Initial Thoughts About the Netflix Movie: Hillbilly Elegy

Late last night I watched the movie "Hillbilly Elegy" on Netflix. I won't spoil the film, but I will say that it was often emotionally wrenching and it was not a good choice of a movie to watch right before trying to fall asleep. I suspect I'll be processing these scenes for weeks and months--the film offers a massive serving of food for thought and suggests a take-home message toward the end. The movie (by Ron Howard) is based on a memoir by J.D. Vance. Glenn Close was especially compelling every time she walked into a scene. Excellent acting throughout the film. So much so that it made me feel like I was actually there in person. I had originally learned of the Vance's Memoir (and this movie) while listening to Episode 32 of "The Portal," where Eric Weinstein interviews the real life J.D. Vance.

On FB, this comment was posted to my above intro:

I've hesitated to watch the movie because I've heard criticism that it reduces the lifestyles depicted to tropes. As someone with deep redneck roots, I am already greatly frustrated with the lack of understanding of my culture. This lack of care has led to alienation of millions of Americans with catastrophic results. Do you think the movie is too harshly criticized in this aspect?

In response this comment, I added this:

The movie is based on a memoir of a man who grew up in that environment. I watched it through that lens. It unveils many harsh truths, but also beautiful moments. I didn't watch it through a political lens--many people are on social media obsessing about whether the movie is politically or socially "appropriate." I have very little tolerance for the PC mobs. I simply watched it to see this man's story after hearing him on Eric Weinstein's podcast (which was also a worthy endeavor). I saw the harsh reviews, but ignored them. I make up my own mind on these things. Rather stunning that I often think a movie is absolutely terrible when it is highly rated and vice versa. It never occurred to me that he is pushing the viewpoint that everything he experienced should be extrapolated to every other person in Appalachia.

Continue ReadingInitial Thoughts About the Netflix Movie: Hillbilly Elegy

COVID Vaccine – Long pole #2, MDN

The best-case scenario is for a future ATZ vaccine. Another, let’s call it MDN, cannot warm above -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) between manufacturing plant and the syringe. This is usable in almost every part of every First World country, because most refrigerators’ freezers can handle that. So, we can transport it in cold storage, in a refrigerated truck or refrigerated shipping container from the manufacturing plant to the seaport or airport. The refrigeration unit requires power while on its way to the ship or plane, and continuous power on the vessel. None of this can be ordered from Amazon or Ebay.

Speed is important, as is security, as is continuous temperature regulation for MDN. Most pharmaceuticals are shipped via passenger airline flights, but their schedules are severely disrupted. Certainty will require cargo flights or ocean containers for intercontinental shipments. The old stand-by, dry ice, has limited use on aircraft because it is solid carbon dioxide. The solid sublimates directly to gas, which is dangerous to the crew. Individual insulated boxes will require continuous monitoring for temperature and leaks.

MDN is delicate, as it is principally RNA, which falls apart under little provocation. It also is an artificial thing that doesn’t self-replicate. It’s a set of instructions for the body to create a defense against some weakness in the virus, such as a protein spike. That’s a two-step process, because the instruction actually causes the body to create just the protein spike, necessary for the virus to enter a cell, but harmless without the rest of the virus attached. Step two is the body’s immune system recognizing the protein spike as a potential threat and creating specialized cells to block or destroy the spike.

In manufacturing MDN, it can’t be allowed to rise above -20C. The manufacturing has to be done under freezing conditions. The delicate RNA can’t be treated roughly or it falls apart. Think of threading a needle while doing jumping jacks, standing on a hammock in a snowstorm. We know how to do this, and will do it well. The vials have to be filled while still doing jumping jacks and packed into cases of 200 or 1,000 vials. The cases then cannot be opened to the atmosphere for more than one minute at a time, likely once a day.

As soon as the cases leave the manufacturing plant in a refrigerated truck or container, they are at the mercy of strong forces, such as curious export inspectors who just want to take a peek. Or thieves thinking they can steal vaccines that will still be worth something. Or traffic accidents, or malfunctioning cranes, or longshoremen on strike, and the possibilities are limited only by imagination.

[More . . . ]

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British High Court Rules in Favor of Keira Bell: Restricts Use of Puberty Blockers and Cross-Sex Hormones

I applaud this recent decision by the British High Court, reported by The Guardian:

Children under the age of 16 considering gender reassignment are unlikely to be mature enough to give informed consent to be prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, the high court has ruled.

