News Feeds

It’s been quiet at the University of Chicago—too quiet!  We almost got through Students for Justice in Palestine’s “week of rage” without nary a megaphone blaring or any graffiti painted on campus walls and sidewalks. But, as I predicted, this was not to last. With Hamas losing the war with Israel, and all universities refusing to divest their endowment from any Israel-related companies, the protestors were bound to get even more enraged than last year.

They’re already back at it at Columbia University, and yesterday afternoon the terrorism-lovers struck our campus again. One of their targets was a famous Henry Moore sculpture on campus called “Nuclear Energy.” It sits on the site of the world’s first nuclear reactor, built by Fermi and his colleagues underneath the old Stagg Field, an athletic field. Wikipedia gives the themes of this work:

Moore cited a number of inspirations for the sculpture, from earlier works with similar forms to natural objects like stones. About the shape of the sculpture, Moore said:

When I had made this working model I showed it to them and they liked my idea because the top of it is like some large mushroom, or a kind of mushroom cloud. Also it has a kind of head shape like the top of the skull but down below is more an architectural cathedral. One might think of the lower part of it being a protective form and constructed for human beings and the top being more like the idea of the destructive side of the atom. So between the two it might express to people in a symbolic way the whole event. (Henry Moore quoted in Art Journal, New York, Spring 1973, p.286)

Moore’s work explores the hopes and fears of the Atomic Age. The potential of controlled nuclear power or a nuclear holocaust is tied to the historical events of the site with the iconography of a mushroom cloud or skull, supported by pillars topped by arches like a protective cathedral. Interviews with Moore highlight the dual nature of the top and bottom portions of the sculpture, meant to represent the creative and destructive power possible with nuclear energy. An abstract sculpture was chosen by the University to highlight the importance of the events at the site, and their implications for humanity, rather than the importance of Fermi in bringing them about.

Curiously, this campus attraction draws a lot of Japanese tourists, who visit it by the busload, competing to have their picture taken in front of the mushroom cloud.

But yesterday, the enraged activists covered it with red paint and then spray-painted “FREE GAZA” on the sidewalk beside it. Here’s a picture taken by a member of the University community, who sent it to me.  What on earth do the protestors think they are accomplishing by doing this? They sure aren’t enlisting sympathy. They are simply acting out, like the petulant toddlers they are.

The person who took the photo sent it to me along with this email (all words and photos are used with permission):

I just came back to work to find this (see attached). It is probably a very good thing that I was not around a few minutes ago. The protestors are now one block down and I cannot see any signs of arrests having been made, regardless of heavy UC and City police presence. About one hundred and fifty children of privilege, calling the UC Police “the KKK’. To their face—with most officers present being black. We are dealing with imbeciles of a species the world has never seen before. Every single student involved in the desecration of this monument needs to be expelled, ipso facto. The whole lot.

Another member of the University community weighed in, and sent some photographs as well:

Today at about 3pm, pro-Palestine protesters forcefully attempted to lock the University gate on 57th Street with chains and padlocks. Two brave UChicago police officers fought back and were able to prevent that. Police cars joined the scene shortly afterwards. I was about to walk through the gate when this happened.

Actually, according to the news report below, they protestors did lock the gate.

Below: the photos (captions are mine). The protestors put their signs on Hull Gate, which is right outside my building, and then tried to lock the gate so their signs would be visible and conspicuous (see more below):

Both campus cops and Chicago city police were on the site. Here two campus cops try to prevent the protestors from locking the gate, the main entry from the north to the Quad:

Note that many of the protestors are masked. That is not for health reasons, but because they are cowards, fearful of being identified because they might be punished. Many are also wearing keffiyehs, sometimes described as “swastikas for hipsters”.

Whoops—there’s a coward inside the gate:

Masks everywhere. I can’t tell you how reprehensible I find acts of civil disobedience that are not only not peaceful, but whose perps try to disguise themselves:

The outside. Whoops, we have an identifiable human here:

More from outside the gate. My building is to the left, and the Anatomy building, housing Organismal Biology and Anatomy, is to the right:

University of Chicago cops on the scene:

The student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, did a live-stream report on the protests that is now a full news report. There were student scuffles with cops, three arrests, and reports that police used batons and pepper spray. Here are a few indented excerpts from the news, with my words flush left.

A UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) rally saw three protesters arrested and physical altercations between protesters and officers. Earlier, protesters locked Cobb Gate using a bike lock despite UCPD’s efforts to keep the gate open. During the rally multiple police officers used pepper spray and batons. Protesters damaged UCPD vehicles and kicked at least one officer.

