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Jon Lovett is identified by Wikipedia as

. . . .  an American podcaster, comedian, journalist, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. All three formerly worked together as White House staffers during the Obama administration. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter, he worked for both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate.

And of course you know who Bill Maher is.  In the ten-minute talk argument below, Lovett and Maher discuss issues of kids with gender dysphoria, including these questions:

a.) Can schools hide a child’s desire to transition sex roles from the parents?

b.) Are there social influences that can promote children to want to change gender roles beyond “feeling like you’re in the wrong body.”

c.) Can the government be allowed to ban “gender-affirming care”?

d) Are children dying (presumably by suicide) because they aren’t allowed to transition?

Lovett actually comes off worse here, mainly because he’s spouting Biden-era dogma about sex and making statements that are scientifically dubious. However, I have to call out Maher near the beginning when he says “Obviously sex is more complicated than just two sexes.”  Yes, sex is complicated, but there are just two sexes. This is the mistake I discussed the other day.

Maher also conflates gender dysphoria with sexual attraction. But in the main, Maher makes some good points, and above all emphasizes that these are questions to be debated, not quashed by “progressives” who slander everyone trying to discuss them as “transphob” or “bigots”.

Maher calls the social conditioning of gender-dysphoric kids “entrapment”, which he defines as “suggesting that people do something that they are not going to do,” or “Putting an idea in someone’s head that wouldn’t be there otherwise.” (In this case, the idea is that the child/adolescent is trapped in the wrong body.)

Lovett, in contrast denies the prevalence of social influence on transitioning, while Maher takes Abigail Shrier’s view that many (but not all) children who decide they are in the wrong body are pushed to transition by peers, doctors, and teachers.  As he says, premature transitioning is medically dangerous and perhaps superfluous, not to mention an issue that can hurt Democrats who support it out of virtue signaling. Maher: “To take that risk at that age, before you know shit about anything. . . ”

Lovett makes the familiar but incorrect argument that without gender-affirming care, many kids would die.  He draws an analogy with cardiology, in which heart surgeons sometimes screw up during surgery and their patients die. But that’s a bogus argument because heart surgeons operate (and patients consent) if the consequences of not having surgery are dire. The difference is that we have enough experience to know the risks and benefits of heart surgery.

But this is not the case for gender dysphoria. Withholding hormones and surgery from kids who are dysphoric does not as often touted, leead to depression and death. (“Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?, some say.)  Yet studies show that about 80% of gender-dysphoric children who are not driven to take hormones and surgery resolve as gay (no medical dangers there!) or even cis.  That is a strong argument against the kind of “gender-affirming care” that puts dysphoric kids on a one-way escalator leading first to puberty blockers and then to hormone treatment and/or surgery.

Maher also seems to know more about the recent science than does Lovett, mentioning the ten-year Olson-Kennedy study showing that puberty blockers, touted by ideologues like Lovett as essential to saving lives, do not in fact improve the well being of gender-dysphoric childrene. From the NYT:

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

Although we the American taxpayers funded this study through the NIH, the results have not yet been released. Why? Because they don’t support the dogma that puberty blockers save lives. Also from the NYT:

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

This is shameful. To suppress important data because they “might fuel political attacks” or go against “progressive” ideology is totally unethical.  Maher knows about that study, as do many of us; but apparently Lovett either does not or deliberately ignores it.

Maher also makes the point that insistence on possibly harmful medical intervention without knowing its long-term effects is a stand that can—and probably has—harmed Democrats. (Yes, some Republicans take this stand because they really don’t want trans people around, but you can take that stand for the right reasons, too.)

Maher’s point, with which I agree completely, is that you don’t go ahead with possibly harmful medical treatment until you know what the harms actually are. 

Without further ado, here is the debate, which is mildly acrimonious:

We have two contributors today, each with a few photos. Once again I’ll ask readers to send in their wildlife photos, as, save for Robert Lang’s Brazil pictures, we’re at an end.  Readers’ captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Our first trio is from Sharon Diehl in Colorado:

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)  Pair atop Transform Tower #199, Wally Toevs Pond, Walden Wildlife Habitat, Boulder, Colorado. I have photographed this mated pair for years at Walden Wildlife Habitat, where they hang out atop the transform towers that overlook Wally Toevs Pond. They aren’t always successful breeders, but they keep at it, together year after year. Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)  hunting at my backyard bird feeders–where, alas, it caught a bird–at least it was a Starling. I know the raptors have to eat, too: Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) on the Hornbeam tree I believe, waiting for the flicker to leave the suet feeder–my backyard, Boulder, Colorado:

. . . and more eagles from Mark Shifman

Obviously I’m not a biologist and these are backyard bird photos. This series is a bald eagle on the Cumberland River.

In the summer of 2022, the journal Nature Human Behavior put out a notice that it could reject articles that were “stigmatizing” or “harmful” to different groups, regardless of the scientific content. The problems with this stand, which were immediately called out by Steve Pinker, Michael Shermer, and others, is that what is seen as stigmatizing or harmful is pretty much a subjective matter, and, as Pinker tweeted:

I think the journal and its editor were taken aback by this and similar reactions to their statements, and on Day 2 of our USC conference on Science and Ideology in January, the Chief Editor of the journal, Stavroula Kousta, walked back their statement a bit in here 24-minute talk (go here to here her talk; it’s the first one on the video).

But the walking-back didn’t mean that Nature Human Behavior was becoming less woke. Indeed, it just published a ridiculously repetitive and trite paper about how science needs “allyship” to produce a “diverse, equitable, and inclusive academia.” It’s not that STEM isn’t seeking a diversity of groups and viewpoints—though, inevitably, “diversity” in their sense means “diversity of race or sex”—but that this article says absolutely nothing new about the issue. What the journal published now is a prime example of virtue-flaunting that, in the end accomplish nothing.  You can read it by clicking on the screenshot below (it should be free with the legal Unpaywall app), and you can get the pdf here.

The piece begins with the usual claim of “harm”: the same issue that the same journal discussed before:

In academia, despite recent progress towards diversity, biases and microaggressions can still exclude and harm members of disadvantaged social groups.

The person who sent me this article wrote “No citations are given for this claim about bigotry and discrimination at the most liberal, open, welcoming institutions that have ever existed in human history. Amazing.”

The article then gives these figures, which are baffling because one would expect younger women to drop out more rather than less frequently. But they may be correct; I am just not sure that they reflect misogyny:

Such patterns of marginalization are not specific to students. Among US faculty members, for example, women are 6%, 10% and 19% more likely to leave each year than their men counterparts as assistant, associate and full professors, respectively.

I suspect that these departures have little to do with ongoing “structural bias” against women academics, not only because no instances of inbuilt structural bias are actually given, but also, at least for women, a big and recent review by Ceci et al. found either no bias against women’s achievements in academic science or a female advantage—save for teaching evaluations and a slight difference in salary, about 3.6% lower salary for women.   However, the authors do not dismiss the possibility and importance of bias against women.

At any rate, if you haven’t heard come across this advice about “allyship” before, and are an academic, you must be blind and deaf. I’m not going to reprise the paper for you, as you’ve heard it all before.

I’m assuming that well-meaning people agree with me that marginalized scientists should be treated just like everyone else.  But how many times do we need to hear that? At any rate, this paper rings the chimes again, singling out six areas where we’re told how to behave. These are direct quotes.

1.) Listen to and centre marginalized voices.

2.) Reflect on and challenge your own biases (I guess you determine them by taking an “implicit bias” test, a procedure that’s been severely criticized

3.)  Speak up to include and support disadvantaged groups

4.)  Speak out against bias when it happens

5.)  Advocate for institutional initiatives to promote equity and inclusion

6.)  Dismantle institutional policies and procedures of exclusion

#4 and #6 are no-brainers, though, speaking personally, I don’t know of any institutional policies and procedures of exclusion in biology.  The rest are ideological statements assuming that everyone except for the marginalized is biased, and that the way to achieve inclusion is to promote “equity” (do they even know what “equity” means?) And, of course, the entire program reflects the tenets of DEI, which are on the chopping block in the U.S.

Now this article isn’t as bad as ones on feminist glaciology or ones maintaining that Einstein’s principle of covariance supports the view that minorities have an equal claim to objectivity..  No, it’s just superfluous, a farrago of what decent human beings already do, misleading assertions about bias, mixed with patronizing advice that we already follow. It accomplishes nothing save further erode the credibility of editor Kousta.

Here’s the conclusion:

For allyship to be effective in academia, it must be grounded in a deep commitment to DEI. This means recognizing that allyship is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process of learning, reflection and action. Moreover, it needs to go above and beyond symbolic or superficial acts (performative allyship) to demonstrate substantial and meaningful support that is recognized as beneficial by those it is meant to serve (substantive allyship). It is noteworthy to understand and accept that we will make mistakes along the way. No one is perfect, and as explained above, allyship requires a willingness to engage in humility and self-reflection. When mistakes are made, it is important to listen to feedback from disadvantaged groups, take responsibility for any harm caused, and commit to doing better in the future.

In conclusion, everyone can engage in allyship and work to challenge and dismantle systemic bias, creating a more just, equitable and inclusive academic community for all.

At least they used “equitable” properly, meaning “treating people fairly.”  But couldn’t the whole article have consisted of just that sentence?

Trigger(nometry) warning: semi-conservative video.

I can’t remember who recommended I watch this video, which features satirist, author, and Triggernometry co-host Konstantin Kisin speaking for 15 minutes at a meeting of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). The group is described by Wikipedia as “an international organisation whose aim is to unite conservative voices and propose policy based on traditional Western values.”

The talk is laced with humor, but the message is serious:  Kisin argues that societies based on “Western values” are the most attractive, as shown by the number of potential immigrants; but they are endangered by the negativity and “lies” of those who tell us that “our history is all bad and our country is plagued by prejudice and intolerance.” To that he replies that people espousing such sentiments still prefer to live in the West. (But of course that doesn’t mean that these factors still aren’t at play in the West!)  Kisin then touts both Elon Musk (for “building big things”) and (oy) Jordan Peterson for “reminding us that our lives will improve if we accept that “honesty is better than lies, that responsibility is better than blame, and strength is better than weakness.”

He continues characterizing the West as special: “the most free and prosperous societies in the history of humanity, and we are going to keep them that way.” To accomplish that, he promotes free speech as the highest of Western values, and rejects identity politics, arguing that “multiethnic societies can work; multicultural societies cannot.” Finally, he claims that human beings are good, denying (as he avers) the woke view that “human beings are a pestilence on the planet.”  Kisin calls for more reproduction and making energy “as cheap and abundant as possible.”

The talk finishes with the most inspiring thing Kising says he’s ever heard: that we’re going to die; ergo, we have nothing to lose. “We might as well speak the truth, we might as well reach for the stars, we might as well fight like our lives depended on it—because they do.”  I’m not exactly sure what he means, nor do I feel uplifted or inspired by these words, which don’t really tell us why he thinks the tide is turning. And, at the end, I could see where this optimistic word salad came from: it’s in Wikipedia, too:

[The ARC] is associated with psychologist and political commentator Jordan Peterson. One Australian journalist identified the purpose of ARC as follows: “to replace a sense of division and drift within conservatism, and Western society at large, with a renewed cohesion and purpose”.

Do any readers get inspired by this kind of chest-pounding?  I have to add that I do like Triggernometry, one of the few podcasts I can listen to, but I’m not especially energized by the co-host’s speech.

If you’re following this site, you’ll know that 22 biologists (including me) sent a letter to three ecology and evolution societies who had issued a statement directed at the President and Congress that biological sex was a spectrum and a continuum in all species. The statement claimed without support that it expressed a consensus view of biologists, although the members of the societies were not polled.

Of course this behavior could not stand, and so Luana Maroja cobbled together a letter to those societies noting that the biological definition of sex was based on the development of the apparatus evolved to produce gametes, and that this showed that all animals and plants had only two sexes: male and female. As Richard Dawkins pointed out, even the three Society Presidents used the sex binary in their own biological work.

The letter has now accumulated more than a hundred signatures.  If you are an anisogamite and want to sign the letter, this is a reminder that the deadline for signatures is in about a week: 5 p.m. Monday, March 3. You can sign it this way (from Luana’s post on Heterodox STEM);

The societies for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society for Systematic Biologists (SSB) issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration also archived here), proffering a confusing definition of sex, implying that sex is not binary.

We wrote a short letter explaining that sex is indeed defined by gamete type.

We are now collecting more signatures from biologists who agree to have their name publicly posted. If you are a biologist (or in a field related to biology) want to add your name, just fill in the bottom of this form (it contains the full text of our letter and a link to the tri-societies’ letter).

Please fill in all the blanks, including your name, position, and email, and we ask that you have something to do with biology. Also, we will most likely post the letter with names, so if you want to remain publicly anonymous but agree with our sentiments, just write your own personal email to the Society presidents (two of them have emails in the original letter). Nobody’s email will become public if I decide to post the final letter and signers on this site.

It takes about one minute to fill in the form, so if you want to send a message to these three societies, you know what to do.

We have contributions from two people, but I am holding onto those, as it appears that this feature will become sporadic in the future. That’s sad, no?

Beyoncê (real name Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter) is wildly popular, but it’s a popularity I find baffling. I have listened to a fair amount of her music, trying to understand the key to her musical fame—perhaps the use of catchy tunes or inventive lyrics—but I have come up dry. It is, as modern rock and pop tends to be, formulaic and trite. But most such music vanishes without a trace, yet forgettable songs like hers get Grammys. 35 of them!

Take, for example, song below, “Texas Hold Em”, the flagship song of her recent Grammy-winning album, “Cowboy Carter.”  As Wikipedia notes:

Music critics praised “Texas Hold ‘Em” for its playful tone, authentic sound, Beyoncé’s vocal performance, and its celebration of the Black roots of country music. Country artists and country radio managers also praised the song for elevating the accessibility of country music for a wider audience. It ignited discussions on Black musicians’ place within country music, boosted the listenership of Black country artists and country radio in general, and increased the popularity of Western wear and culture. It was nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Country Song at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.

I am stymied. The “playful tone” involves rhyming words like “Texas” and “Lexus”, and it is not in any sense authentic country music: it just uses country tropes and a country rhythm to convey essentially meaningless sentiments. I suspect the vocal performance is autotuned. The only part I like is the banjo introduction.

The song is a failed attempt to meld two genres, but the critics love. love, love it.  As for igniting interest in black country music, well, this is not black country music (see Charlie Pride for that); it is standard pop music striving to be countrified. It’s like putting a drop of Cointreau in a cocktail and calling it French.

But listen for yourself. Is this a song for the ages? I don’t think so.

Here are the lyrics, and—please forgive me—they seem so incompetent and ham-handed that I laughed when I read them. The first verse, with its risible rhyming of “Texas” and “Lexus”, is especially rich. Likewise rhyming “panic” and “dramatic.” I’ve put the dumbest lines in bold: Lyrics This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)
So lay your cards down, down, down, down
So park your Lexus (woo) and throw your keys up (hey)
Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)
And I’ll be damned if I can’t slow dance with you
Come pour some sugar on me, honey too
It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown
Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now, woo, huh (woo) There’s a tornado (there’s a tornado) in my city (in my city)
Hit the basement (hit the basement), that shit ain’t pretty (shit ain’t pretty)
Rugged whiskey (rugged whiskey) ’cause we survivin’ (’cause we survivin’)
Off red cup kisses, sweet redemption, passin’ time, yeah Ooh, one step to the right
We headin’ to the dive bar we always thought was nice
Ooh, run me to the left
Then spin me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)
So lay your cards down, down, down, down
So park your Lexus (woo) and throw your keys up (hey)
Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)
And I’ll be damned if I can’t slow dance with you
Come pour some sugar on me, honey too
It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown
Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo) And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with you
Come pour some liquor on me, honey too
It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown
Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo) Woo-hoo
Woo-hoo
Woo-hoo There’s a heatwave (there’s a heatwave) coming at us (coming at us)
Too hot to think straight (too hot to think straight)
Too cold to panic (cold to panic)
All of the problems just feel dramatic (just feel dramatic)
And now we’re runnin’ to the first spot that we find, yeah Ooh, one step to the right
We headed to the dive bar we always thought was nice
Ooh, you run to the left
Just work me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind This ain’t Texas (woo), ain’t no hold ’em (hey)
So lay your cards down, down, down, down, oh
So park your Lexus (hey), throw your keys up (hey)
Stick around, ’round, ’round, ’round, ’round (stick around)
And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with you
Come pour some sugar on me, honey, too
It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown
Don’t be a bitch, come take it to the floor now (woo) And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with you
Come pour some liquor on me honey, too
It’s a real life boogie and a real life hoedown
Don’t be a-, come take it to the floor now, ooh Take it to the floor now, ooh
Hoops, spurs, boots
To the floor now, ooh
Tuck, back, oops (ooh, ooh, ooh)
Shoot
Come take it to the floor now, ooh
And I’ll be damned if I cannot dance with you
Baby, pour that sugar and liquor on me too
Furs, spurs, boots
Solargenic, photogenic, shoot Unlike some of the hard-to-understand songs of, say, Steely Dan, these are just a bunch of fragmentary thoughts strung together, and one sense there’s no message beneath them. Now some of her songs, like “Lemonade”, do tell a story (in that case, the unfaithfulness of her partner), but I find the music lame.  And while words can be lame in a song that’s nevertheless good, it is good because of the music.

