Missouri Fossils from the Ordovician Period

I'm so glad I joined a Missouri fossil hunting group! A few weeks ago, we took a field trip to a highway crosscut near House Springs, Missouri, where we found lots of fossils from the Ordovician Period (400-450 million years ago). Finding real fossils really brings home our humble place in the much much larger scheme of things. On these photos, you'll see lots of brachiopods (they look like sea shells), crinoids (they look like plant stalks, but they were animals), bryozoans & coral.

These animals existed twice as long ago as the earliest dinosaurs. Back then, Missouri was almost entirely covered by ocean. These fossil creatures lived LONG before the existence of Pangea, the time (200-300 MYA) when the continent we now know as North America was contiguous with Africa, South America, and Europe all existed as a single continent. During the Ordivician, most of the world's land was collected in the southern hemisphere as a supercontinent scientists now refer to as Gondwana. Most creatures from this era were not fossilized, but occasionally they were suddenly covered by a mud slide under the ocean, preserving the fossils. In selected highway crosscuts, these fossils can be found.

Hint: click on the photos and then enlarge them to see a lot more detail.

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Andrew Sullivan’s Prescription for Curing our Bad Case of DEI

We've got an enormous problem with DEI. It goes completely against what all of us seek when we need the best surgeon to operate on us, the best engineer to design a new bridge or the best pilot to safely fly us home. Even though we all know this, many of us have been afraid to say this lately. It is entirely rational and humane to seek out the best qualified people to fill jobs. Full stop. Although it is often a challenge to decide who is the best qualified person for the job, there is no close competitor to basing our decisions on merit.

Andrew Sullivan succinctly articulated the way forward:

End DEI in its entirety. Fire all the administrators whose only job is to enforce its toxic orthodoxy. Admit students on academic merit alone. Save standardized testing — which in fact helps minorities, and it’s “the best way to distinguish smart poor kids from stupid rich kids,” as Steven Pinker said this week. Restore grading so that it actually means something again. Expel students who shut or shout down speech or deplatform speakers. Pay no attention to the race or sex or orientation or gender identity of your students, and see them as free human beings with open minds. Treat them equally as individuals seeking to learn, if you can remember such a concept.

I've promoted this idea throughout the Great Awokening, hearing mostly crickets or criticism from intelligent people. Countless people I know have been sitting on their hands--refusing to say what they really think. They worry, often justifiably, that saying out loud what they really think will cost them their jobs and/or their reputations.

Speaking out in favor of merit as the only basis for hiring isn't just a platitude or an emotion. Consider, finally, this excellent article setting for the many reasons for hiring solely on the basis of merit: "In Defense of Merit in Science." Here is the abstract:

Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy. The scientific enterprise, built on merit, has proven effective in generating scientific and technological advances, reducing suffering, narrowing social gaps, and improving the quality of life globally. This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with non­scientific, politically motivated criteria. We explain the philosophical origins of this conflict, document the intrusion of ideology into our scientific institutions, discuss the perils of abandoning merit, and offer an alternative, human­centered approach to address existing social inequalities.

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The Fall of Scientific American

From Spiked:

When you come across the longstanding magazine, Scientific American, you could be forgiven for assuming that scientific truth would play a pivotal role in its output.

But not any more, it seems. Scientific American, founded in 1845, is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. It has previously featured work by Albert Einstein, among others. However, in recent years, it appears to have been taken over by contributors who consider themselves activists first and scientists second. The magazine’s ethos now includes the express aim of ‘sharing trustworthy knowledge, enhancing our understanding of the world, and advancing social justice’ (my emphasis). It has also started to intervene in electoral politics, too. In 2020, Scientific American broke with a 175-year history of non-partisanship to endorse Joe Biden in the US presidential election.

Worst of all, when its articles touch on questions of gender and biological sex, Scientific American seems to have abandoned objective facts entirely, in favour of trans-activist pseudoscience.

Steven Pinker agrees:

As Jonathan Haidt warned, universities (and here, science magazines) can only have one telos. To do otherwise gives rise to a conflict of interest that corrupts the main mission.

If one wants to know what sex is or how many sexes there are, just ask a real life trained biologist, such as my friend Luana Maroja, who has no conflict of interest. She takes pride in being a real-life legitimate biology professor who know that there are two (and only two) human sexes because there are two (and only two) types of human gametes:

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Conference Panel Discussion on Importance of Biological Sex Cancelled Because of Harm it Would Cause to LBGTQI

From Elizabeth Weiss, Anthropology Professor:

September 25, 2023, my fellow panelists and I received a letter from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) informing us that our conference panel, “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”, which had been accepted, is being removed from the program due to the “harm” it will cause the “Trans and LGBTQI community”. We’ve responded to their accusation.

Here is the excuse for the cancellation for the organizers:

Dear panelists, We write to inform you that at the request of numerous members the respective executive boards of AAA and CASCA reviewed the panel submission “Let's Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology” and reached a decision to remove the session from the AAA/CASCA 2023 conference program(me). This decision was based on extensive consultation and was reached in the spirit of respect for our values, the safety and dignity of our members, and the scientific integrity of the program(me).

The reason the session deserved further scrutiny was that the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large. While there were those who disagree with this decision, we would hope they know their voice was heard and was very much a part of the conversation. It is our hope that we continue to work together so that we become stronger and more unified within each of our associations. Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion

Here is an excerpt from the response from the cancelled panelists.

Your suggestion that our panel would somehow compromise “…the scientific integrity of the programme” seems to us particularly egregious, as the decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign. Had our panel been allowed to go forward, we can assure you that lively contestation would have been welcomed by the panelists and may even have occurred between us, as our own political commitments are diverse. Instead, your letter expresses the alarming hope that the AAA and CASCA will become “more unified within each of our associations” to avoid future debates. Most disturbingly, following other organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, the AAA and CASCA have promised that “Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion.” Anthropologists around the world will quite rightly find chilling this declaration of war on dissent and on scholarly controversy. It is a profound betrayal of the AAA’s principle of “advancing human understanding and applying this understanding to the world’s most pressing problems”.

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Science Magazine Puts Partisan Hack Peter Hotez, MD on a Pedestal

I used to respect Science Magazine. For many years I subscribed to it. Regarding this current article, however, where are the RCT's? Where is the free flow of data regarding all-cause mortality between vaccinated and unvaccinated? Why is there an apparently coordinated effort by corporate media to censor the risks of myocarditis and other concerns, especially in children and young adults, who are almost at zero risk of hospitalization/death from COVID? (see here). Why tout Peter Hotez as an "expert" given that he has proven himself to be totally unreliable?

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