell, the chief constable, stated.

“It plays into long-standing, offensive tropes that women who are concerned about the erosion of their sex-based rights are akin to Nazis.”

The row comes just days before Scotland’s new hate crimes laws are enforced.

Trans, non-binary and cross-dressing people, though not biological women, will receive new protections under the legislation which critics claim will be “weaponised” against gender critical women such as Rowling and erode freedom of speech.

The 235 signatories, who include Johann Lamont, the ex-Scottish Labour leader, former Labour MSP Elaine Smith and Sarah Pedersen, a professor at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, called on Ms Farrell to launch an investigation into the creation of “Jo”.

. . . . The Time for Inclusive Education campaign group, which jointly ran the hate crime event, last week revealed that Police Scotland officers have invented the “Jo” scenario “based on their expertise”.

Police Scotland has declined multiple opportunities to deny that the “Jo” character was based on Rowling, whose first name is Joanne and is called Jo by her friends.

Meanwhile, the organisation has so far refused to release training materials for officers charged with enforcing its hate crime law.

The article further reports that the cops won’t let anybody view the training materials until April 9, more than a week after the law takes effect, and further claims that the slow police response violates the UK’s Freedom of Information Act.

Knowing Rowling, she’ll take action against being defamed in this way. After all, the training materials above may constitute a hate crime itself; abusing Rowling because of her statements about sex and gender. If you think the name “Jo”—as well as the beliefs used to attack the “online influencer with a large following”—doesn’t refer to Rowling, I have some land in Florida to sell you.

Oh, woe is Scotland!

h/t: Christopher, Jez

 

The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “quirky,” shows a common theme of this strip: the boys instantiating something that they’re decrying at the same time.  It is, of course, an example of the hypocrisy of religion.

Once again we’re running dangerously low on photos, and I ask contributors to step up and send me some. Thanks!

Today’s batch comes from reader Uwe Mueller, and were taken in Bergisches Land, the part of Germany where he lives. Uwe’s captions and notes are enclosed, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Common wood pigeon (Columba palumbus),  These are living near my place and I shot this one from my balcony last year (shot only with the camera, of course). Interestingly we also have a big colony of feral pigeons living here but both species never mix. The feral pigeons stay on the streets between the houses, the wood pigeons are living in the trees in the nearby forest:

Eurasian blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus).  Shot at the same day as the wood pigeon. These are common visitors at my balcony where I feed them:

Great tit (Parus major).  Another visitor at my balcony who is also nesting here:

Song thrush (Turdus philomelos).  As their name suggests these are great singers. Currently it is their time and I can hear them everywhere:

Eurasian wren (Troglodytes troglodytes).  A little bird that is quite difficult to spot. It loves thick bushes and avoids open spaces. To get it in open sunlight as in this image is a rare opportunity:

This Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) is feeding its chickens. The male woodpecker is recognizable through its red neck which the female doesn’t have. Another visitor at our balcony but they are extremely cautious. The smallest hint of a movement behind the glass of our windows and they immediately take off:

A young Great spotted woodpecker. Their top of the head is completely red during young age:

A European robin (Erithacus rubecula) singing as loud as it can: