News Feeds

ADDENDUM:  See added comments and clarifications under “addendum” at bottom.

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

I’ve written many times about the battle of the indigenous people in New Zealand (the Māori) to get their “way of knowing”—which includes a lot of superstition and unreliable word-of-mouth “knowledge,” as well as legends and morality—adopted as official policy or as a “way of knowing” that is equivalent to science.  This push demands an extreme and unjustifiable form of affirmative action, supported, say the activists, by the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi made between the locals and European “colonists.” (In the Māori language it’s called “Te Tiriti”.)

The culture war—and there really is one—is fomented not by the “colonists” (descendants of Europeans) as the WaPo implies,  but by the Māori themselves, who argue that the Treaty essentially entitles them to half of everything in the country. This is not even equity, for Māori comprise about 18% of the population.  But the issue is with the Treaty, which, say indigenous people, is in effect the official Constitution of New Zealand. It isn’t, because it really specifies only three things (from Wikipedia):

• Article one of the Māori text grants governance rights to the Crown while the English text cedes “all rights and powers of sovereignty” to the Crown.
• Article two of the Māori text establishes that Māori will retain full chieftainship over their lands, villages and all their treasures while the English text establishes the continued ownership of the Māori over their lands and establishes the exclusive right of pre-emption of the Crown.
• Article three gives Māori people full rights and protections as British subjects.

Note that this says nothing about more modern problems, like who gets hired for jobs or accepted in college, what projects get funded, or what gets taught in classes. Yet that’s the way the Māori have interpreted it.

To create a more modern law, a libertarian “colonist” in parliament, David Seymour, introduced a “Treaty Principles Bill” that, he says, will remedy the Māori interpretation of Te Tiriti by banning discrimination but also providing equal opportunities for everyone. Seymour is the leader of the ACT New Zealand party, which Wikipedia describes, confusingly, as “a right-wing, classical liberal, right-libertarian, and conservative political party in New Zealand”. (I believe it would be seen as “centrist” in the U.S.)

My non-Māori friends in NZ, while opposing the extreme privileges given to indigenous people, nevertheless say that the Treaty Principles Bill is confusing, but still think that the 1840 Treaty is outdated and needs some legislative tweaking, especially to eliminate the whole passel of special privileges the courts and government have conferred on the Māori.  And even the Prime Minister of the country, Christopher Luxon, elected partly to eliminate wokeness, has says the bill is dead. The Luxon government has failed to stop the Woke Train set in motion by the Ardern government.

Needless to say, the Māori hate the new bill and want to keep adhering to the Treaty of Waitangi.

Here’s the reaction (described in the WaPo article below), of the youngest member of New Zealand’s Parliament, Hana-Rawhitie Maipiu-Ckarke, only 22. Below you can see her tearing up the new bill and performing a haka (a traditional war dance to intimidate the enemy) in Parliament. She is joined by other like-minded lawmakers,  but the video went viral and inspired thousands of people to write in or give oral testimony opposing the Treaty Principles Bill. Note, however, that given the atmosphere of intimidation in NZ, public support of the bill would seriously endanger people’s jobs or well being.

Read the WaPo article by clicking below (it’s also archived here):

The article is sympathetic to the Māori, who were indeed once treated very badly by Europeans. But it distorts not only the advantages that the law has now given them over Europeans, and the dangers of opposing their increasing drive for not only equity, but more than equity. This demand for Even More Than Equity is what has ignited the culture war, most prominently in the schools, and, on this site, in the science classroom. (Remember the money allocated to rub whale oil on kauri trees and play whale songs to them, all catering to a Māori legend that the whale and trees were brothers, creating the notion that whale oil and songs could kill the microorganism blight that’s killing the trees? (It won’t, and the money came from taxpayers.)

The WaPo distorts the treaty grossly, saying stuff like this:

The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, an 1840 agreement between the British crown and more than 500 Maori chiefs, resulted in New Zealand’s Indigenous population being violently dispossessed of their lands, leading to disadvantage and disempowerment that continue today.

As you can see from Article 2 of Te Tiriti above, this is either a lie or a distortion that could have been easily corrected had the author looked at the treaty. The Māori retained their lands.

In the end, this is a fight about extreme affirmative action, and I can’t help but sympathize a bit with Seymour, who, noting the great legal advantages Māori have over all other New Zealanders (there are also about 18% Asians in the country),

. . . has insisted his Treaty Principles Bill merely “gives every New Zealander the same rights and dignity” and would ensure “the Treaty can no longer be used to justify separate public services, race-based health waitlists, and creeping co-governance.”

This equal rights and opportunities notion is anathema to indigenous people.  And so the Treaty Principles Bill is, in effect, dead, an ex-bill, singing with the Choir Invisible.  Even Luxon admits this. There is no sign that equal opportunities rather than group preferences will come to pass in New Zealand.

The article goes on to valorize the indigenous people, implying that even now they are experiencing a form of Jim-Crow-like segregation and bias similar to that of the American South in the late 18th and early 19th century. That is simply not true.

But I’ll hand my commentary over to a Kiwi friend who know about America, and tried to explain everything to me when I asked the anonymous friend “what the hell is going on over there?”

His/her answer is below the line, with the words indented, and quotes doubly indented. The last full paragraph sums up the situation, but if you read what’s below, you’ll get a good understanding of what is going on in New Zealand.  As I said, WaPo and Wikipedia quotes are doubly indented, but I’ve also put them in quotes.

========================

Here are a few comments that may be helpful – I find that Americans can be flummoxed by NZ treaty discussions.  *Every* *single* *element* of the discussion seems be in active dispute, with high emotions and no obvious way of resolving the issue.

Here are a few tips for American brains trying to understand the NZ Treaty debates: NZ’s political system is UK-derived, so there is no single written constitution. There are a variety of documents and laws that make up “the constitution”. Wikipedia seems to have it:

================

“The constitution of New Zealand is the sum of laws and principles that determine the political governance of New Zealand. Unlike many other nations, New Zealand has no single constitutional document.[1][2] It is an uncodified constitution, sometimes referred to as an “unwritten constitution”, although the New Zealand constitution is in fact an amalgamation of written and unwritten sources.[3][4] The Constitution Act 1986 has a central role,[5] alongside a collection of other statutes, orders in Council, letters patent, decisions of the courts, principles of the Treaty of Waitangi,[1][6] and unwritten traditions and conventions. There is no technical difference between ordinary statutes and law considered “constitutional law”; no law is accorded higher status.[7][8] In most cases the New Zealand Parliament can perform “constitutional reform” simply by passing acts of Parliament, and thus has the power to change or abolish elements of the constitution. There are some exceptions to this though – the Electoral Act 1993 requires certain provisions can only be amended following a referendum.[9]”

================

So, this passage in the WashPo article is confused in several ways:

=============

“The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, an 1840 agreement between the British crown and more than 500 Maori chiefs, resulted in New Zealand’s Indigenous population being violently dispossessed of their lands, leading to disadvantage and disempowerment that continue today. Maori experience worse health, greater poverty and higher incarceration rates than the non-Maori population.

But the treaty has become New Zealand’s de facto constitution. In recent decades, Parliament and the courts have come to see it as promising Maori, who make up almost 20 percent of the population, significant decision-making powers and special protections.”

=============

It would be accurate to say this: “But the treaty has become *part of* New Zealand’s de facto constitution”, but no one would say it’s the whole constitution. Very obviously, it says nothing about elections, parliaments, etc etc.  But it’s not “the constitution”.  The actual Constitution Acts started some years after the Treaty:

===============

“The New Zealand Constitution Act 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 72) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that granted self-government to the Colony of New Zealand. It was the second such Act, the previous 1846 Act not having been fully implemented.[1] The purpose of the Act was to have constitutional independence from Britain.[2] The definition of franchise or the ability to vote excluded all women, most Māori, all non-British people and those with convictions for serious offences.[3]

The Act remained in force as part of New Zealand’s constitution until it was rendered redundant by the Constitution Act 1986.”

===============

It’s also weird to say, “The Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi, an 1840 agreement between the British crown and more than 500 Maori chiefs, resulted in New Zealand’s Indigenous population being violently dispossessed of their lands, leading to disadvantage and disempowerment that continue today.”  The 1840 Treaty explicitly said that (a) Maori should have the rights and privileges of British subjects, and (b) only the Crown could buy land from them. These were some of the provisions to protect Maori.  So, the sentence should have said “(some) of NZ’s indigenous population were violently dispossessed of their lands, despite the Treaty”.  Without the Treaty, the previous situation would have applied, which was random whalers and pirates and settlers making and breaking land deals outside of any governmental regulation.

Regarding the modern debate & the WashPo article:

– I think it would be true to say that David Seymour & supporters are motivated by (a) the idea that the meaning of the Treaty/”treaty priniciples” have become pretty much an exercise in free association, used to justify whatever the left wants at the moment; (b) in particular, two that were highly controversial were the last government’s attempt to split up important things by race — e.g., the national health service, the attempted “Three Waters” reform of water districts etc.; (c) Seymour’s also got an eye for building his own brand/notoriety and that of his ACT Party.  ACT is often called “far right” but as far as I can tell they are socially liberal libertarians.

ACT is also starting to pay attention to the education and university mess. The dominant National Party seems to mostly avoid these topics, although there have been some improvements, and the National-ACT-NZFirst coalition plans to introduce academic freedom legislation sometime soon.

– As for the response, the National Party views ACT’s treaty principles bill as a headache; but they were forced into it to put the coalition together.  They presumably will vote it down.  However, it’s created a massive opportunity for both ACT and Te Pati Maori (the Maori Party – by no means do all Maori vote for this party) to rile up their base and get attention. Te Pati Maori is beset by other scandals, though, and even the haka-in-parliament stunt had mixed reactions locally and abroad (I recall seeing it mocked on the Jimmy Kimmel show) – if I had to bet, I’d say the coalition will win the next election, but who knows?

– While politically, ACT’s treaty principles bill might work for them, I don’t see it as the best approach myself. I think what we desperately need in New Zealand is some textual originalism, interpreting the treaty on its own terms in the context of its time, and not trying to turn it into either:

(a) a mandate for anti-democratic moves like making every institution, governmental or not, having a 50-50 power share between Maori and non-Maori representatives (the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union (TEU) rammed this through in early 2023 in the waning months of the Labour government. Very few people spoke out about it (many left long before this, the majority of faculty are not in the TEU), some left the TEU afterwards, for spending $850/year to make a mockery of democratic values is not everyone’s cup of tea.)  or

(b) trying to turn the Treaty into a full mandate for the modern system, which is what Seymour is trying to do, also seems non-textual.  One thing the National Party gets right is their basic claim that democracy is self-justifying, and that sovereignty resides with the people in a democratic system; and it’s been that way for 100+ years.  The Treaty wasn’t a full constitution, and we shouldn’t try to pretend it was; and we don’t need it to be.

I think everyone on both sides should study the example of the Australian referendum on an “Indigenous Voice” for the Australian Parliament in late 2023. This initially had some support of both left and right, but when the actual proposal came out, everything fell apart, and it was voted down strongly—and probably fatally wounded the current Labour government. Part of the problem was that the proposal was supposed to be a major Constitutional change, but no exact statutory language was being voted on, and what was proposed was quite vague, with uncertain implications on how it would function and how much power it would have.

It is possible that New Zealand’s recent experience with “mission creep” and “language creep” was influential for some — e.g., many have the perception that in NZ, the modern Treaty discussion started with recognising its historical importance and creating the Waitangi Tribunal to address specific historical grievances between an iwi (tribe) and the Crown (the government), but in recent years many have tried to take it all the way to the requirement of mandatory co-governance of all government and nongovernment institutions and activities, including secondary schools, universities and including all subjects — with any opposition to any of this declared to be far-rightist racism. What activists mean by co-governance varies, but it’s pretty clear that what the activists really want is institutional power assigned by race, often 50/50 Maori vs. non-Maori, and they don’t merely mean “everyone gets to participate in governance, because this is a democracy and we can all vote and run for office, regardless of race”, which of course New Zealand has had for a long time.)

[News story from Australia: Why the Voice failed, October 16, Australian Broadcasting Corporation]

ADDENDUM FROM CORRESPONDENT:

If I could make a few clarifications on the material before the anonymous post:

1. I would be careful about referring to “the Māori”, especially about “their” political views. Like everyone else, there is considerable political (and religious etc) diversity among Māori. While you can say they are broadly supportive of the Treaty of Waitangi (there is a annual national holiday about it, after all), for any specific debate about what it means for particular questions like co-governance, science education, etc, there would be lots of diversity. Te Pati Māori (the Māori Party) currently represents the Maori activist position, but it doesn’t get a majority of even Maori votes, and there are ongoing scandals about misuse of census data to bring TPM voters to the polls during the last election, so it may be yet another episode where TPM gets a few seats one election, and loses them the next.

(Notably there is diversity between iwi/tribes as well as between individuals. After awhile in NZ you detect that some iwi had good relationships with the Crown at various historical points, others had wars with each other and with the Crown, some have longstanding grievances, others don’t, or did but have had their grievances resolved with Treaty Resolution agreements put together by the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal, endorsed by an iwi, and approved by Parliament.)

2. One way of showing the political diversity among Maori is to note that the current Centre-Right government is made of 3 parties: the National Party (headed by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon), the ACT Party (headed by David Seymour), and New Zealand First Party (headed by Winston Peters). Both David Seymour and Winston Peters are…Maori! Winston Peters, I believe, even once headed Te Pati Maori back in the 1970s and won a number of seats that way for some years.

3. The phrases about “changing the Treaty” are incorrect. There is no attempt to literally re-write the Treaty, and no mechanism for doing so. The Treaty is a historical document. It is rather like the US Declaration of Independence, or the Magna Carta. These documents provide inspiration and context, but they are not themselves law, except insofar as codified by laws passed by the legislature.

This is confusing because Americans think of “treaties” as detailed legal agreements with other countries, which are passed by 2/3 of the Senate and then become binding statutory domestic law. This sort of framework did not exist in New Zealand in 1840. It is nevertheless important of course, and the things specifically agreed in 1840 would probably be considered binding by modern courts, e.g. if, in modern times, the government tried to confiscate Maori land, a court would presumably rule it illegal and cite the Treaty (that this was often not the case for much of New Zealand’s history is a legitimate grievance, which the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal is supposed to help eventually resolve). However, detailed modern policy proposals, like splitting the National Health Service along racial lines (or even trying to effect some similar carving-up of intellectual space, e.g. in science education) goes far beyond anything one could call a legal mandate of the Treaty.

So the debate is really about the interpretation of the Treaty, in which language (English or te rep Maori) and what that says about what government laws and policies should be. The 2017-2023 Labour government accepted and pushed hard a postmodern, activist interpretation of all of these questions. Despite this, in 2023, Labour lost a number of crucial seats to Te Pati Maori anyway, and are in the minority. The new government is doing some retrenchment.

It’s Sunday, ergo we have a new selection of North American butterfly photos from John Avise. John’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. It’s his 250th contribution!

Butterflies in North America, Part 13 

This week is a landmark of sorts: It marks the 250th Sunday that PCC(E) has posted my photos (of birds and butterflies) on WEIT!  Today we continue my 18-part series on butterflies that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m still drawing from my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.

Pacific Orangetip (Anthocharis sara) male upperwing:

Pacific Orangetip, male underwing:

Pacific Orangetip, female:

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), upperwing:

Painted Lady, underwing:

Pale Swallowtail (Papilio eurymedon), upperwing:

Pale Swallowtail, underwing:

Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos),upperwing:

Pearl Crescent, underwing:

Phaon Crescent (Phyciodes phaon), upperwing:

Phaon Crescent, underwing:

Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor), upperwing:

Pipevine Swallowtail, chrysalis:

Will new studies cause large numbers of anti-vaxxers to say "Wow. It turns our vaccines don't cause autism after all. I've been wrong the whole time."?

The post Dr. Edward Livingston On Vaccines & Autism: “Because of Public Skepticism, it is Not Settled Science” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

For some reason Bill Maher’s latest comedy/news video, “New Rules: Guilt by Civilization”, is age-restricted (it must be the photo of Bianca Censori in her see-through outfit) , but you can see it by clicking either here or on the “Watch on YouTube” line below.

The beginning is great, as Maher claims that the Democrats won’t win elections unless they stop doing land acknowledgments, which. as he shows, was made by , by Julianne Hough in a cringeworthy announcement that kicked off the Oscars this year (I had no idea!) He says, and I agree, “Either give the land back, or shut the fuck up.” He adds, with tongue in cheek, “If you want to thank a tribe for Hollywood, start with the Jews.”

Maher then moves on to New Zealand’s wokeness, noting the recent recognition of a mountain sacred to the Māori as a person having all the rights of a human.  He takes down “the authority of the sacred victim” by simply asking, “Can we please get over this idea that ancient people weren’t just as full of shit—in fact, more full of shit—than humans today? It’s so simplistic—this idea of ‘guilt by civilization’—that the ancient and indigenous and not us was always better than us. It wasn’t.” He highlights some of the problems with ancient Māori civilization in a way that’s not going to go down well in New Zealand.

Maher points out all the advantages of modern, “civilized” life, like anesthetics, refrigeration, medicine, etc. and disses the “but-they-lived-in-harmony-with nature” trope.  He admits that what the European invaders did to the Indians was “not good”, but also “not unusual” since Native American tribes were not only constantly warring with each other, but often enslaving each other.

His final touting of fairly steady progress since ancient times—progress both technological and moral—could have been taken from the pages of Steve Pinker’s books The Better Angels of our Nature or Enlightenment Now.  Those books have received a lot of criticism, but it’s hard to deny the data they adduce. And if you want to reject their thesis of centuries long improvement in moral and bodily well-being—the same as Maher’s thesis here—ask yourself this: “Would you rather have lived your life in the 14th century–or now?” If you answer “now,” then you’d probably have already been dead years ago.

Here’s a question that cat owners probably ask themselves. Certainly some cats go nuts when they see themselves in the mirror, but they could be thinking it’s just another cat and not their own reflection?  Here, according to petMD, is how SCIENCE addresses the question. click to read:

The test scientists use for self-recognition is the famous “mirror test“, which has been criticized because it depends on a critical use of animal vision, and not all species are very visual. They have, for example, used odor in animals like dogs (e.g., do they recognize their own odor?) From the article:

Understanding that you are the person staring back at you in the mirror may seem obvious, but it’s a feat of mental gymnastics that you probably didn’t develop until you were 18 to 24 months old. Scientists have used the mirror-self recognition test (also called the MSR or mark test) to assess self-awareness in humans and animals for decades.

How the test is run varies slightly from study to study, but MSR tests work by exposing animals to mirrors. Once the animal is used to the mirrors’ presence, the researcher places a marker, like a sticker or a patch of dye, on a part of the animal’s body they can’t readily see (their face or neck, for example).

If the animal investigates the visible mark on their body while looking at themselves in the mirror, they are said to pass the MSR test. In other words, they saw something unusual on their body when they looked in the mirror and reacted in a way that showed understanding that their reflection was their own image.

Some animals, such as great apes, elephants, dolphins, and magpies, have passed the MSR test, but many others haven’t. While there haven’t been any rigorous mark tests involving cats, one recent study made use of YouTube videos and concluded that cats can’t recognize themselves in the mirror.

But what about moggies?

Understanding that you are the person staring back at you in the mirror may seem obvious, but it’s a feat of mental gymnastics that you probably didn’t develop until you were 18 to 24 months old. Scientists have used the mirror-self recognition test (also called the MSR or mark test) to assess self-awareness in humans and animals for decades.

How the test is run varies slightly from study to study, but MSR tests work by exposing animals to mirrors. Once the animal is used to the mirrors’ presence, the researcher places a marker, like a sticker or a patch of dye, on a part of the animal’s body they can’t readily see (their face or neck, for example).

If the animal investigates the visible mark on their body while looking at themselves in the mirror, they are said to pass the MSR test. In other words, they saw something unusual on their body when they looked in the mirror and reacted in a way that showed understanding that their reflection was their own image.

Some animals, such as great apes, elephants, dolphins, and magpies, have passed the MSR test, but many others haven’t. While there haven’t been any rigorous mark tests involving cats, one recent study made use of YouTube videos and concluded that cats can’t recognize themselves in the mirror.

If you look at the paper, the answer is clearly “we have no idea,” for they don’t even used the “mark test” on cats. Clearly there is an important question here begging for an answer, and that answer is not that hard to get, even if the test produces false negatives (e.g. when animal does recognize itself but the mark test fails). Cats are visual animals, though, so someone should slap some red sticky dots on cats’ heads and see what happens. The article even tells you how to do it at home!

The best thing about the MSR test is you can easily try it at home with your own cat. Here’s how:

• Place a large mirror on the floor where your cat likes to spend a lot of time.

• Let your cat get used to the mirror for at least a few days.

• Cut out two small squares of clear tape. Leave one clear and color the other so it will clearly stand out when placed on your cat’s fur.

• When you’re ready to perform the test, place the colored piece of tape on the bottom of your cat’s neck and the clear one nearby.

• Put your cat in front of the mirror and watch how they react.

• Cats who look at themselves in the mirror and quickly try to remove the colored piece of tape might be demonstrating self-awareness!

I’m not sure what the clear tape is for, though.

There are videos of cats seeing themselves in the mirror, but they say little about self-recognition:

When you watch videos of cats seeing themselves in the mirror, it’s obvious they know that something important is going on. The cats’ body language falls into two categories:

• Aggressive: The arched back, erect hair, and puffy tail flicking back and forth are all signs of agitation and aggression in cats. Often, cats show signs of aggression because they are scared and feel like they need to defend themselves.

• Curious: Some cats don’t appear agitated but are simply curious. Their eyes are open wide, and their ears are pricked forward.

You can see both aggression and curiosity in the linked video, which I’ve put below:

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

From that ever-informative magazine Newsweek, we learn that people are starting to dunk their faces into bowls of ice water or ice cubes, convinced that this will improve their skin. (I have no idea if there’s any data to support this, though the magazine found one doctor who said, “By constricting blood vessels, cold exposure reduces inflammation and redness, alleviating puffiness and restoring a refreshed look. Cold exposure is particularly helpful for those who have irritable skin through the constriction of blood vessels, alleviating swelling and flushes.”)

At any rate, a helpful cat helped its staff get through this painful procedure. Click on headline to read.

An excerpt:

For many, achieving flawless skin doesn’t happen overnight and often requires effort—whether through skincare products, facials, or even dunking your face in a bowl of ice-cold water, as this woman demonstrates.

Ice-cold therapy for facial skin can reduce puffiness and inflammation, and tighten pores; however, putting your face in the freezing water is the hard part. So, it’s no wonder Makayla Raezz (@makayla.raezz) is reluctant during her TikTok video, which has an astounding 17.7 million views.

Fortunately, she has a supportive kitten called Calypso who seems determined to help Raezz reap the benefits. She stands on her hind legs, places her front paws on her owner’s head, and simply pushes her face into the water.

The feline is referred to as her owner’s “personal cheerleader,” but not all TikTok users agree. Many were left wondering if the cat’s actions were playful or something more sinister. The debate in the comments continues to grow, with some users calling it “supportive” while others remain suspicious of the cat’s motives.

So far, the video has 2.8 million likes and over 7,000 comments, with many viewers assuming the worst.

“I think your cat want[s] you dead,” said one user, while others have written in the first person what they believe the cat would say if she could talk.

“Shhh shhh don’t fight it,” said one comment with over half a million likes, and another wrote: “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

“Shhhhh just go into the light, girl!” said a third commenter and a fourth wrote: “Nah she was tryna take you out right there sis,” gathering over 20,000 likes.

Nonetheless, whatever the cat’s intentions were, her owner seemed happy that she helped her brace the cold. She even smirks at her kitten’s efforts, amused by the unexpected push. After all, it is beneficial.

Here’s the video under debate:

@makayla.raezz

#iceyface

♬ original sound – ;༊

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

The movie “Flow,” an animated film featuring a cat and some other creatures, like a capybara and a lemur, encountering a worldwide flood apocalypse, is superb, and I’ve been touting it for a while. Well, it just won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature Film, and you should see it. Below is a video of the award, and notice the black cat to the left during the award and in the picture below. Note also that one awardee says that “we’re all in the same boat,” indicating one theme of the movie, which features no words or humans—only animal noises. The movie was made by a group that included Latvians, French, and Belgians.

Oh, here’s the trailer again:

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

Lagniappe: A statue memorializing a famous cat lady who lived on the Canary Islands of Spain:

h/t: Ginger K.

Today we have some front- and backyard photos of flowers taken by Rik Gern of Austin Texas. Rik’s notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are two more examples of plants from the front and back yard. They are both species of  ground cover, and are common in Central Texas.

I sent you some pictures of Lawnflower, aka Straggler Daisy (Calyptocarpus vialis)  a few years ago, but a new camera inspired new pictures. Lawnflower has antibacterial properties, grows just about anywhere, is comfortable underfoot, and mows easily. What’s not to like?

The next small plant is Common Chickweed (Stellaria media).The flower is so small that it’s easy to miss. Unlike Lawnflower, Common Chickweed is an introduced species. It is allegedly edible and has been used to treat conditions such as itchy skin.

Neither species is unusual, exotic, or eye catching, but both are examples of the common beauty that surrounds us if we open our eyes to it.

Let’s face it: Space is a hostile environment for humans. Even on Mars, settlers might have a hard time coping with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity. In “Mickey 17” — a new sci-fi movie from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with “Parasite” — an expendable space traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed over and over again to deadly risks. And every time he’s killed, the lab’s 3D printer just churns out another copy of Mickey.

Researchers and other advocates for science gathered at Stand Up for Science rallies around the US and the world to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to scientific research

Widespread firings at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could affect everything from tornado alerts to weather forecasts on your phone

When they weave their webs, spiders pull their silk threads. New simulations show stretching during spinning causes the protein chains within the fibers to align and the number of hydrogen bonds between those chains to increase. Both factors increase the silk fibers' overall strength and toughness. Insights could be applied to designing stronger, tougher synthetic materials.

Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy could raise the risk of a rare form of vision loss, but we are still trying to unpick why

A researcher succeeded developing highly accurate biometric authentication based on images of the palms of hands taken with a hyperspectral camera.

Soaking up pollutants like a sponge, porous organic polymers (POPs) may be the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to researchers.

Until now, artificial gels have either managed to replicate high stiffness or natural skin's self-healing properties, but not both. Now, a team of researchers has developed a hydrogel with a unique structure that overcomes earlier limitations, opening the door to applications such as drug delivery, wound healing, soft robotics sensors and artificial skin.

Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (also known as bird flu) have created a need for rapid and sensitive detection methods to mitigate its spread. Now, researchers have developed a prototype sensor that detects a type of influenza virus that causes bird flu (H5N1) in air samples. The low-cost handheld sensor detects the virus at levels below an infectious dose and could lead to rapid aerosol testing for airborne avian influenza.

A recent study has found that short animations known as GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format) can improve the sleep of professional female footballers.

Producing high-performance titanium alloy parts -- whether for spacecraft, submarines or medical devices -- has long been a slow, resource-intensive process. Even with advanced metal 3D-printing techniques, finding the right manufacturing conditions has required extensive testing and fine-tuning. What if these parts could be built more quickly, stronger and with near-perfect precision? A team is leveraging artificial intelligence to make that a reality. They've identified processing techniques that improve both the speed of production and the strength of these advanced materials -- an advance with implications from the deep sea to outer space.

Producing high-performance titanium alloy parts -- whether for spacecraft, submarines or medical devices -- has long been a slow, resource-intensive process. Even with advanced metal 3D-printing techniques, finding the right manufacturing conditions has required extensive testing and fine-tuning. What if these parts could be built more quickly, stronger and with near-perfect precision? A team is leveraging artificial intelligence to make that a reality. They've identified processing techniques that improve both the speed of production and the strength of these advanced materials -- an advance with implications from the deep sea to outer space.

You wouldn’t think that this difference would need to be discussed once again, but yes it does, because distinguishing between the two is one of the missions of new University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, founded with a $100 million (!) gift of an anonymous donor.  This forum hit the ground running, with a number of special events and discussions on free expression, usually related to how it works and should work on college campuses. Its first director, Tom Ginsburg, who teaches International Law and Political Science here, has buttressed his mission by publishing several articles in the most widely-read forum for higher academia, The Chronicle of Higher Education.  

Ginsburg’s piece below, which you can access by clicking on the link, explains why scholarship and not political advocacy is what we want in University classrooms. Moreover, departments and units of the University should not be engaged in making “official” political pronouncements that chill speech (that is a violation of our Kalven Report, now endorsed by 30 universities besides ours.

I’ll give a few quotes below, which echo in more eloquent language positions I’ve held and advanced on this website. I’ve put the quotes under my own bold headings, but words from Ginsburg’s essay are indented:

Why you can’t just teach anything in the classroom (i.e., no complete “free speech” in class):

Academic freedom is centrally dependent on claims of professional expertise. Within a field, academics have freedom of teaching and research. (In the United States, at least, academics are also allowed broad extramural speech.) But academics can be punished for failure to observe disciplinary standards.\

In my own case, I cannot go into my constitutional-law course and instead teach the laws of physics or advertise the latest brand of detergent; the reason this is true is that no legal academic would in good faith recognize those speech acts as within the domain of constitutional law. While I cannot be fired for the way I teach constitutional law, I can be punished for failing to do the job for which I was hired.

This is why you can’t teach creationism (judged by the courts as “not science”) in a science class, even of the Discovery Institute would have it otherwise.  The line between teaching and advocacy, however, can be thin—especially so when you’re teaching politics. It’s all too easy when teaching about the history of the Middle East, for example, to distort what happened to favor the message you want to impart (and of course history has divergent interpretations).

Why “studies’ courses are particularly susceptible to advocacy. (Ginsburg largely exempts black studies, which seems to have reached academic maturity). Not many science courses in college include ideological advocacy; this is found more often in secondary schools.

American society, however, began to doubt such claims of neutrality with the crisis of the 1960s. Many of the academic disciplines created in that period were born under a political star and rejected claims of technocratic neutrality in favor of promoting perspectives that had theretofore been excluded. It is hardly surprising they saw their mission as integrating scholarship with a particular set of definitions of social change.

