Month: March 2021

Discussion thread: the trial of Derek Chauvin and other matters

March 30, 2021 • 11:00 am

How about a discussion thread while I’m on the road? Here’s one possible topic, but feel free to bring up anything.

As you know, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is now on trial for the murder of George Floyd in the infamous kneeling-on-the-neck incident. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. The jury has a mixed racial composition, so reports the media, but that reporting itself implies that jurors will judge the case based on their race.

I’ve been loath to call the death of Floyd “murder” because there wasn’t a verdict yet, and because even the news doesn’t do that, but it sure looks as if Chauvin showed some sort of wanton depravity, kneeling on Floyd’s neck much longer than necessary.

Here’s CNN’s Van Jones analyzing the case in a seven-minute segment. Jones apparently thinks that Chauvin is guilty, and saying that “the system is on trial”: if Chauvin gets away with it, police officers across the U.S. will feel free to do the same thing.  But the jurors cannot try the system: they are trying Derek Chauvin. The purpose of a trial is to see if an individual broke the law under a particular set of circumstances, not whether the American system of policing is flawed. That said, like Van Jones I can’t imagine how Chauvin’s conduct could be found acceptable.

I suspect there will be a guilty verdict on at least one of the charges.

The coverage will be live (an unprecedented even in Minneapolis) at the site below:

Discuss your take.  Should the system be on trial? Is Chauvin guilty? If so, of which of the charges?

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 30, 2021 • 10:30 am

by Greg Mayer

When I visit Long Island, New York, where I was born and raised, I often visit Argyle Park, which is in the heart of Babylon Village. These photos are from a visit on July 1, 2014. Argyle Lake empties over these falls into the Great South Bay, which is about a mile south (to the left in the photo).

Argyle Falls, Argyle Park, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

It’s a small park, about 25 acres, most of which is taken up by the Lake, which is formed by the falls (actually a dam) across the Carll’s River (a stream, really). There are a few smaller ponds, with lawns and pathways.

A side pond in Argyle Park, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

The Lake and ponds attract waterbirds; visible here are Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) and Mute Swans (Cygnus muta).

Argyle Lake, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

Canada Geese feed on vegetable matter on land, but the swans feed on aquatic vegetation. Here, three swans feed while two geese float by. Mute Swans are native to Europe, but have long been well established on Long Island. Breeding pairs can be very aggressive if you happen to walk by a nest, as I have (although at a different park, in Smithtown, Long Island).

Argyle Lake, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

Canada Geese are native. In early July, these would be resident geese; goose numbers would be augmented outside the breeding season by migrants from more northern breeding grounds. I did not notice any goslings or nests.

Argyle Lake, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

This goose looks content, as it sits guard over various bird droppings. Notice the greenish droppings in front of it (from the grass which the geese eat), and the white spots– uric acid, but likely from some species other than the goose.

Argyle Lake, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

On this visit I first saw that there was a large group of Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacocorax auritus) on a small island in the Lake. You can also see on the island Mute Swans (also on Lake in background), Great Black-backed Gulls (Larus marinus; larger, black, far left) and Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus; smaller, gray backed).

Argyle Lake, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

I don’t ever recall seeing cormorants in the park when I was growing up, so they might possibly be a more recent arrival at the park. (I also may just have been less observant, but I did see and identify cormorants out on the Great South Bay itself at the time.) A guide to the birds of the park, which was clearly not brand new, is quite informative, but leaves out cormorants, so they may have arrived after the sign was made.

Argyle Park, Babylon, NY, July 1, 2014.

The sign urges that thee birds not be fed, which used to be one of the park’s main draws.

America’s inexorable secularization: for the first time, less than half of Americans are church members

March 30, 2021 • 9:30 am

A new Gallup poll shows that for the first since polling began in 1940, the number of Americans who belong to a church has fallen below 50%. This is part of the inexorable and welcome secularization of American, and goes hand in hand with the rise of the “nones:—people who have no formal religious affiliations. (“Nones” include nonbelievers, agnostics, “spiritual” folks, and people who believe in God but aren’t affiliated with a church.)

Click on the screenshot to read:

Here’s the chart of the proportion of Americans belonging to a church over the past eight decades.  As the survey notes,”U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century.” If this trend continues, in a century America will have very few religious people.

The trend won’t continue forever, of course, as there are some people who won’t give up their faith until it’s pried from their cold, dead hands (sadly, they’ll never discover they were wrong). But, as I’ve always maintained, this trend is part of the increasing importance of science, and the realization by many that religion is indeed a fairy tale.

There are actually three causes of this drop: people becoming “nones” within a generation (this includes church members who retain their faith but give up their church membership) and the trend that people who are younger tend to be less religious (the “one body at a time” theory):

The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.

. . . The two major trends driving the drop in church membership — more adults with no religious preference and falling rates of church membership among people who do have a religion — are apparent in each of the generations over time.

This is a remarkably fast erosion of religion. Here’s a plot of the decline in formal church membership among people who retain their religion—down around 13% in 20 years.

And the age effect:

Church membership is strongly correlated with age, as 66% of traditionalists — U.S. adults born before 1946 — belong to a church, compared with 58% of baby boomers, 50% of those in Generation X and 36% of millennials. The limited data Gallup has on church membership among the portion of Generation Z that has reached adulthood are so far showing church membership rates similar to those for millennials.

The decline in church membership, then, appears largely tied to population change, with those in older generations who were likely to be church members being replaced in the U.S. adult population with people in younger generations who are less likely to belong.

This decline of religion is, argues Steve Pinker in Better Angels and Enlightenment Now, one of the reasons for the increase in morality over the last few centuries in Western nations. You can argue about whether he’s right, but the trend is, as Nixon might have said, “perfectly clear.”

h/t: Woody

Spot the cat!

March 30, 2021 • 8:00 am

Here’s a tortoiseshell cat named Lion from Paws Planet. Her staff, Avery Shrader, sent in a “regular photo” of her (top), and the a photo in which she’s reclining on a pile of leaves. Can you spot Lion in the second photo?

Spot the cat! Answer at noon Chicago time. (I’d rate this one as “difficult.”)

 

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

March 30, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning on the penultimate day of the month: Tuesday, March 30, 2021. It’s National Hot Chicken Day, and by “hot” chicken they mean “spicy,” not “warm”. In recent years hot chicken has become a fad in the South, starting in Nashville, Tennessee.

I’m in Luling, Texas, contemplating a late breakfast of BBQ, and so the Hili dialogues will be truncated until I return in ten days or so. Bear with me: in their place ye shall have noms.

News of the Day:

Glory be! The Ever Given container ship is free! With a combination of high tide and tugboats, they got the bow away from the shore, and the ship has been towed to a lake in the canal for inspection. In the meantime, they’re not letting the waiting ships into the canal yet because the canal’s depth could have been changed.

The NYT has a heartening story about how a group of women in Assam are trying to save the world’s rarest stork, the Greater Adjutant Stork (Leptoptilos dubius), a scavenger that stands five feet tall. The total species size is estimated at only about a thousand birds, and there are only three breeding populations. Its habitat is threatened by landfills (see second photo), but a corps of conservation-minded Assamese women are protecting nest sites, rescuing baby birds, and educating the locals.

Coronavirus cases have been on the upsurge for a while as restive Americans, encouraged by the removal of mask mandates in states like Texas, are behaving like they did before the pandemic. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, warned of “impending doom” due to a fourth surge of the virus. From the NYT:

According to a New York Times database, the seven-day average of new virus cases as of Sunday was about 63,000, a level comparable with late October’s average. That was up from 54,000 a day two weeks earlier, an increase of more than 16 percent. Similar upticks in Europe have led to major surges in the spread of Covid-19, Dr. Walensky said.

Public health experts say that the nation is in a race between the vaccination campaign and new, worrisome coronavirus variants. Although more than one in three American adults have received at least one shot and nearly one-fifth are fully vaccinated, the nation is a long way away from reaching so-called herd immunity — the tipping point that comes when spread of a virus begins to slow because so many people, estimated at 70 to 90 percent of the population, are immune to it.

Here’s Walensky on Rachel Maddow’s show. Note that she says that “vaccinated people can’t carry the virus.” I’m not sure we have good data on that, but it would be great news.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 549,552, an increase of “just” 685 deaths over yesterday’s figure.  The reported world death toll stands a 2,806,709, an increase of about 6,400 deaths over yesterday’s total. 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a funny:

Hili: We have an elephant in the garden.
A: What? Where did he come from?
Hili: He left the room.

In Polish:

Hili: Mamy słonia w ogrodzie.
Ja: Tak? Skąd się tam wziął?
Hili: Wyszedł z salonu.

And here’s a photo of Szaron:

A meme fron Nicole:

And one from Bruce:

Matthew posted this on my Facebook page. That must have been a damn good book!

From reader Barry. But where are the kittens gonna get milk?

Tweets from Matthew. First, cat crunches:

Amazing drawings from a fervent desire to preserve the past:

A cat person becomes a cat person through familiarity. Sound up.

A duckling and a baby emu. Which is cuter?

This taxidermist is as good at stuffing sloths as medieval artists were at drawing cats:

Ducks and Texas BBQ

March 29, 2021 • 3:15 pm

First a few shots from Chicago, and then. . . . today’s lunch in Texas!

Yesterday someone brought a beautiful English shorthaired cat on a leash to Botany Pond. The cat didn’t look like it enjoyed it at all: it was hunkered down and appeared frightened. And it certainly wasn’t walking as if it were used to a leash.

Scared cat is circled:

Then a quick trip to the harbor behind the Museum of Science and Industry where, I was told, there were mergansers. And there were: lots of them. Some were diving, though I can’t be arsed to either look up the species, see what they eat, or if the brown vs. black-and-white ducks represent a sexual dimorphism. Readers can answer these questions:

Punk duck:

Females?

