Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Here’s a just reissued “Waking Up” podcast from Sam Harris, discussing whether Islamist fighters, like those in ISIS, really believe what they say they do, and whether religion is really responsible—at least in large part—for their acts. We all know the “religion denialists” about Islamic terrorism: ostrich people like Robert Pape, Karen Armstrong, and Reza Aslan, who assert that the terrorism has purely political causes, is due to the disaffection of young men, and/or is the fault of the West. Anything but Islam, they say. (These folks remind me of those accommodationists who try to exculpate religion as the main cause of creationism.) In this episode Sam maintains that religion really is a major cause of Muslim terrorism, and he reads from an issue of the ISIS magazine Dabiq in which the organization explains “Why we hate you and why we fight you.” (Answer: It’s Islam, Jake.)
I wrote about the Dabiq article three years ago, but for some reason that magazine has gone offline. (Could it be because ISIS has come down a lot since then?) Nevertheless, the article is archived here, and I recommend that you read it. It’s not long, and says exactly what Sam says it does. Then listen to the podcast if you’re so inclined: Sam has a number of things to add to what the jihadists wrote. Unless you think ISIS was lying in this article, you’ll find it most enlightening.
Things are quiet at Botany Pond, as the female duck (not Honey) rarely visits, and when she does she incites all the males in the pond to fight by flying over the pond and quacking loudly. Inter-male carnage ensues. There is often more than one drake around, and although I’m feeding Gregory Peck because he’s a caring drake to his hen, I won’t feed the others. (I’m going to need a name for her.) If I can’t drive the other males away with my Super Soaker, nobody gets fed.
There was a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) by the pond a few days ago, and it returned the next day. I watched it for a while and then shooed it away. These birds eat ducklings, and I don’t want them hanging about. (By my calculations, we should have ducklings within two weeks). Last year, a heron appeared when Honey was in the pond with her ducklings, and she went nuts, quacking hysterically until I shooed it away. Still, these herons are magnificent creatures. (This is an iPhone shot taken early in the morning, so excuse the poor quality):
While walking around the pond to try to feed Gregory (he’s gotten skittish as he sometimes gets spooked when I squirt the other drakes), I saw that Facilities had, at my request, done something really nice: they put a layer of soft dirt directly below the third-floor window where the hen was nesting, covering the cement lip right up to the pond’s edge. This is to cushion the fall of the ducklings when the mother calls them to jump after hatching. I am immensely touched that these folks cared enough to do this:
Yesterday afternoon the hen made a rare appearance, for she rarely leaves the nest. I immediately fed her and Gregory, and they had a good snack. But then an errant drake flew into the pond, and the hen immediately flew off, quacking, while Gregory engaged the interloper and drove him onto the grass. I squirted him away. (I don’t even have to hit the ducks with water; they just see the stream, which doesn’t reach them, and take to the air.)
As much of a domestic scene as you’ll see in the Pond: Gregory and his unnamed mate. They are eating Mazuri Waterfowl Starter Chow (it’s suitable for both adults and ducklings, it floats, and the pellets are small enough that ducklings can take them).
Gregory: the Dude abides. (He waits 24/7 for the female to finally enter the pond with her brood.)
The lovely hen. You can tell it’s not Honey as she doesn’t have speckles on her bill. I still have hopes that Honey is nesting nearby, but that might mean there would be two broods of ducklings in the pond at once, not a scenario that I like to contemplate.
And look who showed up yesterday afternoon: two Eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus)! One had the normal wild coloration, while the other had a brown head and white body—surely a hybrid between someone’s domesticated rabbit and a wild one:
This guy wasn’t too spooked so I was able to get quite close to him (or her):
Cleaning:
The half-white one. I saw it the other day; it was easy to spot in the pre-dawn darkness. I hope it doesn’t get spotted by predators and eaten:
Can you spot the rabbit? This is dead easy!
And a short and mediocre video of the brown bunny. Look at his nose twitching!
Here’s a short video on CNN by the always sensible Fareed Zakaria on the possibility (and desirability) of Trump being impeached. He’s also put the text of this talk in a Washington Post piece called, “Democrats, there’s a better strategy than impeachment.” Listen (click on the screenshot to access the video) and/or read:
What is “Fareed’s take”? It’s that the Democrats should “pursue legitimate investigations of Trump” that will educate the nation about what he did (certainly a lot of malfeasance), but not pursue a full impeachment trial. Remember, the House can impeach, which means just bringing charges, by a simple majority, while the trial itself, determining whether Trump should be removed from office, takes place in the Senate, where a 2/3 majority is required to convict. That won’t happen—not given what we know so far about the Mueller report.