The rally, which began with a walk out at 2:30 p.m., morphed into a brawl that involved at least 200 University- and community-affiliated protesters, 20 University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) officers, and 30 Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers.

Deans-on-Call informed UCPD at approximately 2:15 p.m., that the University had “zero tolerance” for excessive noise before attempting to hand out warning cards to protest leaders using bullhorns to lead chants on the quad at 2:45 p.m. The cards read, “FINAL WARNING: This card serves to inform you or your student organization that your conduct is violating policies outlined in the Student Manual.” The cards also contained four QR codes linked to relevant University policies, which were updated in advance of the beginning of the academic year. Protesters refused to accept the cards.

The Deans-on-Call have always been useless in these altercations. From the lack of punishments last year, the protestors know that “zero tolerance” really means “infinite tolerance.”

. . . At approximately 3 p.m., protesters marched from the center of the quad and proceeded through the Hull and Cobb Gates on the north end. Once all protesters had passed through Cobb Gate, protesters pushed the gate closed and secured it with a bike lock despite police attempts to stop them. They also hung a banner on the gate that read “Free Palestine” and “Hands Off Lebanon.”

By this point, the protest had grown to include over 150 people, spilling out onto East 57th Street. Protesters allowed space for cars to pass through, but UCPD patrol cars blocked the street on both ends.

Protesters told police officers “Pigs go home” and chanted “Intifada, intifada, long live the intifada.”

The “intifada” is an armed uprising of Palestinians against Israel. The protestors want that, and doubtless many of them are proud of the butchery of October 7.

At 3:15 p.m., protesters left Cobb Gate and proceeded north on S. Ellis Avenue. They stopped in front of the Nuclear Energy Sculpture next to the Regenstein Library, at which point some protesters threw paint on the statue and wrote graffiti in the surrounding area that read “Free Gaza,” “hands off Lebonan” [sic], and “fuck the bombs.” CPD officers arrived on scene, joining at least 20 UCPD officers. Some were in riot gear and carried batons and zip-ties.

At approximately 3:30 p.m., the protest moved further north along the street, stopping between Ratner Athletics Center and the Court Theater. Police searched for and then tackled and detained one protester, whom they put into a patrol car. Protesters attempted to prevent the detainment, physically confronting officers. The Maroon was unable to confirm why that protester was detained.

Other protesters began chanting “Let him go!” and surrounded the patrol car that held the detained protester. An officer attempted to drive the UCPD patrol car away from the scene but was blocked by the crowd of protesters. Officers and protesters continued to push against each other.

Another protester struck the side mirror of a separate police car several times with what appeared to be a rock and then rejoined the crowd.

As tensions escalated, a third protester kicked a CPD officer in the back of his leg. Officers attempted to detain the protester, hitting him with a baton. They chased him briefly and tackled him halfway down the block, at which point they detained him and placed him into a patrol car.

The attack on cops takes the protest out of the realm of civil disobedience, which is supposed to be peaceful protests. And of course rule #1 of that type of demonstration is NEVER HIT A COP.

Officers used pepper spray on protesters, who were seen afterward rubbing and washing their eyes with water. One student told the Maroon that he was pepper sprayed by an officer who had “harassed students at the encampment.” A Maroon reporter witnessed a UCPD officer inadvertently pepper spraying a Chicago Police Department Captain, an incident which the UCPD officer later apologized for.

I don’t know about the pepper spray, but I saw the encampment taken down, at least the beginning of it, and I saw no harassment of students by the University police.

At approximately 3:45 p.m., protesters began dispersing north along South Ellis Avenue, south towards the quad, and through the SMART Museum courtyard. One CPD officer remarked to gathered officers, “that was fun for a little while.” Shortly after, CPD and UCPD officers also dispersed. By 4 p.m., the lock on Cobb Gate was removed and the gate was reopened.

And of course the mess around the sculpture, involving painted vandalism, had to be cleaned up by workers from Facilities. The protestors don’t care that workers have clean up after them.

The University issued a statement (below) that seems to me a bit ambiguous. Yes, university policiers prohibit disruptive violations and destruction of property, but what will happen if (as happened during the last academic year) the arrested protestors have their charges dropped by the Chicago district attorney, who seems sympathetic to the protests?  Here’s the statement:

According to a University spokesperson, “the University of Chicago is fundamentally committed to upholding the rights of protesters to express their views on any issue. At the same time, University policies make it clear that protests cannot jeopardize public safety, disrupt the University’s operations, or involve the destruction of property.”

