Words of the Day 2025-07-07

“Endangerment Finding in danger?” [Arctic News]. “In the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed that the current and projected concentrations of six key well-mixed greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. Recently, President-elect Trump picked Lee Zeldin to lead the EPA and a Republican-controlled Senate subsequently confirmed Zeldin’s appointment. More recently, in an EPA news release, Zeldin said that President Trump’s Executive Order gave the EPA Administrator a deadline to submit recommendations on the legality and continuing applicability of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Having submitted these recommendations, the EPA can now announce its intent to reconsider the 2009 Endangerment Finding. The current situation should act as a wake up call. This is not merely a debate about interpretation of law or following a political ideology. This touches everyone and everybody should get involved in efforts to do the right thing. Dictatorship in itself is bad enough, but it’s even worse when it serves climate change denial. The danger of climate change is real and this reality can and must compel any government, whatever its ideological background, to look for and adopt policies that are in line with best available science.” • The issue here is that (at least) since Covid began, the “best available science” is contested, and justifiably so. For many hospital administrators and some epidemiologists, the best available science is droplet dogma. The ruling principle is well stated by Ulysses S, Grant: ” I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”

““Get Out of Here,” Yells French Mayor as Royal Caribbean Ignores Port Ban” [Maritime Execture]. “The outspoken Mayor of Nice and President of the region took to the water to personally confront the master and an officer of Royal Caribbean International’s Voyager of the Seas for breaking the region’s new ban on large cruise ships. Aboard a police boat with a television news crew, Mayor Christian Estrosi was denied boarding and ignored by the officers, prompting him to yell ‘Get lost,’ ‘Get out of here,’ and ‘You are nobody,’ at the ship. Royal Caribbean International’s massive 137,276 gross ton cruise ship, Voyager of the Seas, once one of the largest in the world with capacity for 3,600 passengers, anchored off Villefranche at 0630 on July 3. Port officials highlighted that the ship was on a scheduled and approved port call, but for the mayor, it was a test of the ban imposed on large cruise ships…. Estrosi, in January 2025, had called for a ban on cruise ships and signed an order limiting the ships to under 690 feet (190 meters) in length and less than 900 passengers. He later compromised on the 2,500-passenger capacity limit while saying mega ships would have to go to Cannes or Marseille. Cannes has now adopted a rule limiting cruise ships to 1,000 passengers starting in January 2026.” • Lol. Everybody hates a tourist….

“Millions of flies to be dropped over Texas to combat flesh-eating maggots” [Independent]. “The flies — which are endemic to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and some South American countries — were thought to have been wiped out in the U.S. as far back as 1966…. Unfortunately, the screwworm flies have recently reemerged in Texas, following an outbreak in Mexico…. To facilitate the new version of the fly program, a factory aimed at breeding and producing sterile flies will open in southern Mexico in July of next year. After that, a fly distribution center will be opened in southern Texas to import and distribute the sterile flies throughout the Southwest.” • Not Texas-sized flies, I hope. But why build the factory in Mexico, and distribute from Texas?

“The conceptual structure of human relationships across modern and historical cultures” [Nature]. “[B]y using online surveys, laboratory cognitive tasks and natural language processing in diverse modern cultures across the world (n = 20,427) and ancient cultures spanning 3,000 years of history, we examined universality and cultural variability in the ways that people conceptualize relationships. We discovered a universal representational space for relationship concepts, comprising five principal dimensions (formality, activeness, valence, exchange and equality) and three core categories (hostile, public and private relationships). Our work reveals the fundamental cognitive constructs and cultural principles of human relationship knowledge and advances our understanding of human sociality.” • But, but…. foirget about gender. What about sex? As for exaxmple.

“Rethinking vegetarianism: Differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in the endorsement of basic human values” [PLOS One]. N = 514+540; 301+335; 68+1943 (?). From the Abstract: “Differences between the basic human values of vegetarians and non-vegetarians were examined in three studies of samples of adults drawn from general populations, one in the US and two in Poland. Vegetarians were oversampled in the US study (514 vegetarians, 540 non-vegetarians) and in one study in Poland (301 vegetarians, 335 non-vegetarians). In the other Polish study, there 68 vegetarians and 1943 non-vegetarians… Across all three studies, Benevolence, Security, and Conformity values were significantly less important for vegetarians than they were for non-vegetarians, although the difference for Conformity was marginally significant (p < .10) in the US study. Across all three studies, vegetarians also endorsed Tradition values less strongly than non-vegetarians, although this difference was not statistically significant in the US study (p = .12). Across all three studies, vegetarians endorsed Stimulation, Achievement, and Power values more strongly than non-vegetarians did. There was only one value, Self-direction, for which the difference between vegetarians and non-vegetarians varied between the two countries. In the US, Self-direction values were more important for non-vegetarians than they were for vegetarians, whereas in Poland the difference was in the opposite direction. Across the three studies, there were only a few instances in which differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians varied as a function of respondents’ gender. These results suggest that following a vegetarian diet represents a manifestation of values that emphasize independence and individuality, a possibility that is somewhat at odds with how vegetarianism is often discussed. • Trump loves a good steak, or at least a steak, or a Big Mac. Hitler, on the other hand….