Instead, says Zakaria—and here I agree with him—right now the Democrats need to be putting forth policies, and trying to unite around those policies, instead of trying to punish Trump with an impeachment trial. Remember, even if Trump is successfully impeached and convicted, that makes Pence the President. Perhaps, too, a removal from office could help the Democrats in 2020, but the likelihood of a successful impeachment is so small that, as Zakaria and others have noted, the specter of a Democrat-dominated trial of Trump may actually help the President get re-elected.
A short excerpt of Fareed’s Take (my emphasis):
Consider, for a moment, what the growing talk of impeachment among Democrats sounds like to the tens of millions of people who voted for President Trump. Many of them supported him because they felt ignored, mocked and condescended to by the country’s urban, educated and cosmopolitan elites — especially lawyers and journalists. So what happens when their guy gets elected? These same elites pursue a series of maneuvers to try to overturn the results of the 2016 election. It would massively increase the class resentment that feeds support for the president. It would turn the topic away from his misdeeds and toward the Democrats’ overreach and obsessions. And ultimately, of course, it would fail — two-thirds of this Republican-controlled Senate would not vote to convict him — allowing Trump to brandish his “acquittal” as though it were a gold medal.
. . .For some Democrats, impeachment talk might be a smart, if cynical, short-term calculation. If you are running for the Democratic nomination and languishing in the polls, it is a way to get attention. If you are consolidating your support with the party’s base, the more fiercely anti-Trump you are, the better. But all these moves work only as long as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slow-rolls the process and stops it from getting out of hand. Others can be irresponsible on the assumption that Pelosi will be responsible. But what if things snowball, as they often do in politics?
The Democrats have a much better path in front of them. They should pursue legitimate investigations of Trump, bring in witnesses and release documentary proof of wrongdoing, providing a national education about the way Trump has operated as president. But they should, at the same time, show the public that they would be a refreshing contrast to Trump — substantive, policy-oriented, civil and focused on the country, not on their narrow base. America is tired of the circus of Trump. That doesn’t mean they want the circus of the House Democrats.
The president is vulnerable. With strong economic numbers, he has astonishingly low approval ratings. He will likely run his 2020 campaign on cultural nationalism, as he did in 2016. Democrats need to decide what their vision will be. That should be their focus, not the unfounded hope that if they pursue impeachment, somehow a series of miracles will take place — a deeply divided country will coalesce around them, and Republicans will finally abandon their president.
The real challenge the Democrats face goes beyond Trump. It is Trumpism — a right-wing populism that has swelled in the United States over the past decade. Surely the best way to take it on is to combat it ideologically and defeat it electorally. That is the only way to give the Democrats the real prize, which is not Trump’s scalp but the power and legitimacy to forge a governing majority.
I think he’s right here, but the animus of House Democrats against Trump is so strong, and the country so divided, that I wonder if any Democratic coalescence is possible. For even the Dems are divided, with the centrists or more moderate Democrats fighting the Democratic socialists and “progressive” Democrats. Those progressives will do anything they can, I think, to bring down Trump, even at the expense of their own party. It’s times like these that I think it was a good thing that Nancy Pelosi remained Speaker of the House. In my view, she still has her eyes on the prize. And imagine what would happen if a “Progressive” were in charge!
I was alerted to The Cartoon by this tweet from Bari Weiss, a Jewish op-ed columnist for the NYT, and someone I much admire. However, in this case I don’t agree with her.
She’s referring to this cartoon, and to the op-ed by NYT columnist Bret Stephens below it. The political cartoon appeared in the print version of the NYT’s international edition, not in the U.S. edition or online.
Stephens has no doubt that the cartoon’s publication was ignorant, playing into the hands of anti-Semites:
Here was an image that, in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Stürmer. The Jew in the form of a dog. The small but wily Jew leading the dumb and trusting American. The hated Trump being Judaized with a skullcap. The nominal servant acting as the true master. The cartoon checked so many anti-Semitic boxes that the only thing missing was a dollar sign.
Wily? I don’t see that. Dumb and overly trusting of Israel? Well, that is Trump, isn’t it? Bibi, regardless of what you think of him, is certainly smarter and savvier than Trump. In fact, had the cartoon had depicted Kim Jong-un as a dachshund leading a blind trump waving a DPRK flag, nobody would have batted an eyelash. The point would have been similar.