Even in cases involving teenagers under 18 doctors may need to consult the courts for authorisation for medical intervention, three senior judges have ruled in an action brought against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs the UK’s main gender identity development service for children.

An NHS spokesperson welcomed the “clarity” the decision had brought, adding: “The Tavistock have immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under 16s, which in future will only be permitted where a court specifically authorises it. Dr Hilary Cass is conducting a wider review on the future of gender identity services.”

Now it's time to stop this mass child abuse on this side of the pond too, given that most girls move from "puberty blockers" to taking 10 to 40 times the natural female amount of testosterone, usually leading to infertility. How did it get to the point where the once-vocal anti-clitoridectomy crowd got so quiet when something comparable comes to our own communities? 12, 13, 14 and 15 year old girls have been allowed to make permanent "decisions" of this sort, without the need for any official medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Instead of getting real diagnoses, they are cheer-led into drugs, hormones and surgery through social media, peer pressure and even Planned Parenthood (which supplies testosterone to many of these girls. All of this under the guise of "civil rights." The "decisions" of these girls to use "puberty blockers" are being made without the benefit of long-term studies as to dangers, physical and psychological. It's about time we got real adults into this conversation. There is a LOT of buyer's remorse out there, but it's being suppressed by left-leaning news media (you can find hundreds of cases on Reddit/detransition), It makes me wonder when the lawsuits will start flying over here. [More . . . ]

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There Are Still Only Two Human Sexes

It baffles me that, in furtherance of Woke ideology, so many people are somehow willing to pretend that human animals come in more than two sexes. These pretensions are part of an "antiscientific trend toward the outright denial of biological sex." These arguments often take one of two forms: the argument from intersex conditions and the argument from secondary sex organs/characteristics. At Quillette, Colin Wright, who holds a PH.D. in evolutionary biology, explains that both of these arguments fail. His article is titled "JK Rowling Is Right—Sex Is Real and It Is Not a “Spectrum”:

[Both arguments involve] fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of biological sex, which is connected to the distinct type of gametes (sex cells) that an organism produces. As a broad concept, males are the sex that produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (ova). There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no spectrum of sex. Biological sex in humans is a binary system.

It is crucial to note, however, that the sex of individuals within a species isn’t based on whether an individual can actually produce certain gametes at any given moment. Pre-pubertal males don’t produce sperm, and some infertile adults of both sexes never produce gametes due to various infertility issues. Yet it would be incorrect to say that these individuals do not have a discernible sex, as an individual’s biological sex corresponds to one of two distinct types of evolved reproductive anatomy (i.e. ovaries or testes) that develop for the production of sperm or ova, regardless of their past, present, or future functionality. In humans, and transgender and so-called “non-binary” people are no exception, this reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time.

The binary distinction between ovaries and testes as the criterion determining an individual’s sex is not arbitrary, nor unique to humans. The evolutionary function of ovaries and testes is to produce either eggs or sperm, respectively, which must be combined for sexual reproduction to take place. If that didn’t happen, there would be no humans. While this knowledge may have been cutting edge science in the 1660s, it’s odd that we should suddenly treat it as controversial in 2020.

More recently, in an article titled "Sex Chromosome Variants Are Not Their Own Unique Sexes," Wright responded to a Tweet by a purported biologist named McClean, making an unusual claim.

McLean, who prominently lists five degrees after his name and claims to be a human evolutionary geneticist, took issue with that claim and forwarded a very common—and very wrong—portrayal of biological sex: that different sex chromosome compositions beyond the standard XX and XY each represent their own unique sex. In fact, Dr. McLean appears to suggest in his tweet that there may be as many as 10 biological sexes!

It especially concerned Wright that McClean's groundless claim was retweeted more than 4,000 times. There is apparently a hot market for bad biology.