But is there a greater meaning here?  A site purporting to give this “meaning” resorts almost completely to simply reiterating what Texas tropes appear in the lyrics. For example (lyrics in bold; dodo’s interpretation in plain text):

“There’s a tornado (There’s a tornado) in my city (In my city)
In the basement (In the basement), that shit ain’t pretty (Shit ain’t pretty)
Rugged whiskey (Rugged whiskey) ’cause we survivin’ (‘Cause we survivin’)
Off red cup kisses, sweet redemption, passin’ time, yeah”

Texas has more tornadoes passing through it than any other US state, and here, Beyoncé regales the listener with a tale of how a twister has forced her and her partner underground.

She subsequently paints a visceral picture of a crude, sparse setting, as they resolve to get through the violent weather with the help of country music’s No. 1 – or perhaps more accurately, No. 7 – painkiller: some good old Jack Daniels whiskey.

Beyoncé throws in another country trope by referencing the red solo cups that regularly pop up in Friday night anthems by the likes of Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen and more.

“Ooh, one step to the right
We headin’ to the dive bar we always thought was nice
Ooh, run me to the left
Then spin me in the middle, boy, I can’t read your mind”

Here, Beyoncé details some of the moves as she guides her hesitant partner through the dance in their local dive, putting him at ease. She again underlines her hopes that he’ll open up to her more, as she frustratedly highlights how she can’t read his mind.

Well, isn’t that special?  I wanted to listen to this song again, for the fourth or fifth time, before I posted this, but I find I can’t bear to hear it again. If any reader wants to tell me why this is such a great song, I’ll be glad to hear it—but I doubt I’ll agree.

I’m not alone in my criticism here; just read the Washington Post‘s article, “Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ isn’t a country album. It’s worse.”

This is an album that posits its lack of ideas as big ideas. Only in its final seconds, when Beyoncé sings about how “old ideas are buried here,” does “Cowboy Carter” start to feel less like an extravagant awards telecast, and more like a clear-eyed comment on the state of the nation — a grand, sprawling, overcrowded place with nowhere else to go.

Freddie deBoer  gives us what I think is the main reason why Beyoncé is so lauded (his piece is largely about Kendrick Lamar, but the lessons apply). The bolding is mine:

We’re left in this bizarre space where no one is willing to flourish, to succeed, without simultaneously calling themselves an underdog, their talents unrecognized and their tastes disrespected. This is planet “Nobody believed in me!,” and facts never get in the way.

Thus, to pick a paradigmatic example, we still get a thousand thinkpieces a year arguing that Beyonce is terribly mistreated and overlooked – Beyonce, a billionaire with the most Grammys in history, every other kind of award that humanity has to bestow, influence in every sphere of human achievement, multiple films and books about her genius, every material, social, artistic, and cultural laurel we as a society can give. Look how fucking long this list of awards is! The only human being on earth who enjoys a combination of celebration and wealth and access and privilege and power that equals that of Beyonce is Taylor Swift, and both are constantly referred to as disrespected and marginalized underdogs in our most prestigious publications. Beyonce has thirty-five Grammys. What would be enough? Seventy? Seven hundred? Honey, the whole point is that nothing could ever be good enough for her. Indeed, the evidence that Beyonce is an immensely lauded human being is so vast that this kind of talk inspires an admonition I get a lot in my career – you’re right, but we don’t talk about that.

. . . . The idea that your moral value is determined by what you do has given way to the assumption that your moral value is determined by what you like. If you’re an aging dad who likes Sabrina Carpenter, you must be an open-minded and discerning feminist. And if you’re a white person who likes Kendrick Lamar, well, you must have all the right attitudes about race.

And so it is with Beyoncé. Calling her mediocre, as I just did, is just asking for vilification.

 

h/t: Greg Mayer for the deBoer reference

If you think you’re beleaguered by political correctness in America, just thank your lucky stars that you’re not living in New Zealand.  There you are increasingly surrounded by demands that you abide by the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, but, worse, you can be demonized or fired simply because you think it’s outdated and there needs to be court-mandated interpretation of what it means, or, worse, adopt a New Zealand Constitution.

For in that country, which I love, virtually area of endeavor is subject to Equity Demands and Diktats that you respect indigenous “ways of knowing.” Today the subject of discussion is pharmacy, which is being rapidly colonized by this ideology. But note the bit about real estate at the bottom.

An anonymous New Zealander sent me this article from The Breaking News site in that lovely but increasingly benighted land.

You can verify Kennedy’s claims by going to the official pharmacy standards site (click on link to get pdf).

As you can see from the top headline, it’s a bit of a rant, but everything that Mr. Kennedy says about the pharmacy standards is true.

First, the aim of the Pharmacy Council is a general one: to help all New Zealanders. From pp. 3-4 of the second document:

Through skilled and safe practice, pharmacists contribute to better health outcomes for New Zealanders. We aspire to have pharmacists operate at the top of their scope of practice and to not only be competent and professional in their roles but to continually work towards being the best pharmacist they can be.

. . . . The purpose of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act (HPCAA) 2003 is to protect the health and safety of the public by providing mechanisms to ensure that health practitioners are competent and fit to practise their profession.

So consideration #1 should be merit: the quality of service provided by pharmacists.  However, if you look at the first three “domains” of competence (there are seven), you see this:

Yep, the very first thing in which you must be competent as a pharmacist is understanding the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (“Te Tiriti o Waitangi”), which of course says nothing about pharmacy. The treaty simply guaranteed the indigenous Māori their lands, gives them all the rights of British citizens, and places governance of the indigenous people to England.  There are several versions of the treaty, not all Māori tribes signed onto it, and it’s used to justify all kinds of stuff which are not in any of the texts but fall under a recent interpretation “Māori are to get at least half of everything.” That includes having their ways of knowing taught in science classes.  And remember, just 17.8% of New Zealanders are Māori, while 17.3% are Asians (67.8% are of European descent.  Somehow the Asians got left out of the pharmacy standards.

So once again the most important aspect of “competence” you need as a New Zealand pharmacist is respect and understanding of the Treaty, along with deference to the indigenous people.  Extreme deference.  The first four paragraphs below are Kennedy’s take (and his bolding), while the rest are word-for-word from the second source above.

Unfortunately the Pharmacy Council NZ has gone all woke and racist and apparently now thinks that practicing safe, competent dispensing of medicine and advice depends on a deep knowledge of 27 different aspects of Maori customs, beliefs, traditions, practices, superstitions, intergenerational historical trauma, familiarity with mana whenua and kaumatua, the Treaty of Waitangi, structural racism and colonisation and many other alleged Maori-related issues – such is the depth of knowledge required by pharmacists of Maori culture, beliefs and Te Reo etc. etc., that it would seem that every pharmacist who achieves all these competencies that are totally, completely, categorically, undeniably and irrefutably unrelated to safe dispensing of medicines will have earned a Bachelor’s degree in Maori Studies!

This is racism on steroids, the woke, totally unnecessary, unwarranted imposition of irrelevant culture and beliefs on a professional group whose sole focus should be on the safe practice of pharmaceutical medicine!