Stephens continues:
The image also had an obvious political message: Namely, that in the current administration, the United States follows wherever Israel wants to go. This is false — consider Israel’s horrified reaction to Trump’s announcement last year that he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria — but it’s beside the point. There are legitimate ways to criticize Trump’s approach to Israel, in pictures as well as words. But there was nothing legitimate about this cartoon.
. . .The problem with the cartoon isn’t that its publication was a willful act of anti-Semitism. It wasn’t. The problem is that its publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism — and that, at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice, from mansplaining to racial microaggressions to transphobia.
Imagine, for instance, if the dog on a leash in the image hadn’t been the Israeli prime minister but instead a prominent woman such as Nancy Pelosi, a person of color such as John Lewis, or a Muslim such as Ilhan Omar. Would that have gone unnoticed by either the wire service that provides the Times with images or the editor who, even if he were working in haste, selected it?
The question answers itself. And it raises a follow-on: How have even the most blatant expressions of anti-Semitism become almost undetectable to editors who think it’s part of their job to stand up to bigotry?
The cartoon was drawn by António Moreira Antunes, 66, a well-known and sometimes controversial Portuguese political cartoonist for the Lisbon-based Expresso weekly who has published caricatures critical of Israel in the past.
. . . The cartoon, carried in the paper’s international edition, showed Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Star of David on his collar leading a blind US President Donald Trump seen wearing a skullcap.
The Times acknowledged on Saturday that the cartoon “included anti-Semitic tropes” and “was offensive,” and called its use an “error of judgment.” The paper did not, however, explicitly apologize for its publication.
“The anti-Semitic caricature published by the New York Times is shocking and reminiscent of Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust,” Erdan said. [Gilad Erdan is Public Security Minister and a member of the Likud]
But now there has been an explicit apology by the NYT:
My take? Although I’m often accused of being reflexively pro-Israel and too quick to call out anti-Semitism (I maintain, for instance, that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and that the BDS movement is almost overtly anti-Semitic), I am not as quick as Weiss, Stephens and others to claim that this is a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon. In fact, when I first saw it—and I like to think I’m as sensitive as anyone to Der Stürmer-like tropes—I didn’t see it as anti-Semitic. I saw it as anti-Trump and anti-Netanyahu: the point was that Netanyahu, like a guide dog for the blind, was leading around a blind Trump, getting the President on board with all of Bibi’s policies. It seems in line with how many political cartoons are drawn.
Now there are aspects of the cartoon that could be seen as anti-Semitic if you squint hard, like the Star of David and Netanyahu’s big nose, as well as Trump’s yarmulke. But the Star of David could be taken to show that this was indeed Netanyahu, the nose may be simply part of the normal caricature of such cartoons (let’s face it: Bibi’s proboscis isn’t small), and the yarmulke represents Trump’s claimed unthinking support of Israel. In short, while I find the cartoon misguided and somewhat offensive, I don’t see it as explicitly anti-Semitic. Had I been an editor, I’m not sure I would have approved its publication. Yet now that it’s published, I can’t really join the offense brigade on this one.
That said, I do think that the New York Times has bent over backwards to criticize Israel and extol the Palestinians, and that this cartoon is part of the paper’s growing Wokeness and Authoritarian Leftism. Its long and tendentious article from last year dissecting the errant path of a bullet that killed a Palestinian medic seemed a gratuitous way to demonize Israel by implying it was deliberately killing civilians. In my view, the article didn’t show that, but its length and the amount of money spent on the research bespoke the paper’s animus against Israel. So if the cartoon shows anything, it’s the Times‘s (or rather, an overseas editor’s) annoying and kneejerk dislike of Israel, which goes along with the Time’s history of biased and laudatory articles on Palestine.
Offensive, yes, and certainly biased. But not anti-Semitic. Or so I think, and I already know that some people will disagree with me vehemently. But if an editor didn’t spot it as anti-Semitic, and I didn’t either, does that make me, a secular Jew, blind to one of the “most blatant expressions of anti-Semitism”?
For opinions opposed to mine, arguing that the cartoon was indeed blatantly anti-Semitic, see The Jerusalem Post, CAMERA, the Spectator, and Elder of Ziyon, which claims that the dog is a dachshund because it has been used as a symbol of Germany.
As always, you’re invited to give your opinion below, whether or not you agree with me.
Tara Tanaka (Vimeo site here, and Flickr site here) is back with a lovely video of inter-sibling rivalry between two Great Egret (Ardea alba) chicks. Her description of this avian Frog Fight is below.
