The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Anthropology Brings Back Bestiaries For gender activists, clownfish and orangutans operate as just-so stories guaranteeing proper moral orientation rather than empirical challenges to evidence-based accounts. KATHLEEN LOWREY In September, several colleagues and I were pre-emptively  booted  from the 2023 joint meetings of the American Anthropological Association and Canadian Anthropology Society in Toronto. Our panel, titled “Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology,” was scheduled for Sunday, November 20. I have already  detailed  this regrettable situation elsewhere, so I won't repeat it here. Instead, I want to focus on a specific point about why our panel was said to fly in the face of the “ settled science ” in anthropology: the contention that evidence from orangutans demonstrates that the great apes, humans included, are not sexually dimorphic species. In a joint  lette...

The New York Times somehow casts a Massachusetts couple who spent $7 million on building an oceanfront (second) home as environmental activists. Can't make it up. You’re gonna want to read this one on an empty stomach. Twenty-six times a year, The New York Times shows its commitment to the environment by offering readers “Living Small.” No, Living Small isn’t about the joys and trials of being height-challenged. It’s “a biweekly column exploring what it takes to lead a simpler, more sustainable or more compact life.” Seems the Times defines “sustainable” somewhat broadly, though. Thus today’s   Living Small : Their Cape Cod Home Isn’t Small, but Its Carbon Footprint Is — When I saw that headline, I paused to pull on my Tyvek suit before clicking through. I knew the unintentional irony and hypocrisy were about to get thick. But I had no idea how thick. In 2019, Michael and Jennifer Monteiro dropped $2.6 million on an oceanfront vacation house in Harwich, Massachusetts. Good for them...