The Minister of Health needs to stamp down immediately on this repugnant, racist, woke over-reach by the Pharmacy Council and weed out any of the incompetent and/or radical members of the Pharmacy Council!

Following is the list (from page 31) of the essential competency standards for all pharmacists, according to the Pharmacy Council: [JAC: as I say below, I’ve put in italics everything that seems to me completely irrelevant to competence as a pharmacist]

● being familiar with mana whenua (local hapū/iwi), mātāwaka (kinship group not mana whenua), hapū and iwi in your rohe (district) and their history,

● understanding the importance of kaumātua,

● being familiar with te Tiriti o Waitangi and He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nū Tīreni,

● advocating for giving effect to te Tiriti at all levels,

● understanding the intergenerational impact of historical trauma,

● understanding of the role of structural racism and colonisation and ongoing impacts on Māori, socioeconomic deprivation, restricted access to the determinants of health,

● being familiar with Māori health – leaders, history, and contemporary literature,

● being familiar with Māori aspirations in relation to health,

● developing authentic relationships with Māori organisations and health providers,

● having a positive collegial relationship with Māori colleagues in your profession/workplace,

● being proficient in building and maintaining mutually beneficial power-sharing relationships,

● tautoko (support) Māori leadership,

● prioritising Māori voices,

● trusting Māori intelligence,

● be clinically and culturally confident to work with Māori whānau, [JAC: family groups]

● understand one’s own whakapapa (genealogy and connections),

● have a basic/intermediate understanding of te reo Māori, [the language; and most Māori themselves don’t understand it]

● have a basic/intermediate understanding of the tikanga and the application of tapu (sacred) and noa (made ordinary),

● be familiar with Māori health models and concepts such as Te Pae Mahutonga9 and Te Ara Tika10,

● have a basic/intermediate understanding of marae (community meeting house) protocol,

● be confident to perform waiata tautoko (support song),

● be proficient in whakawhānaungatanga (active relationship building),

● integrate tika (correct), pono (truth), aroha and manaakitanga into practice,

● be open-hearted,

● be proficient in strengths-based practice,

● be proficient with equity analysis,

● practice cultural humility,

● critically monitor the effectiveness of own practice with Māori.

Only 1 out of 4 standards (7/28) seem to me at all relevant to competence in pharmacy, and I’m being generous.

Now I can understand that there should be a section in pharmacy school about “indigenous medicine” so that pharmacists can understand where a local is coming from if they want an herb rather than an antibiotic. But most of this statement It is simply irrelevant fealty to the indigenous people; a form of virtue signaling or “the sacralization of the oppressed.”

I needn’t go on, as you can see that most of the requirements for competence in this section are irrelevant to the aims of the Pharmacy Council.  Poor New Zealand!

But wait! There’s more!

Lagniappe: New Zealander loses realtor’s license for refusing to take Māori-centered DEI training. Click on the link to go to the New Zealand Herald article:

An excerpt:

Janet Dickson, the real estate agent facing a five-year ban for refusing to do a Māori tikanga course, has lost a court bid to block the threatened cancellation of her licence.

Today, the High Court turned down her request for a judicial review of decisions about agents’ professional development requirements, which required her to take a 90-minute course called Te Kākano (The Seed).

The module focused on Māori culture, language and the Treaty of Waitangi and was made compulsory for all real estate agents, branch managers and salespeople in 2023.

Agents who do not complete professional development requirements risk having their licences cancelled. People whose licences are cancelled cannot reapply for one for five years.

. . .She has called real estate work a vocation and a calling, citing her Presbyterian values. In her court case, she said the course’s references to Māori gods sat uncomfortably with her own monotheistic Christian belief.

She labelled the course “woke madness” in a Facebook post and vowed to fight “to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else”.

She told the court she considered the course would not add any value to the performance of her real estate agency work.

Poor New Zealand!

While thinking about about objections to the sex binary—usually discussed in humans but sometimes in other species—they all seem to come down to a single assertion:

“Sex is complicated in both development and expression, involving chromosomes, behavior, hormones, genitals and even psychology.  Therefore there are more than two sexes.”

One example of this is from the deeply misguided anthropologist Agustin Fuentes, who has a book coming out about why sex isn’t binary. On Twitter he says this:

It turns out that both Darwin and Bateman made assumptions that don’t always hold up across species. Plus, there is much biological research that challenges the assertion that diffs in gamete size (anisogamy) means the same thing, or has the same impact, across all animals.

So, at least some awareness of these important discussions is necessary before simply accepting that anisogamy, and gametes, tell you everything you need to know about sex for a species, and the individuals in it. Esp. if you are making laws based on this assumption.

But nobody has ever maintained that whether an individual falls under the definition of “male” or “female” tells you everything you need to know about sex for a species. You’d have to be a moron to accept that.  There is variation in how sex is determined, how biologists recognize sex, in secondary sexual characteristics and behavior (in seahorses, for example, the sperm-producing males actually incubate eggs from fertilized females, getting pregnant).

I keep pondering what kind of mentality would reject the male/female sex binary simply because there is variation in how sex is determined (not “defined”) and how sex is expressed in the bodies and behavior of different species.  When I sent the above to a colleague, she responded:

Is he then saying that a seahorse who produces sperm is a female?  I don’t even get the argument.

And that leads to the question posed to Fuentes on Twitter when he touted his book:

@Antrofuentes Since you are an expert, what would be the third or fourth sex, choose one of your choice that is not male or female and tell us what gametes it produces?

— Nemesi2024 (@Nemesi_Nemesi) February 19, 2025

It’s funny, but telling, that those who claim that sex is a spectrum or continuum never specify how many sexes there are, either in humans or other species.  I suspect that if they responded—based on their “multivariate, multidimensional” definition of sex—that “there are many, many sexes,” or “I can’t answer that”, they would be laughed out of the house.

But we all know that that the “spectrum” people are not dumb or willfully ignorant. They are simply imbued with a certain ideology.

For more on this, I defer to Richard Dawkins and his elegant explanation of the sex binary on one of his Substack posts.

If you’re a pop music fan, you’ve probably heard Karla Bonoff‘s songs—but may not know that she wrote them, for the most famous ones were popularized by others. Her two best, in my view, were covered by Linda Ronstadt (“Someone to Lay Down Beside Me“) and Lynn Anderson (“Isn’t it Always Love“). Yet Bonoff recorded both of these songs herself, and her versions—save for Ronstadt’s, which is a classic—are at least as good as the covers.

Bonoff does tour, but it’s hard to find good live videos of her performances.  I’ll show a couple. She’s now 73 but apparently is still drawing appreciative fans to her concert.

Here’s her best song performed live, and clearly done some time ago. The quality of the recording is poor, but gives an idea of her talent.

“Isn’t it Always Love”, played not that long ago:

“The Water is Wide” wasn’t written by Bonoff, but rather is derived from British folk songs that go back to the seventeenth century, and its beauty makes it one of my very favorite folk songs. Bonoff sings it frequently, and her versions, I think, are the best ones. Here’s a recent live performance with Nina Gerber playing accompaniment on the electric guitar (see Gerber’s great solo at 2:01, which sounds in places like a violin).

Did you find the squirrel in Berlin? Yes, it was a hard one, and I couldn’t find it until it was pointed out to me.  First, the original:

And then the reveal; I’ve circled the elusive rodent:

First, it’s a cat holiday in Japan!  From Facebook:

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The Kiffness is back, riffing on a cat’s meows. This time it’s “Kitty Caught a Mouse”, with tumpet and keyboard accompaniment. (Not the gratuitous appearance of a d*g.)

 

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In this short video from Instagram, a cat not only makes biscuits, but also delivers them! (Props to whoever finds the original song in Spanish that accompanies this video.)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cats Doing Things (@catsdoingthings)

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This event was covered by several British papers, including the times (click below, or find it archived here) as well as the BBC.  Yes, a cat got on a train and left home, but it all ended well.

From The Times:

Tilly had already shown her adventurous streak with solo trips to the local pub and the vet. This time, however, the two-year-old cat from Surrey decided to really go the extra mile.

Hopping aboard a train at Weybridge, Tilly proceeded to hitch an 18-mile ride into London, arriving at Waterloo station.