This year, I hope, the University will actually enforce violations of the law and of university regulations. As far as I know, despite arrests and dismantling of the encampment last academic year, in the end not a single student was punished. Last spring I recounted four protests by Students for Justice in Palestine and their umbrella organization, UChicago United, and yet though all of these constituted legal or university violations, not a single student was punished. 13 of them had their degrees withheld, but they all got them reinstated after a short while. And though a sit-in in the admissions office led to the arrest for criminal trespassing of 28 people by Chicago Police (18 undergraduates, eight graduate students, and two professors), all the charges were dropped.

As far as I know—and there may be proceedings of which I’m unaware—the only punishment meted out the entire academic year was a mild rebuke to Students for Justice in Palestine–just a note on their record that if they continue to violate university regulations, there may be trouble for them in the future.

Frankly, I’m tired of the University proclaiming that violations will be punished, but then doing nothing about it. I don’t want to live through another year with protestors illegally shouting through megaphones during class hours, spraying graffiti on University walls, and holding sit-ins in University buildings.  Many of us feel that the University, despite eventually dismantling the illegal encampment, is doing as little as it can to punish protestors—perhaps because they don’t want the attention. But if this kind of mishigas continues, it will eventually lead to more attention focused on the University of Chicago, and perhaps, as has happened at Harvard, a decline in the number of Jewish students applying for admission.

Dumbest Thing of the Week: Loch Ness Sonar; News Items: Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, and Physics, Fruit Fly Connectome, Shroud of Turin Again; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Hydrogen Cars; Name That Logical Fallacy; Science or Fiction

If you find cat-related material, send it along (one reader already does).

From Cosmos we see that scientists have developed new ways to give brain scans to cats, which of course don’t want to wear electrodes on their head.  Click headline to read:

Cosmos caption: Fée, an abandoned cat with chronic osteoarthritis, was one of 11 who went through the knitted cap tests at Université de Montréal’s veterinary school. Credit: Aliénor Delsart / Université de Montréal

An excerpt:

Knitted wool caps are a good way to give cats brain scans, according to a new study.

Cats tend to chew off wires and electrodes in electroencephalograms (EEGs), which means that they need to be sedated to get a scan.

This hinders vets’ abilities to assess chronic pain from conditions like osteoarthritis.

But a Canadian research team, publishing in Journal of Neuroscience Methods, has developed a less invasive method.

The team’s solution is a hand-knitted cap, embedded with ten gold-plated electrodes.

“The knitted hat helped to keep the electrodes in place during the evaluation and prevented cats to try to play with or chew the wire,” the team writes in their paper.

They used this cap to take EEG scans of 11 cats, assessing each cat’s response to stressful and soothing stimuli, like scented oils and coloured lights.

“One cat was able to shake its head and to remove the electrodes. In this case, we stopped the procedure, re-placed the electrodes, and resumed recording,” write the researchers.

“The entire procedure lasted around 45 min per cat, including positive reinforcement (treats and petting) between the sensory exposure.”

A cat styling the knitted cap and electrodes. Credit: Delsart et al., 2024, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2024.110254

The team was able to collect EEG data from all cats, and analysed 4 in detail.

They’re now looking for funding to perform more scans, “to enable us to establish a genuine EEG signature for chronic pain, and many other applications that will enable us to automate chronic pain detection in the future,” according to co-lead researcher Professor Éric Troncy, a researcher at the Université de Montréal.

Here’s are some EEGs from scanned moggies:

Graphs recorded from feline subjects. Credit: Delsart et al., 2024, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2024.110254

 

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

Here we have my favorite genre of YouTube video: an animal rescue, and particularly cat rescues. This cat must have fallen or climbed onto the pipes, and then jumps into the water to escape. The soggy moggy was rescued by a nice man with a net, though the rescue wasn’t straightforward. The man wields the net with great dexterity, and finally snags it. This reminds me of how I rescued some ducks with a net (though I was actually in the water). I hope the cat found a good home.

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

Maybe if Marxism was explained by a cat, we’d understand it better. Here’s a 2+-minute short explanation of Marxism using cats. The YouTube notes:

There is nothing the internet loves more than cats. So here is a very brief introduction to Marxism, explained by Bosley.

There is also a book that helps teach kitties about Marxism: Marx for Cats.

