Two Things
Civil rights reform; oldest skin
Coffee this Friday (tomorrow!) at the usual time and place. (Apologies for the lateness of this week’s Two Things. It has been a week full of too-many things.)
(1) Colorblind equality: Writing at City Journal, Christopher Rufo highlights conservative criticism of the federal Civil Rights Act. Rejecting both the libertarian argument to repeal the Act and the (manifestly stupid) argument for right-wing racialism, Rufo proposes a third way: reform.
The ideological capture of the Civil Rights Act is neither fixed nor inevitable. Rather than argue for its abolition, Americans concerned about the excesses of the DEI bureaucracy should appeal to higher principles and demand that our civil rights law conform to the standard of colorblind equality….
What would this new civil rights agenda look like in practice? First, reformers should outlaw affirmative action and racial preferences of any kind…. Second, reformers must eliminate the “disparate impact” [theory for proving discrimination claims]…. Under a just system, the criterion for assessing biased treatment would not be disparate outcomes but specific, concrete discrimination, driven by animus…. Third, legislators should abolish the DEI bureaucracies in all American institutions, which openly discriminate against disfavored racial groups, impose ideological orthodoxies on American citizens, and restrict freedoms of speech and association.
(2) Lasting impression: We don’t know much about the skin of prehistoric creatures. But thanks to an unusual cave in Oklahoma, we now have a better sense of what some of these creatures looked like in the flesh. Smithsonian Magazine reports:
Within the roughly 288-million-year-old recesses of a cave in Richards Spur, Oklahoma, paleontologists have found truly ancient fossil skin impressions that were preserved in a very unusual way.
Described Thursday in Current Biology, these tatters of fossil skin and various skin impressions come from some of the earliest amniotes. The lizard-like animals were some of the first creatures to live their entire lives on dry land, away from the water’s edge, and their bodies were covered in pebbly, scaly skin. The newly uncovered fossils are the oldest record of preserved skin yet found, about 130 million years older than the previous record holder, containing not only the exterior texture of the skin but also the internal structure of the epidermis.
Another fun exercise? Counting the number of clever wordplays in this article, like the last sentence: “Of all the evolutionary innovations related to living on land, tough skin is high on the scale.”
Hope to see you tomorrow.