Michael Hardy and Emma Hill, her owners, said their affable cat had a reputation for straying, having caught buses before as well as climbing behind the bar of his local pub.

But even he admitted he was shocked when he received a call from a station officer informing him that his cat had found her way into central London.

“Luckily, I was working in London that day, but I had to drive across the city to go and collect her,” he said.

“The station staff couldn’t believe it. They said, ‘we have your cat, what the hell is she doing here?’, kind of thing. But she is always at the local station [in Weybridge]. People come from everywhere now to try to find her. The locals all know her.”

Hardy said he wouldn’t be surprised if his intrepid pet had even grander ambitions.

“Waterloo is the furthest she has ever made it. If she manages to get on the other line she could end up in Brighton,” he said.

“Summer is coming up, isn’t it? She might want to go to the beach. But she always comes back at some point.”

Hardy and Hill realised their cat was missing in November, but were in disbelief when they saw their Apple AirTag — which they bought specially to keep an eye on her — revealed that Tilly was on the train to London.

“We didn’t know where she was. We looked on the Apple tag and realised she had gone to Waterloo,” he said.

“The only way she can get there is on the train. You look at the tag and you see it going from one stop to another.”

Tilly’s journey from a Times graphic:

And her obligatory FB page:

Tilly’s reputation for adventure has won her fans from around the world. She has her own Facebook page called “Tilly the adventure cat”, which has more than 4,700 followers.

And a news video recounting Tilly’s Big Adventure:

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Lagniappe: A cat inhabiting what I think is the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio. Click on it to see the Facebook video.

 

h/t: Amy, Divy, Mark, Chris

I think this is the hardest “spot the. . . ” picture that I’ve seen. It comes from Natalie in Berlin, who came across an Eichhörnchen (“squirrel” in German) while perambulating with her children.  You’ll have to enlarge it (click on the photo) and even then you might have trouble.

If you find it, do not give clues in the comments; let others have the fun. But you can say “I found it” or “I didn’t find it.”

The reveal will be at noon Chicago time.

A REMINDER

Yesterday I put up several posts about the binary nature of sex. On one of them I reported that several of us had signed a letter to the Presidents of three ecology/evolution societies who had issued a missive to Trump and all the members of Congress (I don’t think their missive has yet been sent). I wrote this:

Note that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration also archived here), a statement deliberately aimed at contradicting the first Executive Order by declaring that sex is not binary but a spectrum—in all species!

A first version of our own letter, signed publicly by 20 people (there are now almost 40) can be read here.

If you want us to consider adding your name to our letter above—for we’re still accumulating signatures—please click on the link below, which is an early version of the letter with some signatures.

At the bottom of the letter, you will see this form:

If you want your name to be added to the letter that will be sent to the SSE, ASN, and SSB, please go to the site above and fill in the blanks. And all of them please, as people are leaving off titles, emails and sometimes last names. We’ll track down titles and the like, but that’s about all we can do to recover missing information.

The deadline for signing is a week from Monday: 5 p.m. Chicago time on March 3. 

We ask only two things: you be affiliated with biology in some way (training in biology sufficient to adjudicate the issues is sufficient), and that you be willing to have your name publicized, not only to the societies but on this website (I’m not sure if I’ll post the final version, though).  Your response will automatically be added to an Excel document from which we’ll draft the final letter. Your email address will always be kept confidential Thanks!

h/t to Luana Maroja for drafting the letter and collecting many of the signatures.

Papa’s got a brand new book, with Papa being NYT columnist Ross Douthat and his new book being Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.  Douthat makes the familiar argument that it’s more rational to be religious than atheistic or agnostic, and pushes his own Catholicism as the “right” religion.  It’s bad enough that a NYT columnist is deluded in this way, but it’s worse when he proselytizes his faith all over the Internet, trying desperately to make people embrace Catholicism.

Excerpts of this book are everywhere, a form of self-plagiarism and self-aggrandizement that is especially prominent in the deeply pious. I’ve criticized Douthat and his book excerpts several times, but of course folks sufficiently desperate to find “the meaning of life” in religion—to fill their God-shaped hole—will make the book a best seller.  The excerpt for today was published in the Catholic journal The Lamp, (characterized by the newspaper The Catholic Spirit “the Catholic version of The New Yorker”), and you can read it for free by clicking on the headline. Here Douthat reveals the extent of his delusion: the things he thinks about Catholic dogma that are actually true.

An excerpt (it’s longer but I can’t bear to reproduce more than this). Bolding is mine:

But isn’t all this talking around an essential question, which is whether I think the tradition I’ve ended up practicing is actually true? Not just true enough, not just pointing toward God, not just generally accurate in its description of the nature of God or the cosmos, but also true in its most important claims about reality? After all, Catholics don’t just stand up on Sundays and proclaim their belief in monotheism, a diversity of supernatural beings, sacramental grace, and the goodness of creation. We profess belief in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages,” who came to earth and “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,” who died on the cross in Roman Palestine and “rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,” who will eventually “come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” And that is just the creedal condensation of a long list of specific claims about the way to salvation, the requirements of the moral law, the authority of the bishops and the pope—enough to fill a thick bound catechism, at the very least.

When I say the Nicene Creed, I mean it. I am open to hidden complexities and unexpected syntheses, but in the end I think that God has acted in history through Jesus of Nazareth in a way that differs from every other tradition and experience and revelation, and the Gospels should therefore exert a kind of general interpretative control over how we read all the other religious data. I think the New Testament is just clearly different from other religious texts in a way that stands out and demands attention, that the figure of Jesus likewise stands out among religious founders, that together the sources and the story and the Nazarene Himself all seem God-touched to a degree unmatched by any of their rivals. So where there is uncertainty, tension, a wager to be made, I make my bet on Jesus.

I’d put up $500 against the truths of the Nicene Creed, but of course Douthat has never written a single sentence I’ve seen telling us what would make him reject Catholicm. (In contrast, I laid out in Faith Versus Fact the kind of things that would make me provisionally accept the truths of Christianity.)

Okay, it’s time to look at the Nicene Creed, also discussed in my book.  Douthat’s claim that when he says it, he really means it is shared by many Catholics. That puts paid to the arguments of Sophisticated Theologians® that the Creed is either metaphorical or some soothing words to effect a bonding experience. Nope, that’s not why it was written. It was written so Christians could verbally profess the things they actually believe.

There are several versions of the Creed.  This one I took from the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled “What We Believe”. I was going to put in bold all the empirical things that Douthat accepts, but I would have had to put the whole thing in bold:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

As you see, Douthat has dined on the whole hog from snout to tail: Jesus was the son of God (and himself God), was born of a virgin, was crucified as a way to save humanity, but then came back to life again and shortly thereafter ascended to Heaven.  He will return some day, although we’ve been waiting 2,000 years. That apparently doesn’t bother Douthat despite Jesus’s disproven claim that he would return while some of his contemporaries were still alive. And on that blessed day of Rapture, Jesus will judge everyone, sending them either up, down, or in the waiting room of Purgatory.

Douthat also accepts the Holy Spirit, whatever that is, and, of course, the forgiveness of sin and eternal afterlife.

This is what Douthat thinks is really true, and what he wants you to believe (see his book).  If he were the only person who professed this stuff, he’d be taken as a lunatic (see C. S. Lewis), but because the delusion is so widespread, it’s considered respectable.  But how can such a man not only be allowed to write for the NYT, but to actually publish this palaver in the newspaper?

Coming: the Good News about Xenu.

h/t: Barry

PLEASE send in your wildlife photos, ASAP!  Thank you.

Today we have a combination picture-and-text post by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior, and the subject is epitaphs.  Athayde’s comments are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.  The epitaphs are in italics:

The long dead speak to us – again

Most ancient Greek and Roman texts that helped shape Western culture were written by white men high up the social ladder (unsurprisingly, woke warriors are determined to defund, distort or do away with Classic studies). Epitaphs, on the other hand, give us glimpses of the lives of ordinary people of whom we know little: tradesmen, women, soldiers, gladiators, slaves. Some of these inscriptions are surprisingly familiar and poignant, considering how odd, cruel and violent the Ancients may seem to us.