Unfortunately, these fields also became active agents of social construction and political mobilization, sometimes on an ethnic basis. Scholarly associations of these new interdisciplinary fields do not hide these goals. The Chicana- and Chicano-studies association begins its mission statement by saying it will “advance the interest and needs of the Chicana and Chicano community.” The Association for Asian American Studies mission statement includes as an objective “advocating and representing the interests and welfare of Asian American studies and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

Presumably scholars in these fields are evaluated not only by their scholarship but by their advocacy of particular interest groups. We can understand why histories of exclusion encouraged scholars to blur the lines between scholarship and advocacy, but doing so draws on the social capital of the scholarly enterprise for unabashedly political purposes. (Interestingly, Black studies may have done a better job of transforming into a stable scholarly interdiscipline.)

Among older disciplines, anthropology has led the way in insisting that cultural advocacy must be at the heart of scholarship. In a 1999 statement on human rights, the American Anthropological Association pronounced that it had “an ethical duty to protest” when any culture or society denies the right of people and peoples to the “full realization of their humanity.” But in 2020, it refined this commitment to include a cultural relativism, stating that “no one jurisdiction ought to impose its own interpretation of how to recognize and protect these rights on any other jurisdiction.” Reflecting on its own tainted history, the AAA leadership went on to demand “forms of research and engagement that contribute to decolonization and help redress histories of oppression and exploitation.”

When one’s scholarship is designed to include advocacy — what Tarunabh Khaitan has called “scholactivism” — risks are obvious. Advocates may reject or downplay inconvenient results, distorting academic debates. More deeply, they violate the “role morality” — the notion that some roles entail specific ethical commitments — of scholarship, which is the very basis for the social tolerance of academic freedom in the first place. While of course there is always a deep politics of scholarship, for example in the selection of topics for inquiry or methods for approaching them, these biases ought to be examined and minimized in genuine inquiry, not celebrated. This requires a humility about the limits of one’s own perspective.

Academic boycotts. The American Association of University Professors recently removed its opposition to boycotts, clearly so that scholars could boycott Israel. That was a cowardly and heinous move, which impedes academic freedom. Ginsburg says this:

The horrors of the Gaza war have provided a litmus test for whether disciplines are committed to genuine inquiry or instead to “scholactivism.” Several associations have debated or passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire. With the tacit support of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), several scholarly associations have signed on to a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. These include the Association for Asian American Studies, the African Literature Association, the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.

While the promoters of the boycott emphasize that it is not to be directed at individual scholars, it has in fact led to hundreds if not thousands of individual-level cancellations of scholarly engagements and collaborations. Such a collective boycott arguably undermines the academic freedom of scholars at both targeted and targeting institutions, who should be free to collaborate with whom they choose. Advocates of academic freedom should oppose this kind of boycott vigorously.

Institutional neutrality. The last part of the essay promotes the kind of institutional neutrality first adopted by the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report in 1967, and now held by about 30 schools. It is an essential part of Chicago’s promotion of free speech, because if a department or center

. . .We should, for example, call into question the general practice of scholarly associations making pronouncements by majority rule. The internal progress of science depends on tolerating dissidents and does not proceed by majority rule. Why should things be different when the discipline is speaking as a whole? A small step of self-correction would be to use collective statements only in extreme circumstances, perhaps only with super-majoritarian rather than majoritarian mechanisms.

. . . . In a prescient observation in 2001, Clark Kerr noted that there was a conflict between the traditional view of the university that flowed from the enlightenment, embodied in a vision of seeking truth and objectivity, and a postmodern vision in which all discourse is political, with university resources to be deployed in ways that were liberatory and not repressive. He thought the conflict might further deepen, and noted that “any further politicization of the university will, of course, alienate much of the public at large.”

As we stand at a moment of deep alienation, stepping back from the further politicization of scholarship is an existential step.

This essay originally appeared in Inquisitive.

The postmodern view is wrong, and it’s clearly opposed by Ginsburg. The Chicago Forum is clearly defending the Chicago Principles of Free Speech, but is also a forum for discussing and tweaking those principles. When, for example, do demonstrations on campus abrogate freedom of speech? When does teaching lapse into advocacy? We have continuing discussions about issues like this, and the Forum is also supports a unit on freedom of expression given to first-year students before they start classes.  Actually, our faculty need it as much as do the students!

Spending more time at school could keep you sharp into old age, but there are other factors that might explain the effect