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

Lagniappe:  A cat rescue story; click to read. Toilet water! Click to read the Telegram article:

The piece:

When stray pets are left to wander under the Texas summer sun for days and weeks on end, it could lead to a death sentence. But one cat in the Lone Star State proved his will to survive by finding at least some refuge.

When Edd was discovered by Houston SPCA investigators, he was living in a closed-down tanning salon, living off toilet water with no food in sight, the shelter said in an Aug. 27 Facebook post. He was also underweight and skittish.

“Shoppers and fellow business owners said they could see him in the window,” Julie Kuenstle with the Houston SPCA told McClatchy News. “It’s estimated that Edd was inside the closed store for around a month but survived on the water in the toilet.”

Now, weeks later, Edd is ready to start a new chapter of his life — his now-healthy life.

The SPCA ad for Edd is below.  There’s a happy ending, as the article says,

Kuenstle told McClatchy News that it didn’t take long for someone to offer Edd a forever home — he was adopted at the end of September.

 

h/t: Barry, Ginger K., Michael

Systems that can harvest water from moisture in the atmosphere could offer a valuable water source in the wake of disasters

A new technique enables makers to finely tune the color, shade, and texture of 3D-printed objects using only one material. The method is faster and uses less material than other approaches.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different viewpoints. The results inform future plans to study like types of planets around other stars.

Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. The results suggest that without 'unmelted' asteroids, there may not have been enough of these compounds on Earth for life to emerge.

Scientists have used light to visualize magnetic domains, and manipulated these regions using an electric field, in a quantum antiferromagnet. This method allows real-time observation of magnetic behaviors, paving the way for advancements in next-generation electronics and memory devices, as well as a deeper understanding of quantum materials.

Scientists have used light to visualize magnetic domains, and manipulated these regions using an electric field, in a quantum antiferromagnet. This method allows real-time observation of magnetic behaviors, paving the way for advancements in next-generation electronics and memory devices, as well as a deeper understanding of quantum materials.

Researchers have successfully develop single-atom editing technology that maximizes drug efficacy.

A collection-based survey of lichen species at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, USA and Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada was conducted as part of the Mars-160 mission, a simulation of Martian surface exploration. The survey identified 48 lichen taxa, with 35 species from the Utah site and 13 species from the Canadian site.

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the 'inside-out' growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big Bang.

Researchers devised a way to expand tissue 20-fold in a single step. Their simple, inexpensive method could pave the way for nearly any biology lab to perform nanoscale imaging.

Sometimes, we try to capture a QR code with a good digital camera on a smartphone, but the reading eventually fails. This usually happens when the QR code itself is of poor image quality, or if it has been printed on surfaces that are not flat -- deformed or with irregularities of unknown pattern -- such as the wrapping of a courier package or a tray of prepared food. Now, a team has designed a methodology that facilitates the recognition of QR codes in these physical environments where reading is more complicated.

Researchers have made a significant advancement in understanding the underlying heating mechanism of the sun's atmosphere, finding that reflected plasma waves could drive the heating of coronal holes.

Researchers have developed and demonstrated a technique that allows them to engineer a class of materials called layered hybrid perovskites (LHPs) down to the atomic level, which dictates precisely how the materials convert electrical charge into light. The technique opens the door to engineering materials tailored for use in next-generation printed LEDs and lasers -- and holds promise for engineering other materials for use in photovoltaic devices.

Researchers have developed and demonstrated a technique that allows them to engineer a class of materials called layered hybrid perovskites (LHPs) down to the atomic level, which dictates precisely how the materials convert electrical charge into light. The technique opens the door to engineering materials tailored for use in next-generation printed LEDs and lasers -- and holds promise for engineering other materials for use in photovoltaic devices.

Spear-throwing tools called atlatls allow humans to launch projectiles over great distances, but Neanderthals apparently never used them – and an experiment involving a 9-metre-tall platform may explain why

Millions of years ago, our ancestors lost a gene for producing vitamin C and got a taste for citrus. Since then, we've cultivated the tangy fruits into global staples like sweet oranges and sour lemons

This article, from Pirate Wires, shows something that many of us already knew: there’s a thriving industry out there to either create or buff up your Wikipedia page, despite it being against the rules.  (I note immediately that I neither created nor had anyone buff up my page.)

There are two types of editing: “white hat editing” in which paid interests are disclosed and direct edits aren’t made, and which may be okay (I don’t agree), and “black hat editing,” in which edits are made without conflicts of interest being disclosed, which is definitely against Wikipedia’s rules. New article are even created to boost businesses or organizations. Both of the latter two are against Wikipedia’s rules, but are hard to police.