A while back we looked at some Greek and Roman epitaphs; here’s another batch with their accompanying translations, where parentheses indicate missing and presumed words. Epigraphy, the study of inscriptions on stone, metal and other durable materials, is skilled detective work. Fading, truncations, misspellings, initialisms and abbreviations make interpretation difficult, even for Classics scholars. Comments are my own.

All objects depicted but the last one are housed in the unmissable Capitoline Museums in Rome.

Epitaph of Geminia Agathe Mater, 2nd c. AD. Tartarus mentioned in the last line was the place for the punishment of sinners after death. Not an appropriate destiny for a little girl, so the author must have been theologically confused:

For the souls departed. For the sweet Geminia Agathe Mater. My name was Mater, but I was never destined to become a mother. In fact I do not deny having lived only 5 years, 7 months and 22 days. During the time that I lived, I enjoyed myself and I was always loved by everyone. In fact, believe me, I had the face of a little boy, not of a girl; as only those who generated me knew Agathe, of gentle temperament, of pleasing and noble appearance, with red hair, short on top and long behind. Now all of (you) offer me nice drinks and pray that the earth does not weigh heavily upon my remains. Do not despair too much about the remains of my little (body), Faventius, who raised me more than my parents and who loved only me. In fact, I have a mother and a father who preceded me some time ago and never grieved over (my) destiny. I also have a sister by (my) mother Amoena, who is also saddened by my death. Please, everyone comforts my family, (reminding) them of the pleasant life (that I lived), reciting prayers so that (their) pain does not increase and their sadness does not exceed the limits. You who read, if you wish to know my whole name will know Geminia Agathe, whose premature death stole and brought at a tender age to Tartarus. This is all, more cannot happen: this (is foreseen) for us.

Epitaph of Menophilos, written in Greek, 2nd c. AD. Greek was spoken widely in Rome and the Western Empire, where it was considered a second language. Mentioning the muses, Bacchus and Aphrodite, suggests that Menophilos lived a hedonistic and gratifying life, albeit short:

While I passed my entire life in joy, smiling, playing and happy, and I delighted my soul with all kinds of pleasures in the art of song, never sorry, I never pronounced offensive words, but (was) a friend of the Muses, of Bacchus and of Aphrodite. I arrived from Asia to Italy, now I rest among the dead while still youthful. My name is Menophilos.

Epitaph of Ammias, from one of Rome’s Jewish catacombs. 3rd-4th c. AD. Text in Greek and some Semitic words. Rome had a significant Jewish population since 27 BC, after many of them fled the Hellenistic wars in today’s Turkey and the Middle East. Things started turning sour for the Jews in 313, when Constantine made Christianity the Empire’s legal religion:

Here lies Ammias, a Jew from Laodicea, who lived 85 years. In peace.

Funerary inscription of Ovia Quarta, 2nd c. AD. The two figures flanking the tablet are laruae (sing. larua), wandering spirits of the dead. A larua was also the mask worn by a performer in the role of such ghost. With time, the Latin ‘u’ morphed into ‘v’, so larua became larva. Linnaeus, who knew Latin and the Classics like any other contemporary naturalist worth his salt, adopted ‘larva’ to define the life stage of an insect hidden behind the ‘mask’ of immaturity to be removed and reveal the adult’s appearance. The laruae were also known as lemures, another term snatched by Linnaeus to describe those eerie and secretive Malagasy primates:

Ovia Quarta lived 60 years.

Funerary table of Alexander, 2nd c. AD. The DM initialism in the first line of text refers to dis manibus, translated as ‘for the souls departed’, ‘to the memory of’ or ‘to the spirits of the dead’, and is a conventional inscription commonly found on Roman tombstones. The last four letters, STTL, are also formulaic. They stand for sit tibi terra levis: ‘may the earth be light on you’. When Christians began replacing pagan nonsense with their own, STTL was swapped for RIP (requiescat in pace), which conveniently works in English:

For the souls departed. Alexander lived 3 years, 4 months and 19 days. His father, Quintus Canuleius Alexander, and his mother, Clarina, saw to (the making of this tomb) for their dear, devoted and well-deserving son. He is buried here. I beg you, when you pass (nearby), to say: may the earth be light upon your remains.

The humble funerary inscription of a head teacher, 1st c. AD:

To Lucius Sentius Index, head of tutors. He is buried here.

Funerary altar of freedman Tiberius Julius Xanthus, 1st c. AD. Freedmen in Rome could become citizens and climb high on the social ladder, amass money, buy property and own their own slaves. Tiberius the VIP masseur could have done worse, as suggested by the fancy altar dedicated to him. Certainly he seemed to have done better than the head teacher, who was left with a modest plaque. Some things never change. . . :

To the imperial freedman Tiberius Julius Xanthus, masseur of the emperors Tiberius Caesar and the Divine Claudius and vice-commander of the Alexandrian navy, dedicated by his wife Atellia Prisca and the freedman Lamyrus, his heirs; he lived 90 years.

Funerary inscription celebrating Crescens the charioteer, 2nd c. AD. The Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup and the Superbowl pale when compared to the popularity and social reach of chariot racing in Greece, Rome and Byzantium. Fortunes could be made and lost in bets, and racing events often degenerated into violence and riots. Owners of champion horses could become famous and rich, but drivers and horses often didn’t see the end of a race, being maimed or killed by collisions and crashes – which were some of the main attractions for the hoi polloi. Drivers could race alone or for the Blue, Green, Red or White teams. For an excellent take on Roman chariot racing, see Asterix and the Cauldron:

Crescens, charioteer of the blue faction, originally from Mauritania, 22 years old. He achieved his first victory with a quadriga in the 24th race (staged) when L(ucius) Vipstanus Messalla held the consulship, on the anniversary of the birth of the divine Nerva, with these horses: Circius, Acceptor, Delicatus and Cotynus. Between the consulship of Messalla and that of Marcus Acilius Glabrio, on the anniversary of the birth of the divine Claudius, Crescens raced 686 times. He won 47 competitions: 19 with one chariot, 23 with two chariots and 5 with three chariots; in one race he won thanks to his teammates; in 8 he was in the lead from the start, and from the last position he won 38. He came in second place 130 times; third place 111 times; he won 1,558,346 sesterces.

Inscription on the tomb of Caius Novius Mynias, 2nd c. AD. Caius must have been an unsentimental, no-nonsense chap, considering the information he chose to leave for posterity. But he shared a recurrent concern among people burying their dead: the defacing, theft or destruction of monuments. To prevent such affrontery, amulets, curses and magic spells were frequently attached to tombs, altars and crypts:

For the souls departed. Caius Novius Mynias saw to (the making of this tomb) for himself, his freedmen, freedwomen, for his and their descendants. To this funerary monument belongs a garden with an edifice, bordered by a wall, extending 280 feet along the front and 360 feet towards the countryside; these (structures) belong to the freedmen and freedwomen of Novius Mynias, those who are and who will be, and to whoever is born of them; to the same garden and edifice belongs a pathway through the main entrance of the gardens or the fundus Meropianus. May trickery and fraud stay away from this funerary monument.

Funerary altar of a humble poet, 2nd c. AD.:

For the souls departed. Here I lie, Claudius Diadumenus, poet by trade, once rich with imperial commissions, who was never possessed by the love for fame, but always maintained a modest way (of life). O Hyllus, o father, I have joined you. I do not wish to create a commotion: for us, this house is a hospitable place. Claudia Fructiane made this to the well-deserving (Diadumenus).

And finally, a coarse and facetious take on funereal epitaphs on a graffito scribbled on a Pompeii wall. The text, in cursive Latin and following a pentameter rhyme, warns those feeling the urge to squat behind a tomb about the dangers of stinging nettle (urtica). It reads:

Hospes adhuc tumuli ni meias ossa prec[antur],

nam si uis (h)uic gratior esse caca.

Urticae monumenta vides discede cacator

non est hic tutum culu(m) aperire tibi.

Stranger, my bones beg you not to pee at my tomb: if you wish to be more pleasing to the deceased, shit. You look upon the monuments of stinging nettle: go away, shitter. It is not safe for you to open your arse here.

And so we come to the last sex post of the day—about a new piece by Richard Dawkins on his Substack site, The Poetry of Reality. Richard points to what he sees as arrant hypocrisy in the statement on biological sex by the Presidents of the SSN, ASN, and SSB.  As I mentioned in my first post today:

Note that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration archived here), a statement deliberately aimed at contradicting the first Executive Order by declaring that sex is not binary but a spectrum—in all species!