Six days after videoing three young Great Egrets in this nest, I returned to find only two. The feeding process is brutal, and it’s a wonder that there aren’t a lot of one-eyed egrets. For a brief moment the chick with its back to the camera had the frog – but his joy was short-lived as the chick facing the camera immediately grabbed it from him, feet first. It was probably the backwards orientation that kept him from being able to quickly swallow it, and once again, when opportunity presented itself, the original chick quickly snatched it out of the beak and throat of his sibling. It’s not over until it’s over.
Watch on full screen and be sure to listen all the way to the end. See if you can figure out what’s supposed to be happening at the end.
And here’s an astronomy photo from reader Tim Anderson.
This is NGC5139 – the Omega Centauri globular star cluster. It is one of the glories of the Southern Hemisphere skies and is easily visible to the naked eye on a dark night. This image was compiled from eighty 60-second exposures taken with a 100mm refracting telescope and a colour astronomical camera.
On this day in 1429, Joan of Arc, a peasant girl, arrived at Orléans on a Mission from God to lift the siege by the British. She and the French succeeded. Here’s a painting depicting her entry into the city:
Joan of Arc enters Orléans (painting by Jean-Jacques Scherrer, 1887)
On April 29, 1770, James Cook arrived in Botany Bay in Australia, a place that he named on the spot. In 1916, this was the day of the end of the Easter Rising, when the Irish rebels surrendered to the British in Dublin. Fourteen of the leaders were executed by firing squad. On this day in 1945, there were two events in Nazi German: Hitler married Eva Braun in the Führerbunker, designating Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. The next day Hitler and Braun both committed suicide. On the same day, Dachau concentration camp was liberated by American troops.
On this day in 1967, after having refused induction into the Army the previous day, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title. But he fought (in the ring) again. On April 29, 1967, as Wikipedia notes, “The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opens at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with some of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.” On this day in 1974, besieged by the courts and Congress, President Nixon released an “edited transcript” of the White House “Watergate tapes.” It wasn’t enough, and the S.O.B. was forced to resign.
Exactly eight years ago (was it that long?), Prince William and Catherine Middleton got married at Westminster Abbey in London. For you Royal watchers, and also Kiwis—since William will one day be your King—here’s a short clip of the moment of the nuptials:
Finally, as Wikipedia again reports, “A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.”
Notables born on this day include Henri Poincaré (1854), William Randolph Hearst (1863), Harold Urey (1893, Nobel Laureate), Duke Ellington (1899), Hirohito (1901), Rod McKuen (1933), Zubin Mehta (1936), Bernie Madoff (1938), Brian Charlesworth (1945, my erstwhile colleague and chairman at Chicago), Jerry Seinfeld (1954), Daniel Day-Lewis (1957), and Uma Thurman (1970).
Those who bought the farm on April 29 include Ludwig Wittgenstein (1951), Alfred Hitchcock (1980), Mike Royko (1997), John Kenneth Galbraith (2006), and Albert Hofmann (2008).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hli is taking advantage of the rights conferred on her (remotely) by the American Declaration of Independence:
A: Are you asleep?
Hili: No, I’m resting. I got tired in the pursuit of happiness.
(Photo: Zuzanna Frydrych)
In Polish:
Ja: Śpisz?
Hili: Nie, odpoczywam, zmęczyłam się pogonią za szczęściem.
(Zdjęcie: Zuzanna Frydrych)
Pi got a lion cut, which he needs in the Hawaiian heat:
This is splendiferous!
Useful SFW words from Facebook:
Tweets from Heather Hastie. The tweeter here assures us that this floating pigeon is fine:
It’s a bumper crop of kakapos this year, and a good thing, too, given their rarity and low reproductive rate. Here are three in one nest!
Rakiura's three chicks are getting big – and agile! It's a huge nest, so we put barriers at the back to stop the chicks wandering too far. There's a big variation in #kakapo nest size: several are too small, but some are perhaps a bit too big! #kakapo2019#conservation#parrotspic.twitter.com/711yDsKSCl
Utricularia inflata commonly known as the swollen bladderwort is a large suspended aquatic carnivorous plant that uses small depressurised chambers to suck small aquatic animals inside and then dissolves them. It's the world's fastest carnivorous plant https://t.co/igtDH668Oxpic.twitter.com/60wJLEtqzr
It’s hard to see platypuses (platypi?) in the wild. Here are some:
Went to Tidbinbilla and saw 5 platypuses!!! Though pretty sure the last two we saw were these two again… so maybe we only saw 3. First time seeing platypuses in the wild I'm dead 😭 pic.twitter.com/1lPsZQQO98
[Grania here again. Jerry is still under the weather so I am posting this for him. Have a lovely Sunday!]
