It’s been a hectic but fun trip so far; I’ve had my time in the UK and am sitting in Heathrow on my way to Amsterdam and Groningen. I’ve had no time to post about the Royal Society meetings, which were full of good talks and good fellowship.
Nick Barton spoke on the evolution of sex (summary: it’s still a mystery), and there were talks by John Willis on Mimulus, Spencer Barrett on heterostyly in plants, Holly Wichman on viruses as models of evolution, Dolph Schluter on sticklebacks, and many others on varied aspects of evolutionary genetics. When I return in late November I’ll try to post some of the intersting things I’ve learned, including the story of a South African plant that has evolved, as part of its ground-hugging flower, a PERCH on which sunbirds sit while sipping nectar and pollinating the plant. This is the only case I know of in which a plant has evolved a perch to specifically accommodate birds, although of course many species of flowers (including Mimulus lewisii), have evolved “landing platforms” from their petals to allow bees to alight.
I did find out that the Royal Society headquarters on Carlton Terrace used to be the German Embassy until WWII. Buried in the Royal Society Garden is a dog with a headstone, a name, and the epiphet “ein treues Hund” (a faithful dog), said to be Ribbentrop’s dog, although this is disputed. (The dog may belong to his predecessor.)
The news of the day is this: future GOP wacko Presidential candidate Sarah Palin doesn’t accept evolution. In her piece on Palin’s soon-to-be-best-seller, Going Rogue, NYT reviewer Michiko Kakutani reports that Palin doesn’t accept evolution. But first, some tidbits, which you will learn here first because you are NOT going to buy this book:
All in all Ms. Palin emerges from “Going Rogue” as an eager player in the blame game, ungrateful to the McCain campaign for putting her on the national stage. As for the McCain campaign, it often feels like a desperate and cynical operation, willing to make a risky Hail Mary pass to try to score a tactical win, instead of making a considered judgment as to who might be genuinely qualified to sit a heartbeat away from the Oval Office . . .
. . . Ms. Palin suggests that she and her husband, Todd, are ideally qualified to represent the Joe Six-Packs of the world because they are Joe Six-Packs themselves. “We know what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition,” she writes in “Going Rogue.” “We know what it’s like to work union jobs, to be blue-collar, white-collar, to have our kids in public schools. We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”
As for evolution:
Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”
I had a bit of a problem with Francis Collin’s evangelic Christianity when he was appointed head of the NIH, but will those of you who criticized these reservations be equally accommodating of Palin’s overweening faith? I doubt it. Her denial of evolution alone disqualifies her to be President, for it shows her sheer, blind resistance to facts–at least those facts at odds with her faith.
Let’s face it: the woman is just plain dumb (and don’t tell me how media-savvy she is), and it’s a testimony to the desperation of the Republican Party that many of them are enthusiastic about electing the first president who openly embraces creationism. Let’s not invite Her in to take over.
h/t: Otter
I used to like the Republican party but they have been co-opted by religious nutjobs. It’s too bad, and you have to wonder what will become of them when white become a minority in a few decades.
Huh? Whiteys will be a minority in a few decades? That sounds like bigoted ignoramus bullshit to me. The whitey population is doing just fine in all places which have been whitey dominated for the past 400 years, not that the color of folks’ skin has much to do with anything.
Yes, Palin is stupid.
However, as we know, this is no barrier to high political office. Many voters prefer stupid leaders, I suppose thinking they will be more trustworthy. You’d think they would have learned better after Dubya.
Appropriately enough, at the other end of Carlton Terrace is what was the headquarters of General de Gaulle’s Free French during the war…
That reminds me, is a US version of The Resistance coming? So far, unless you Kindle (I don’t), it seems unavailable in print outside the UK.
I am nagging my agent to get it sold! But with the £ so weak, I’d order it from amazon.co.uk – even with the postage, it will be cheap. Or you can pre-order it from amazon.ca – it comes out in Canada on 1 December.
The fact that she has stupid beliefs does not mean that she herself is stupid. Perhaps she is indeed dumb, but I would not be surprised if her IQ is above average (say, over 120). Alas, it is not too uncommon for smart people to blindly hold to stupid beliefs.
“Above average” is often still pretty stupid, IMHO.
I don’t want to be average, to have average intelligence. That would mean I’m dumber than half the population, and you can just imagine how dumb that is.