First, Wright restates McClean's claim:

The argument that individuals with sex chromosomes that deviate from the typical (46, XX and 46, XY) arrangements, such as those with Klinefelter syndrome (47, XXY) or Turner syndrome (45, X0), is common and usually used to argue that there are 6 sexes, though other numbers are frequently thrown around as well.
The proper response to the above claim is, again, that the size of the gametes determine sex. Males produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (ova). Since some individuals do not actually produce gametes, we sometimes need to look to the sex organ rather than the gamete.  Once we do that, we can still see that there are only two sexes.  Wright explains:

But on an individual level (since not all individuals may be able to produce gametes) an organism’s sex corresponds to the type of primary sex organs (testes vs ovaries) and individual has developed. In mammals, which includes humans, the Y chromosome carries a gene (SRY) that encodes a testes-determining factor. If an individual has a Y chromosome with a functional SRY gene, they will develop testes and therefore will be biologically male. Absent a Y chromosome and functional SRY gene (unless the SRY gene has been transposed to an X chromosome), an embryo will develop ovaries and will therefore be biologically female. What’s important to note is that the presence of a Y chromosome, or two, or three, etc., all result in the development of testes and therefore these individuals are biologically male. Likewise, individuals with additional or fewer X chromosomes, in the absence of a Y, all develop ovaries and are therefore biologically female. With this in mind, the chart in the above tweet can more accurately be rewritten as:

X – Female XX – Female XXY – Male XY – Male XYY – Male XXXY – Male

Wright concludes that these atypical chromosomal patterns do not result in new sexes, "but rather represent natural variation within males and females."

Ergo, there are still only two sexes.  It's interesting to note that there does not seem to be any confusion about this when discussing any animal other than humans. In this way, the Woke position on "many sexes" reminds me of claims by religious fundamentalists that evolution by natural selection is straightforward until those upstart biologists start trying to apply natural selection to human animals.

I might be wrong, of course.  Therefore, I'll keep an eye out for ferocious arguments from Woke biologists that squirrels, hamsters and flowers come in six sexes (and unlimited numbers of genders).

Continue ReadingThere Are Still Only Two Human Sexes

A Detailed Case-Study in Theatrical Woke Defiance at Haverford College

In "Race and Social Panic at Haverford: A Case Study in Educational Dysfunction," Quillette's Jonathan Kay gives a detailed account of how Woke-permeated campus-wide insanity can be triggered by nothing in particular. Kay makes a strong case that Haverford College, a private and expensive far-left-leaning liberal arts institution, self-spiraled into moral panic in a way that brings to mind the meltdown of Evergreen State, a story told and experienced by evolutionary psychology professors Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying.  See also, Weinstein's discussion of Evergreen with his brother, Podcaster Eric Weinstein ("The Portal").

The self-annointed thought police are still working overtime at Haverford, where free-speech is merely a phrase and where tribal truths are the reality.  I could not imagine sending any student to Haverford if they wanted to learn how to think self-critically and be prepared to hold a job in the outside world.

Jonathan Kay's long article leaves a pit in my stomach and casts a pall over my evening as I write this comment. He needed to fill his article with an extraordinary amount of details in order to substantiate his extraordinary conclusions, including the following:  A) Nothing insensitive or racist occurred at Haverford College leading up to the current shrill unrest. B) Nothing that happened at Haverford justified the long ridiculous list of student demands (to which the administration mostly acceded).  C) Most chillingly, the administrators of Haverford (and many other colleges) lack the the necessary resources to have meaningful conversations with students or to take respectable negotiating positions during these Woke-fueled paroxysms.

A few excerpts from Jonathan Kay's excellent article:

[T]he mania that swept Haverford College in late October and early November 2020 lays bare, with unusual clarity, the fervid atmosphere of grievance and self-entitlement that has made the administration of elite colleges and universities so difficult.

Of all the Haverford community members I spoke with, the only one who asked to be quoted by name was recently graduated philosophy major Alex Gutierrez, who once summarized the mindset of campus activists in an essay about Jacques Lacan. “Modern activists have psyches that are built for the joy of transgression,” he observed. “They engage in activism so they can repeatedly experience that joy, a joy that is denied them in everyday life because everyday life is dominated by the ethics of pleasure… And so they need to invent fictional dominant orders so that they can defy them. This is why protesters would actually be extremely unhappy if oppression went away. They want white patriarchy to be as powerful as possible, so they can defy it.”

Gutierrez wrote these words before his alma mater fell into upheaval in late October. But his analysis seems apt. When students complained that Raymond had caused them “harm” with her October 28th email, they weren’t really speaking up as activists denouncing racism on campus (since there doesn’t seem to be much of it), but as consumers whose parents paid good money for them to experience the sensation of transgressive social-justice heroism. “Normally, the administrators are the perfect target for student transgression,” Gutierrez told me. “They take the abuse and they’re not supposed to push back. That’s part of their role. That’s what students expect.”

Continue ReadingA Detailed Case-Study in Theatrical Woke Defiance at Haverford College