It’s Sunday, April 28, 2019, and ye shall not gather sticks on pain of being stoned. It’s National Blueberry Pie Day, and I say to ye again, as I have said before, that ye shall week out those pies only at Helen’s in Machias, Maine. For she gathereth only the tasty lowbush blueberries. In Canada it’s Workers’ Mourning Day, commemorating those who have been injured, killed, or sickened on the job.
It snowed heavily in Chicago yesterday, but it’s all melted by now. Temperatures will continue to be cool, probably suboptimal for waterfowl.
On this day in 1789, mutineers on the Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian, dumped the authoritarian leader Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 crew into the ocean in an open boat. Bligh and his men made it to land and back to England, prompting a punitive expedition to find Christian, who had settled with his men on Pitcairn Island. Some mutineers were sent back to England and hanged, while many on Pitcairn, including Christian, were killed by the locals.
On this day in 1924, Wembley Stadium (originally named Empire Stadium) was opened. In 1945, Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, as well as two other fascists, were killed by a firing squad. Their bodies were then hung upside down, debased, and mutilated.
Exactly two years later, Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmen left Peru on the raft Kon-Tiki to show that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. In fact, this is very unlikely, though perhaps a few native South Americans made it to Polynesia in the 12th or 13th century. The Americas were in fact settled by Asians who crossed the Behring Strait and worked their way south. The raft (below) is on exhibit in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, Norway:
On April 28, 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and thereby lost his World Heavyweight title. He was convicted of draft evasion but the Supreme Court later overruled his conviction. Exactly two years after Ali refused to step forward during his induction, Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France.
In 1973, or so says Wikipedia, “The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, recorded in Abbey Road Studios goes to number one on the US charts, beginning a record-breaking 741-week chart run.” I don’t like Pink Floyd at all, but I know that many readers do.
On April 28, 1988, the fuselage of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 ripped open in mid-air, sending flight attendant Clarabelle Ho Lansing to hear death when she was sucked out of the cabin and fell 24,000 feet into the sea. Amazingly, pilots were able to land the plane on Maui. 60 of the 89 passengers on board were injured (6 seriously), but there were no other deaths. Here’s the ill-fated Lansing and the plane:
Clarabelle Ho Lansing
This is how the plane, a Boeing 737, looked after it landed. It’s remarkable that nobody else was killed and that the plane was able to land at all.
Finally, it was 15 years ago today that CBS News revealed evidence of the abuse and torture of prisoners by Americans in Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war. Eleven soldiers were convicted of maltreatment, assault, battery, and dereliction of duty and sent to prison, while six others were dishonorably discharged. You will remember this famous photo of a detainee, Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, being tortured:
Lynndie England served two years in jail for her crimes; you’ll remember this photo as well. She is unrepentant.
Notables born on this day include James Monroe (1758), Lionel Barrymore (1878), Kurt Gödel (1906), Harper Lee (1926), James Baker (1930), Saddam Hussein (1937), Ann-Margret (1941), Alice Waters (1944), Terry Pratchett (1948), Jay Leno (1950), Elena Kagan (1960), Penélope Cruz (1974), and Jessica Alba (1981).
I could find only one notable who took the Big Nap on April 28: Benito Mussolini (1945; see above).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is unintentionally having a Titanic moment, only with profoundly better taste.
Hili: Make me a portrait like in a Dutch painting.
A: Here you are.
In Polish:
Hili: Zrób mi portret jak z holenderskiego obrazu.
Ja: Proszę bardzo.
A meme sent by reader Barry:
From the Jesus of the Day Facebook site:
From reader Jon: an eight-year-old’s critique of a thesis on genomics:
My 8yo came across my bound thesis in the basement, "read" it, and spontaneously wrote me this note. I will now be listing her as a suggested reviewer for all my manuscript submissions. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/ZnKvThzxfC
The change in from baby to adult tapirs is one of the most remarkable modifications of pattern I’ve seen. The German reads, “Today is World Tapir Day, and therefore everything is possible. Do something with it!”
— Freifrau von Hanebüchen (@Burgfrollein) April 26, 2019
Read the thread: this fly in a collection was found to be only the second specimen ever collected. And look at those crazy antennae. Neither Matthew nor I have any idea what they’re for:
One of our students found this crazy fly at our collection today. It has "paddle-like" antennae. I have never ever seen anything quite like it. To me it looks like a bee fly. Any thought @flygirlNHM? pic.twitter.com/Su7kX2IZXb