The fact she seems incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence (I’m referring to her public speaking) would suggest she either has a learning disability or is indeed a dimwit.
*squee!*
I love internet psychology! Not being sarcastic– I really love it.
First of all, IQ is really only useful for kids. If youre an adult with an IQ of 160 and youve accomplished nothing with your life, your IQ means nothing.
If you tell me a 10 year old kid has an IQ of 120, I would say that they are capable of going to college to do whatever they want. Their intelligence isnt going to hold them back, so college shouldnt be an issue.
However there are medical, family, financial problems that could get in their way, completely independent of their intelligence.
Or, they could have a personality defect (immaturity– inability to set/maintain goals, inability to put off short-term enjoyment (party, video games) for long term achievement (passing a class)).
Palin apparently had a lot of trouble with college. Switching schools numerous times, switching majors, finally getting a degree in broadcast journalism. Not engineering, not cognitive psychology, not French Literature– broadcast journalism.
Not that theres anything wrong with that, its just that someone with an IQ of 120 should have had little difficulty obtaining that degree.
So from my pov, shes either dumb, or has personality defects that interfere with her intellectual abilities, neither of which I want in a politician.
However, I also think politicians are all idiots that cant contribute in a meaningful way to society, so they pursue politics for the facade of ‘helping’. So… there you go.
Perhaps there is hope for the country if the poll referenced in the NYT review is correct – that 70% consider her unqualified. Should the book fail to reach the bestseller list, it would be even better.
“the woman is just plain dumb”
To her fans, this is a feature, not a bug. Too much education is a bad thing: it tends to produce liberals!
“I had a bit of a problem with Francis Collin’s evangelic Christianity when he was appointed head of the NIH, but will those of you who criticized these reservations be equally accommodating of Palin’s overweening faith?”
At least Collins admits he’s a type of creationist, as are most Americans, which is why Palin remains popular: people relate to her.
I am a Sarah Palin denier. She does not exist. She is a mask that is worn sometimes by Michele Bachmann and sometimes by a dog turd. Pass the word please.
Unfortunatly the Bush years made clear that being in denial of the evolutiuon s not a major disqualification to being president….
“…Nick Barton spoke on the evolution of sex (summary: it’s still a mystery)…”
What have I been sayin’? What have I been sayin’??
Who’d your Daddy now?!
This really is an example of where religious thinking conflicts with scientific thinking, and in this case Sarah clearly is using religion to abdicate herself from any responsibility for thinking.
I’m not, of course, saying that all religious people do this.
But she is a symbol for a great many who also don’t think, but simply resort to religious contrivance.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
…many of them are enthusiastic about electing the first president who openly embraces creationism.
That’s a bit of a stretch. Ronald Reagan openly denied evolution (and climate change), and, in a way, made it respectable to do so. He’s really the father of the the anti-science movement that has infected national politics. We still see the effects of that today, in the serious dumbing-down of national leadership, (witness the number of Republican candidates in the last election who denied evolution when asked.)
George W. Bush, during the Kansas Board of Ed troubles, famously declared, the “jury is still out” on evolution and promoted the idea that “local folks” should decide on whether to teach creationism. He, like Reagan, was strongly in favor of it.
Interestingly, Al Gore said the same thing at the time, “localities should be free to teach creationism as well.” When his campaign was informed that the Supeme Court prohibited teaching creationism in 1987, in Edward v. Aguillard, he backed off and said it should be taught in religion classes only.
The sad thing is, none of this denial hurts a politician with the American public. In many cases it’s a plus.
While showing that Reagan never openly denied evolution would require the excruciating work of going through nearly everything that he said and wrote, I can say that I know of no instance in which he did openly deny evolution. An extremely short search using Google turned up this:
And IIRC he stated that creationism should be taught alongside evolution. So I’m not pretending that he didn’t adopt the anti-science stance of IDists/creationsts and large chunks of the Republican party. I just doubt that he openly denied evolution.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
I just doubt that he openly denied evolution.
Well, depending on the meaning of “openly”, perhaps he didn’t spell it out explicitly, though it was well-known at the time that he didn’t “believe” in evolution. This is from the press conference in 1980 that you mention.
“[Evolution] has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was believed. But if it was going to be taught in the schools, then I think that also the biblical theory of creation, which is not a theory but the biblical story of creation, should also be taught.”
