Halberdleaf rosemallow flower up close

From October 18th at the Arbor Walk Pond, here’s a close abstraction that plays up the curves in a halberdleaf rosemallow flower, Hibiscus laevis. If you’ve forgotten or never knew what one of these flowers “normally” looks like, you can skip back to a post from September.

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You may never have heard of Trofim Lysenko, whose ideology-over-science approach to agriculture led to the deaths of millions of people in the Soviet Union and China. The group Minding the Campus has now begun giving the Trofim Lysenko Award for the Suppression of Academic Speech to similarly benighted ideologues in academia. The first awardee is Williams College Professor Phoebe Cohen, who said: “This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated.”

That raises the interesting question of whether Prof. Cohen will live up to her professed belief and stop culturally appropriating anything that was rigorously developed entirely or mostly by white men. If so, she should give up using insignificant little things like radios, televisions, telephones, airplanes, automobiles, washing machines, air conditioning, and light bulbs. Fat chance she’ll do that.

© 2021 Steven Schwartzman