Richard shows, in his post (click below to read), that even the Presidents of these societies act, in their scientific publications, as if sex is binary, and he considers the disparity between their statement and their scientific behavior to be hypocritical.

An excerpt:

The presidents of three American societies of evolutionary biologists and ecologists have written a joint letter to President Trump and members of the US Congress stating that “extensive scientific evidence” contradicts the view that “there are two sexes . . . [which] are not changeable.” Also the view that “sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce”. Their statement is false and their letter is riddled with hypocrisy. In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be President, but his statement that “sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce” is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made.

The fact is, of course, that paper after paper in the scientific literature refers without qualification or equivocation to “males” and “females”. Biologist authors correctly assume that their readers will know the meanings of  “male” and “female” without further explanation, and will accept the authors’ unsubstantiated recognition of the sex of the animals they study. I shall quote just three examples, which happen to be papers authored by Carol Boggs, Daniel Bolnick and Jessica Ware, the three society presidents. A conceivable riposte would be that “humans are not animals”. But then at what point in the evolution of Homo sapiens did sex suddenly became non-binary, a single exception to the general rule pervading the whole of the animal and plant kingdoms? And indeed, the three presidents explicitly disavow human exceptionalism when they say, “Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.”

You can read the three examples yourself, for free, in his piece. (I used different examples in my own post here.) Note in the last sentence above that the three Presidents imply that sex is a spectrum in all species!  I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make such a foolish assertion were they to rewrite their letter. But I’m not sure they have even sent that letter, and have heard noises that they haven’t.

After Richard gives his examples, he says this:

When I wrote this, I was unaware that Jerry Coyne had already made the same point, quoting three different papers written by the three society presidents. He was too polite to accuse them of hypocrisy.

Finally, I want to add something important: If you want us to consider adding your name to the letter above, for we’re still accumulating signatures, please click on the link below, which is an early version of the letter with some signatures.

At the bottom of the letter, you will see this form:

If you want your name to be added to the letter to the SSE, ASN, and SSB, please go to that site and fill in the blanks. I ask only two things: you be affiliated with biology in some way, and that you be willing to have your name publicized, not only to the society but on this website (I’m not sure if I’ll post the final version, though).  Your response will automatically be added to an Excel document from which we’ll draft the final letter.  Thanks!

Evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven was bullied out of Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology for public statements that were true, compassionate and biologically anodyne. As she explains:

At the end of July 2021, I made my first live TV appearance, on the Fox and Friends show on Fox News. I was invited to comment on an article in The Free Press by Katie Herzog,in which I’d been quoted. She reported that medical school professors were backing away from using clear scientific terms such as male, female, and pregnant woman, largely in response to student complaints. I said I thought this trend was a big mistake.

In the brief segment on Fox, my troubles began when I described how biologists define male and female, and argued that these are invaluable terms that science educators in particular should not relinquish in response to pressure from ideologues. I emphasized that “understanding the facts about biology doesn’t prevent us from treating people with respect.” We can, I said, “respect their gender identities and use their preferred pronouns.”

I also mentioned that educators are increasingly self-censoring, for fear that using the “wrong” language can result in being shunned or even fired.

The ensuing fracas at Harvard, during which Hooven found little support from her colleagues, led to her eventually leaving her department. But she hasn’t lost her cool and, in today’s Boston Globe, explains sex to the layperson, prompted by the Executive Order of Trump discussed in the last post. You can read Carole’s “ideas” post by clicking below or finding it archived here.

This is a great article for not only explaining biological sex to people who are new to the controversy, but also correcting misconceptions about it, like the tri-societies’ claim that sex is defined by some unspecified, multidimensional amalgam of traits like hormones, chromosomes, genitals, and even behavior. (They never tell us how such combining is to be done, nor how many sexes there are in humans and other species.)  But first an excerpt that shows how the media has distorted the sex “controversy,” which shouldn’t even be a controversy:

Ideally, political beliefs would not bias views of scientific reality. But take a look at how the media covered the Trump administration’s new executive order. The Globe: “Trump executive order misstates facts about sex and gender, scientists say.” Time: “Trump’s ‘Biological Truth’ Executive Order Is Not Based in Biology or Truth.” The Guardian: “Most scientists now reject the idea that sex is strictly binary” and “sex is a hell of a lot more complicated than Trump’s executive order would have you believe.” NBC: “The executive order questions [transgender people’s] existence by saying the government would recognize only two unchangeable sexes: female and male.”

As for Fox News: “Trump is returning sanity to the gender conversation.”

Many journalists — and the experts they consult — seem unable to disentangle their politics from analysis of the relevant science. I’m a Democrat, and I have never voted for a Republican. Yet while I might have worded things in Trump’s executive order a little differently, I agree with the way this administration has defined sex.

There are two and only two sexes. Sex is immutable in humans and other mammals, and it is defined by gamete size. (I’ll discuss some of the technicalities shortly.)

I’d love to live in a world in which children in particular felt comfortable expressing themselves as they saw fit, regardless of whether that expression was sex-typical. To promote such a culture, we adults don’t need to pretend that sex is not a biological reality, claim that sex can be changed, or deny the natural differences between boys and girls, men and women. Instead, we should foster an environment that respects individual expression, while also acknowledging biological reality.

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Unfortunately, mainstream coverage has elided basic biological facts and misled the public about what sex actually is.

Carole goes on to give the gametic definition of sex, dispelling the idea that biological sex is defined by other traits like hormone levels, genitalia, and chromosomes. These are traits that are associated (imperfectly) with biological sex, but for reasons that Richard Dawkins has engagingly and clearly  explained, are not part of the definition of sex.  Here is Carole’s related take:

The more we understand about the wide variety of characteristics that can be associated with one sex or the other — like genes, genitalia, hormone levels, muscle mass, or even how individuals feel and act — the better able we will be to meet the medical, psychological, and social needs of those with rare variations. But variation in characteristics that are associated with sex does not constitute evidence for additional sexes. Nor does it mean that sex itself is somehow on a spectrum.

What it instead shows is that sex-associated traits do exist on a spectrum.

Two more points from a long piece. First, Carole does seem to differ slightly from Trump on how sex might be shown on official documents:

Sex is written into law for a reason: There are situations in which it might make sense for boys and men not to have all the same rights as girls and women. For instance, perhaps women should have exclusive access to lactation rooms and women’s sports teams. Perhaps it’s reasonable to consider men’s-only spaces such as military quarters or social clubs. Yet the fact that we are born into one of two sexes doesn’t necessarily mean that our sex should always matter or that official documents must always reflect it. (In the United States, the sex marker on passports wasn’t required until 1977.) But constructive discussion about the implications of sex cannot happen if we can’t agree on basic facts and the language to describe them.

I agree with the last sentence, though I can also see reasons to have natal sex on at least some official documents (for medical care, for one reason). But as she said, it needs to be discussed. Do we have it on passports? (I think yes.) Birth certificates? (Yes, too.) Driver’s licenses? (Those are state and not federal documents, and I see no need to add “sex” to them.) But please put your own views in the comments.

At the end, Hooven explains why we scientists, who are in the truth business, have to get the science right before we begin making policy about it.  And she explains that, because we are humans (and Democrats!), we should avoid using the truth to promulgate bigotry and hatred. The truth is the truth, and the rest is commentary—and morality:

What are our options, as scholars and journalists, if we are concerned about science landing in the “wrong hands” and being “weaponized”? Should we refrain from doing the research that would produce such inconvenient facts, or keep them out of the public eye? Produce journalism that only reports that which appears to support a preferred narrative? Shame those who share facts that the “other side” could to use to advance their own agendas?

All of this is going on, and it’s bad for science, bad for trust in our academic and journalistic institutions, and just bad for democracy. Vulnerable people especially deserve honesty, dignity, and compassion. I hope we can agree that the facts of nature are not what provide the justification for treating people with dignity and respect. We should do that in any case.

You don’t need to have a PhD from Harvard to know the truth here, and you shouldn’t need courage to say it. Whether the policies in Trump’s executive order are justifiable is something reasonable people can disagree about. But as for the scientific facts: The order got those right.

