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Anthropology Brings Back Bestiaries

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  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 ā€œLetā€™s Talk about Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology,ā€ 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 ā€œ settled science ā€ in anthropology: the contention that evidence from orangutans demonstrates that the great apes, humans included, are not sexually dimorphic species. In a joint  lette...

Everything you hate about climate change virtue signaling in the most absurd story you'll read this year

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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. Youā€™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 ā€œLiving Small.ā€ No, Living Small isnā€™t about the joys and trials of being height-challenged. Itā€™s ā€œa biweekly column exploring what it takes to lead a simpler, more sustainable or more compact life.ā€ Seems the Times defines ā€œsustainableā€ somewhat broadly, though. Thus todayā€™s   Living Small : Their Cape Cod Home Isnā€™t Small, but Its Carbon Footprint Is ā€” 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...