I’ll give just a few examples to show you what kind of stuff is subject to paid editing:

. . . . . Today, Wikipedia’s list of black-hat editors includes over 200 companies, many of which operate dozens of front companies and subsidiary brands. One of the biggest and highest-profile is Abtach, a Pakistani firm founded in 2015 linked to an IT company called Intermarket Group. On Wikipedia, Abtach has been tied to at least 130 different Wikipedia editing front companies that operate under domains like Wikicreatorsinc.com, Wikicreation.services, Wikipedia Pro, Wikipedia Legends, and USAwikispecialists.com. Alongside its Wikipedia activities, Abtach’s owners run a parallel business selling low-cost trademark applications under names like Trademark Terminal, Trademark Eminent, Trademark Excel and more than a dozen others. In 2022, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) found that firms tied to Abtach had defrauded customers, in some cases by billing them for multiple filings when only one single-class trademark was filed. USPTO invalidated 5,500 trademarks as a result of the investigation and Google banned the companies from advertising. The previous year, the Federal Investigation Agency, Pakistan’s equivalent to the FBI, investigated the company for criminal fraud.

While Abtach may have pushed the boundaries farther than most, there are hundreds of Abtach-like companies out there — many based in Pakistan, India and Ukraine, but some of the longest standing and most impactful in the UK, Switzerland, France, Spain and the US — each with a profusion of front sites and domains ready to slurp up overflowing demand. Most of what these black hat firms offer is a kind of blunt-force approach to reputation management. For $1,200 to $1,500, they promise to create a Wikipedia article about you or your company. The process will take around a week (or so you’ll be told) with half the payment made up front and the other half upon completion. Payments are usually made in the form of bank wires, which are much more difficult to reverse than credit card charges. Frequently, the newly created article will be taken down by Wikipedia community editors patrolling for articles that don’t meet the site’s notability threshold. In some of these cases, black-hat companies will demand further payment to get the article back up, forcing clients to double the $1,500 investment, then triple it, etc.

And oy, the NYT does it!

While the mainstream media has covered the issue of Wikipedia editing, they have not been immune to its temptations. In 2020, during the lead-up to A.G. Sulzberger — the scion to the Sulzberger dynasty that controls the New York Times — assuming the chairman position at the newspaper, the Times hired one of the first and most highly regarded white-hat Wikipedia firms, Beutler Ink. Readying A.G. for the new post at the height of the #MeToo movement, the firm requested community editors beef up of the section on the incoming chairman’s journalistic experience, including a heroic account of Sulzberger’s time as an intern at the Providence Journal, where he “revealed” a local country club was not open to women. A range of other similar additions were requested — and made — including Sulzberger’s stint at The Oregonian newspaper, “writing more than 300 pieces about local government and public life, including a series of investigative exposés on misconduct by Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto” — language provided almost verbatim by Beutler Ink.

This seems unethical for a newspaper, and especially unethical for what is supposed to be a leading and reputable newspaper.  A few more clients, which will surprise you.

The list of Beutler Ink’s clients alone reveals the staggering scale of this activity. A small sample includes media executive and Democratic mega donor Jeffrey Katzenberg, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, Simon and Schuster CEO Jonathan Karl and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. Corporate clients include Reddit, MetLife, Accenture, Intel, IBM, Hubspot, Hilton, Vox Media, Dick’s Sporting Goods, United Airlines, Amdocs, Gallup, Allergan, Breyers, Vimeo and Waymo.

The PR tactics and marketing KPIs involved are just as diverse. While the New York Times turned to Wikipedia to burnish its brand, NBC News hired a white-hat firm to do damage control during a period of major upheaval. The scandal began when Today show host and media super-star Matt Lauer was abruptly fired in 2017 following serious allegations of sexual misconduct. In October 2019, an excerpt from a book by Ronan Farrow reported shocking details on the allegations, and claims top NBC executives, including NBC News chairman Andrew Lack and president Noah Oppenheim, quashed Farrow’s reporting on the scandal when he was at the network.

The revelations sent NBC into a tailspin. . .

Does this mean you can’t trust Wikipedia? No, though Greg Mayer has been promising me a post on “What’s the matter with Wikipedia?” for about a decade now.  But surely nobody is going to pay to have articles about specific species of animals, chemical compounds, some biographies altered. But as for politics, history, or currently controversial subjects (including people), caveat emptor!