Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is one of the most prominent scientific organizations in the world with associations to such luminaries as Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Despite that proud history, British scientists are pushing to politicize the society and expel Elon Musk because they disagree with his political views. It is not […]
The inevitable happened this morning: Hamas turned over four dead bodies of Israeli hostages, encased in black boxes. And, contrary to my expectations, there was a ceremony, with posters blaming the deaths on Netanyahu and the Red Cross there signing documents. The bodies included the Bibas family (Shiri Bibas and her two children. four-year-old Ariel […]
There will be a few posts on the definition of sex today, as everything “dropped”—as the kids say—at the same time. First, on January 20, the Trump administration issued an executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”—an attempt to efface gender ideology from the government and […]
The Herald reports: Daman Kumar – the 18-year-old threatened with deportation to India despite living in New Zealand all his life – has been offered residency. Green Party immigration spokesman Ricardo Menéndez March told the Herald he was informed of the development by Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk’s office this afternoon. Menéndez March wrote to the minister last week, […]
I had not known of this passage, which I am packaging with its introduction from Gavan Tredoux: John Maynard Keynes has the undeserved reputation of a critic of the USSR. Few know that he reviewed Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s mendacious tome The Soviet Union: a New Civilization (1935/1937/1943) fawningly. Perhaps the most embarrassing thing Keynes […]
Like many who do business in California, I often complain about the regulatory burden (free at last!) People will ask, “So what one regulation would you get rid of?” The problem is that this is a really hard question to answer because in most cases it is not any one regulation in particular, but the…
TweetHere’s a letter to the New York Times. Editor: Encountering, in David Leonhardt’s report, a summary of Peter Navarro’s attempted justifications of Trump’s tariffs makes the head spin (“A Disagreement on Tariffs,” February 18). Navarro’s arguments are so illogical, self-contradictory, and economically ignorant that they’d be merely laughable were he not an advisor to the…
The central thesis of my The Case Against Education is that actually-existing education is a terrible waste of taxpayer money. Since signaling, not building human capital, is the main function of education, the main effect of government subsidies is credential inflation. In economic jargon, my claim is that education has a low (indeed, negative) social…
Six days ago I posted a group letter to the Presidents of three ecology/evolution/systematics societies who had issued a joint statement that many of us found deeply misguided. As I wrote at the time: The Presidents of three organismal-biology societies, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and […]
After a few days of ‘rest’ (by which I really mean some intensely long work days), I’m going to pick up again on my recent series of posts about the minimum wage (see here for the most recent post), but returning to more familiar ground – the disemployment effects of the minimum wage. The story…
Understanding the Differences Between Terrorism and Guerrilla Warfare or ‘Freedom Fighting’ The terms terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and freedom fighting are often used interchangeably in popular discourse, yet they embody distinct concepts with unique characteristics and implications. This essay explores the differences between these three terms, focusing on their methodologies, objectives, and the ethical considerations that […]
Below is my column in the Hill on the historic defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich last week. Where John F. Kennedy went to Berlin to declare “Ich bin ein Berliner,” Vance in Munich to declare a type of “Ich bin ein Amerikanisch.” He spoke of free speech as an […]
Take this for what you will, since my first view came from the New York Post. However, the Post reported a piece by the science editor of the Telegraph, a more respectable paper. Both sites are below; click on the headlines to go to the articles. NY Post: Telegraph: An excerpt from the Telegraph: The difference […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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