If anybody asks you about the sex kerfuffle, refer them to Dawkins’s article linked above and also to this piece by Carole.

There will be a few posts on the definition of sex today, as everything “dropped”—as the kids say—at the same time.

First, on January 20, the Trump administration issued an executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”—an attempt to efface gender ideology from the government and ensure that people’s biological sex appeared on government documents like passports. It defined “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” in standard ways that were also to be used, per the specifications, in all government documents.  Gender ideology was to be eliminated from government-funded projects like grants, sex was characterized as “binary,” and the order specified things like this:

Agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity.

It also used the gametic definition of sex:

“Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

“Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

. . . and specified standardized terminology:

“Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

“Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

Of course many people were angered by this, some assuming—with some justification—hat this was more than just a clarification of how sex was to be used in by government, but also an attack on those who considered themselves to not be of male or female gender, or on transsexual people.  I recognize this construal and see that it comes from how people have seen Trump previously comment on sex and gender.

Nevertheless, I think the document itself is pretty much okay, though I can’t see why you can’t have both natal sex and some indication of gender on government documents, although that would be nearly impossible as there are a gazillion genders, and a single character wouldn’t say much. I do appreciate the attempt to protect “women’s spaces.”

Now, in an attempt to further clarify how biological sex is defined, and deal with some of the caveats and misconceptions about it, the Department of Health and Human Services (now headed by RFK Jr., oy), has issued another short document, which you can access below by clicking on the headline or by going here. 

I’ll reproduce the entire text, indented, below the header:

Background

President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14168 on January 20, 2025, entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which directs the Department of Health and Human Service (the Department) to promulgate clear guidance to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public, expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in the Executive Order.

Defining Sex

There are only two sexes, female and male, because there are only two types of gametes. An individual human is either female or male based on whether the person is of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova) or sperm.

The sex of a human, female or male, is determined genetically at conception (fertilization), and is observable before birth. Having the biological function to produce eggs or sperm does not require that eggs or sperm are ever produced. Some females or males may not or may no longer produce eggs or sperm due to factors such as age, congenital disorders or other developmental conditions, injury, or medical conditions that cause infertility.

A person’s sex is unchangeable and determined by objective biology. The use of hormones or surgical interventions do not change a person’s sex because such actions do not change the type of gamete that the person’s reproductive system has the biological function to produce. Rare disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex because these disorders do not lead to the production of a third gamete. That is, the reproductive system of a person with such a disorder does not produce gametes other than eggs or sperm.

The Department has long recognized that the biological differences between females and males require sex-specific practices in medicine and research to ensure optimal health outcomes and rigorous research, including by considering sex as a biological variable.

Recognizing the immutable and biological nature of sex is essential to ensure the protection of women’s health, safety, private spaces, sports, and opportunities. Restoring biological truth to the Federal government is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself. Accordingly, the Department promulgates the following definitions:

Definitions

Sex is a person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.

Female is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).

Male is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.

Woman is an adult human female. Girl is a minor human female.

Man is an adult human male.

Boy is a minor human male.

Mother is a female parent.

Father is a male parent.

I really cannot find anything biologically wrong with this short document, regardless of what you think its motivations are. And it does provide a standardized terminology while also correcting some misconceptions about sex (a common but ludicrous one is that if you have the reproductive apparatus of, say, a woman, but cannot produce gametes—as in the case of a sterile or postmenopausal woman—you are not a woman). It also notes, correctly, that “Rare disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex because these disorders do not lead to the production of a third gamete. That is, the reproductive system of a person with such a disorder does not produce gametes other than eggs or sperm.”  (Many prefer to say “differences of sexual development” rather than “disorders of sex development” because the former sounds less perjorative. I am fine with “differences.”)

It appears that there was some salubrious biological expertise that went into the confection of this document. As I said, I can’t find anything wrong with it, and it comports pretty well with what I see as the consensus of biologists and with how terminology is used in the literature (see another post by Richard Dawkins to come today).  But remember that administrations come and go, and were a semi-progressive Democrat like Biden to be elected again, this document would be very different.

Finally, I cannot resist a bit of snark.  First note that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), and the Society of Systematic Biologists issued a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress (declaration archived here), a statement deliberately aimed at contradicting the first Executive Order by declaring that sex is not binary but a spectrum—in all species!  I and others have pointed out the fallacies and misrepresentations in this “tri-societies” letter (see my posts here, here, and here); it almost seems that some of Societies’ misrepresentations of biology were based not on science but on ideology, and were deliberate.

How embarrassing is it, given the situation, that the SSE, the AASN, and the SSB got their biology wrong while the Trump administration got it right! But that’s what happens when scientific societies get ideologically captured.

The inevitable happened this morning: Hamas turned over four dead bodies of Israeli hostages, encased in black boxes. And, contrary to my expectations, there was a ceremony, with posters blaming the deaths on Netanyahu and the Red Cross there signing documents.  The bodies included the Bibas family (Shiri Bibas and her two children. four-year-old Ariel and 9-month old Kfir) and Oded Lifshitz, identified by Matti Friedman in the Free Press as “a grandfather, journalist and peace activist who was 83 when he was kidnapped from the same kibbutz, Nir Oz.”

To get those bodies back, Israel had to release 100 Palestinian prisoners, including a Gazan woman who had held hostages in her flat.

Here is a video of the turnover of the bodies, taken as a live feed. It’s quite long but you can scroll through it. Start at the beginning:

A couple of photos from Sheri Oz’s article in Israel Diaries.  First, a poster hanging over the coffins, reading “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes.”  Of course they blame the deaths on the IDF. There’s a picture of a ghoulish Netanyahu with blood-dripping fangs looming over the dead hostages.  We did not know the identity of the dead hostages until about two days ago.

The Red Cross signing documents.  What kind of documents do they need? The Red Cross has behaved shamefully during all this time, even refusing to bring needed medications to the hostages:

Hamas carrying a coffin:

Lots of spectators came to see the show, with some bringing their children:

From Matti Friedman’s article, “The family that never came home.”  He is angry and sees this as a symbol of Israel’s failure to achieve the goals of this war:

No captives have focused public sentiment like the Bibas children, the youngest Israeli hostages. Footage from October 7 showed a terrified Shiri Bibas cradling a baby and a toddler as they were taken at gunpoint from their home. The two redheads quickly became symbols of the 250 Israelis taken hostage—icons not just of the inhumanity of the Palestinians who kidnapped and murdered civilians and celebrated this barbarism as a victory, but of the unthinkable weakness of the Israeli state that allowed this to happen.

After their capture, the Israeli military said Shiri and the children were in the hands of a small and previously unknown Gazan faction. Video footage showed the children’s father, Yarden, covered in blood on the back of a motorcycle, surrounded by dozens of men as he was taken away separately. He survived 15 months in captivity and was recently returned as part of the current ceasefire deal.

Later, another video surfaced showing Shiri and the children being herded into Gaza by a half-dozen men. This was the last glimpse of them.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of the grief in Israel on Thursday is that the fate of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir has largely been understood since late 2023. Hamas announced early in the war that the three were dead, killed by an Israeli airstrike. Given the intensity of fire in the early stage of the war and the fact that the military didn’t know where Palestinian fighters were hiding hostages, it seemed possible. And the deaths seemed even more probable when, in November 2023, Hamas returned Israeli mothers and children in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and the Bibas family wasn’t among them.

. . .But Hamas has produced false information about other hostages as a form of psychological warfare, including a report that Daniella Gilboa was killed in an Israeli airstrike. (She was just released alive.) And while Israeli intelligence was able to ascertain the death of other hostages in captivity, there was no confirmation about the fate of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir.

And so Israelis retained hope that the Bibas family would somehow come back alive. The reluctance to accept the worst was less about logic than about their deaths simply being too unbearable to believe—and so simply wouldn’t be believed until we had no other choice. That moment arrived on Thursday morning.

After the war began on October 7, 2023, the Israeli government stated that its goals were the elimination of the Hamas threat and the return of all the hostages. Today, as armed terrorists held a macabre ceremony with the coffins of four Israelis who were kidnapped alive, it was impossible to argue that either goal had been achieved.

I have nothing to add.  The “ceremony” instantiates the evil that is Hamas.