And a damn Canada goose, the bane of all waterways:

Then, on to Texas! The two-hour flight was uneventful, and we were even offered drinks and snacks (I refused). I rented a car at the Austin airport, and within an hour I was in the Barbecue Capital of Texas: the small town of Lockhart (population about 13,000). It boasts three of the best BBQ joints in the state (ergo in America): Kreuz Market, Smitty’s, and Black’s. I had to choose one, and since the last time I was here Black’s was the best, I returned. The other two places weren’t nearly as crowded today.

The exterior of Black’s, in this location since 1932.

The interior is austere, as is seemly for all good BBQ joints. You’re there to eat, not admire the view. You wait in line, first getting sides, then you encounter the Meat Guy and tell him what you want: brisket, sausages, or ribs. Drinks (sweet tea is essential) are on the side.

The “feminist” restrooms. “Women are always right.”

The meat guy slicing my brisket (I had two “moist”, or fatty, slices). Briskets are smoked in the rear.

My lunch: two slices of BBQ beef brisket (the speciality of Texas), a jalapeno-cheddar sausage, raw onion, pickles, black-eyed peas with green beans, potato salad, two slices of squishy white bread, a scoop of banana pudding with vanilla wafers (fantastic), and, of course, sweet tea.

Since I hadn’t eaten all day, this filled me up nicely.

The other two places in Lockhart. Kreuz Market (pronounced “Krites” with a long “i”) and Smitty’s.

I passed these places up as I plan on having only one big meal per day.

A poseur in town! Famous banana pudding my tuches!

The lovely old Lockhart city hall. This really is a classic small Texas town, with a central square on which converge small streets lined with local businesses:

I’m now digesting in nearby Luling, where I plan to go to the place where I had the best BBQ I remember in America: the City Market. Brisket is usually best without sauce, but they have an absolutely addictive sauce that puts their brisket over the top. I hope it’s as good as I remember.

I plan to go when it opens at 10 a.m., as BBQ is best right when taken off the smoker in the morning.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 29, 2021 • 10:00 am

by Greg Mayer

These photos were submitted by Leo Zaibert, who came across this turtle while out for a walk near his house in upstate New York, which is close to the Mohawk River. He was very impressed by its size and prehistoric demeanor, and surmised it was a snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), which indeed it was.

Snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), Niskayuna, NY, March 26, 2021.

It was crossing the road, heading toward the Mohawk, which Leo estimated to be about 100 yards away. At this point along the Mohawk the river is bordered by wetlands, which is probably where snapping turtles in the river would spend most of their time. The turtle stopped as Leo approached, assuming a more defensive posture. In the water a snapper will run away, but on land they raise and direct their shell toward a threat, and will bite. There are good summaries of snapper biology available on the web by the Virginia Herpetological Society and the Savannah River Ecology Lab, and for the truly dedicated a monograph edited by Anthony Steyermark, Michael Finkler, and Ronald Brooks (2008).

Snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), Niskayuna, NY, March 26, 2021.

This is a large adult. My guess is that it’s a female out looking for a nesting site. They need diggable soil in an area that won’t flood, so they need to be a few feet (at least) in elevation above the level of the water body they live in, and this can lead to them wandering along the roads, and even digging nests sometimes in the unpaved shoulders on the side of the road. In many turtles females are bigger than males, but in snappers males are larger. You can see a fairly luxuriant growth of algae on the snapper’s carapace, which is fairly typical. The algae has dried a bit, as the turtle has probably been wandering around on land  for a bit.

Snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina), Niskayuna, NY, March 26, 2021.

Leo estimated its size at 40 inches, but I think this is an overestimate. The size of a wild animal, especially a bulky one like a snapper, is often overestimated, but this is not so much an error as a reaction to the unexpected appearance of an impressive beast. Snappers have big heads, long necks, and long tails, which adds to the impression of size: the tail is a bit shorter than the shell length, and the extended neck is quite long too, so that the total length of a snapper is well over twice the shell length.

My fairly large snapper (I went up to my lab and measured after getting Leo’s photos) is 10 3/8 inches straight line in the midline shell length, 8 inches tail length (the tip was infected and fell off many years ago, so would probably be about 8.5 inches), and the neck and head stretched out 7 inches toward my finger, but could probably reach a few inches more (I didn’t want my finger close enough to actually elicit a strike!), for a total length of 25+ inches, but less than 30 inches. A really big snapper would be about 14 inches in shell length, which would be about 35 inches total including neck and tail. (The record shell size for the species is 19 inches, which would make it over 40 inches in total length.)

Big snappers are very impressive beasts; at the Virginia Herpetological Society page there’s a photo of a guy holding an 18 inch shell (the state record) that shows how really large they are. There’s a species down south, the alligator snapping turtle (Macrochelys temminckii), that gets much bigger: up to 31 inches shell length, and over 200 lbs.!

Leo, who wished it to be recorded that he is a “noted expert on herpes or something”, is a philosopher, and reported that on a previous gallivant along the banks of the river that he miraculously emerged from the “treacherous quicksand of the Mohawk”, though I suspect it was deep mud, myself.

Steyermark, A.C., M.S. Finkler and R.J. Brooks. 2008. Biology of the Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. JHU Press