Before Reagan, science deniers in the US were generally looked at with raised eyebrows, or eye rolling. Reagan gave denial an air of respectability.
He may well have denied AGW as well (Sagan was on about it in the 80es, so the issue could have been of the agenda), but one thing he did do was sign the Montreal Protocols. Supposedly those were accepted because the Thatcher was a chem undergraduate. For all her other faults that should be an indication of why it’s important to get everyone a founding in the sciences.
It is a shame that SP could not just be happy with her overly long 15-minutes of fame and just fade into the background. Everything she says indicates that she is a shallow shallow thinker (or perhaps that she just doesn’t think.)
I wouldn’t say lack of belief in evolution disqualifies someone from being President. Probably she’s unaware of the facts, not that I think she’d change her view if she were aware of them.
But if you presented me with a candidate that wasn’t torturing people in Afghanistan, wasn’t ratcheting up the wars in the Middle East, wasn’t using drones to bomb Pakistan, wasn’t tapping our phones, wasn’t disregarding laws by issuing signing statements, etc (all of which Obama is doing) but they were wrong on evolution, they’d still get my vote. Stopping the slaughter of innocent people is kind of at the top of my priorities list.
Do you seriously think that if she read my book, for example, she’s become an ardent pro-evolutionist? That doesn’t happen on this planet, not when the reader is a more ardent evangelical Christian!
And we all know such people never write comments in a Pharyngula thread to report on how learning about evolution led to their becoming atheists.
Worthy priority indeed.
So you’re telling me that if SP was the VP she’d’ve stopped McCain from “bomb bomb bomb[ing] Iran”?
Is Sarah Palin dumb, or do you need her to be dumb?
I have the book and I’m now reading it. She wanders a bit and presents a fine example of stream of consciousness writing. But I don’t need her to be the second coming of Christ or a blithering idiot, so I don’t see her either way. There is just one bit of ancient wisdom I’m relying on here, the more adamant the supporters or critics, the more apt the object of their passions is to be a an ordinary human being.
IMO there is enough strong evidence to make at least a preliminary conclusion as to her dumbitude.
SP strikes me as a Cargo Cult politician; one who apes the motions and parrots the words of the Right Wing Noise Machine, but truly has no depth of understanding, or desire to achieve such depth. She wants the title, with all its trappings of fancy dinners and pep-rally speeches, but not the office, with the difficult choices and work.
She quit because math was hard, but celebrity was easy.
I wonder that so many people are surprised at this revelation by Palin. Her religion is a very conservative fundamentalist one that seems to be very much entwined with creationism.
I’m going to reverse my long-standing beliefs and say now that I believe we need to teach Creationism.
Specifically, we need to teach it as an exercise in critical thinking.
Palin’s resignation as Alaska governor was the best thing she’ll ever do for this country. She’s always going to be remembered as a quitter, but now she’ll also be known as an ignorant quitter.
Some ignorance is accidental, and some results from a choice to wear ideological blinders that protect a person from the truths that will require harder thought and possibly abandoning parts of their ideology.
So Palin gets my contempt for willful ignorance.
P.S. Her argument is a straw man anyway. Even I don’t believe in what she is arguing against and you could argue it’s an elaborate troll.
This can’t be the best candidate the GOP can rally around. You would hope a candidate would be an equal intellectually to a median line of Americans, this is a step below. Does her husband wear an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt?
But, she’s gorgeous! Ever since the advent of television being good looking has been a major factor in the viability of candidates. The level of the candidate’s stupidity rarely influences voters, e.g., “W” or Reagan.
In that case bigjohn756, Stormy Daniels may be the next Senator from Louisiana.
That’s not as scary as Jindal for President!
“didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”
Well, Palin would accidentally be right about both, wouldn’t she? Humans neither evolved from fish which sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea nor from monkeys who eventually swung down from trees. Those are creationist myths which creationists substitute for evolution and are nowhere near even resembling the truth.
And yet she refuses to take the hint when God tells her she’s not qualified for public office, and that he much prefers Obama to be president of the US?
Sorry, Palin, but you can’t have it both ways. If “everything that happens to [you]” is God’s will, you should be BO’s biggest supporter.
To quote a Joe Sixpack: “YOU LIE!”