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.
In lieu of the usual photos from readers, I’ll show today some pictures of my wildlife family: the ducks of Botany Pond. Here are photos from the first two years I met Honey and tended her brood: 2017 and 2018.
They may refurbish the pond next year, which would mean a sad season without ducks. Click on the photos to enlarge them.
Below: the first time I met Honey, in 2017. She had four ducklings, and I don’t know if had more hatched but died. These four grew up and fledged:
A selfie with Honey:
Later: hardly distinguishable from Mom:
Showing the Lab School students how to feed the ducks:
Honey’s brood in 2018: eight, now being fed regularly. They all fledged.
Later:
On the duck ramp; the first year we had one made:
Growing up:
And, with feathers, at the awkward teenage stage:
Almost ready to fly, but still stuck to Mom:
Mom, free at last:
My sweet hen, here doing her soccer ball imitation:
Good morning on MY BIRTHDAY: Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021, the fifth and last day of Coynezaa. I grow old. . . . I grow old. . . And the food day for today is, appropriately, National Bicarbonate of Soda Day. Oy!
Because I’m celebrating another trip around the Sun, posting may be light today.
Thanks to all readers who sent me goodies and messages for Coynezaa. Here’s a beautiful birthday card made for me by Jacques Hausser, who works on shrews. Note the duck and Professor Ceiling Cat! (click to enlarge):
Wine of the Day: This 2018 California Cabernet is incredibly good for its price: $19 (probably more now). It’s made with a Bordeaux-like blend, including 85% Cabernet Sauvignon as well as with 7% Merlot, 4% Malbec and 4% Petit Verdot. I decided to have it with an aged baguette, niçoise olives, aged Gouda cheese, and some green beans for vegetation.
It was dark purple with the classic California cabernet nose: cassis with mint and eucalyptus. Smooth as a baby’s bottom and a great value if you want an upscale California cabernet but don’t want to pay upscale prices. Highly recommended.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of a British media mogul and the former companion to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted on Wednesday of conspiring with him over a decade to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
A federal jury in Manhattan found Ms. Maxwell, 60, guilty of sex trafficking and the four other charges against her. She was acquitted of one count of enticing a minor to travel across state lines to engage in an illegal sexual act.
She’s going to jail for probably the rest of her life. One count on which she was convicted—sex trafficking of a minor—carries a maximum sentence of 40 years. Another count, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, carries a maximum of ten years. The remaining three counts of conspiracy carry a maximum sentence of five years each. Total maximum: 65 years. Halve that to get a conservative sentence, and it’s about 33 years. Maxwell is now 60.
I called this one, but I also called the Elizabeth Holmes case as having a guilty finding, and perhaps Holmes will get off.
*NYT book of the century-and-a-quarter: It’s the 125th anniversary of the New York Times Book Review, and the paper asked readers to nominate the best book of the lat 125 years. In October they published the 25 most frequently-nominated books (actually, whether the finalists were the books that got the most votes was unclear).. There are some great books and some not-so-great books (I’m looking at you, Harry Potter), but by and large, it’s a good list.
Then the readers voted on the best of those 25 books. I won’t tell you which one it is. Try to guess when you look at the 25 finalists (I found some good reading suggestions there). And you can see the winner here, along with the critic’s appraisal of the book and the five runners-up. I’ll let you look for yourself, but I don’t think it should have beat Ulysses.
*Where is Webb? If you want to know where the Webb Space Telescope is, NASA has provide a really nice real-time page with constantly hanging speeds and positions, as well as maneuver points. It even gives temperatures on the sun shield, which has been deployed. Bookmark it at the preceding link and have a look from time to time. Here it is in miniature, with half a million miles to go to L2 orbit. Click photo to enlarge (h/t Malcolm):
*Quillette has a long interview of recently deceased biologist E. O. Wilson from 2009 conducted by Alice Dreger as research for Dreger’s best-selling book, Galileo’s Middle Finger. It’s interesting as it’s all about the Sociobiology Wars and the backlash Wilson faced when he wrote that book. Lewontin comes in, too, for, as I said, Wilson helped bring him to Harvard. I’ll give one quote, but I think Dreger gets Lewontin completely wrong, and cozies up to Wilson way too much: There’s lots of juicy gossip here, though!
AD: I met Lewontin briefly in grad school. He was brought in to give a talk. I thought it was very odd. Here was a guy who was an intense Marxist, who spent so much time rallying on behalf of the proletariat, who was all about the class struggle. And he struck me absolutely as a BMW-driving, Cambridge-living, Romance-language-phrase-dropping snob.
EOW: You got that. I’ve never fully figured him out. I used to joke that when things got too hot, he could go to his dacha, like a member of the Soviet leadership. . .
. . .I’ll tell you a story about all of this. Around 1970, we were searching for someone in population genetics. He looked very good then. And he had this brilliant personality in conversation, this brilliant presentation, a real theatrical power. The search committee decided he was the best person, but this was after he had just adopted his political and public persona and he was known to be joining protests. I remember watching a news report one day about the takeover of a stage at the University of Chicago, where some government functionary had come to speak at the height of the anti-war protests. And to my astonishment, I saw Dick Lewontin rush up and take the microphone!
We had a meeting to take the final vote on Lewontin at Harvard, and a group of the older professors said they were worried about reports of his behavior at Chicago—that he might be disruptive or might have gotten away from genetics, and so would not be the right sort of person to be at Harvard. I made the speech I will regret for the rest of my life: I said we should never accept or reject someone because of their political views. I felt so good about myself making that political speech! “I know several key people at Chicago on the faculty,” I said. “Let me ask them about the key question: Is Lewontin’s new political activism affecting his performance at the University of Chicago, or affecting anything connected with his duties?” And they said, okay, ask and let us know.
By the way, Ms. Dreger, Lewontin NEVER drove a BMW. Why don’t you do your homework?
Not much stuff happened on December 30 and most of it is grim:
1066 – Granada massacre: A Muslim mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.
1853 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States buys land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.
1890 – Following the Wounded Knee Massacre, the United States Army and Lakota warriors face off in the Drexel Mission Fight.
This is still the most deadly single-building fire in American history. The first started when an arc light sparked and ignited a curtain. Many of the exists were locked or blocked, as in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The dead were stacked up ten feet deep in front of some of the locked exits. Here’s an emergency van containing some of the victims:
Inside, after the fire:
1916 – Russian mystic and advisor to the Tsar Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is murdered by a loyalist group led by Prince Felix Yusupov. His frozen, partially-trussed body was discovered in a Moscow river three days later. He was hard to kill (a group of nobleman, worried about Rasputin’s influence over the Tsarina, engineered his death), but you can read about that at the link:
1922 – The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is formed.
Here’s a documentary featuring Hussein’s executioner (Hussein was hanged). I won’t show you the video of the hanging, but here’s the memories of the hangman:
Notables joining me in being born on this day include:
AD 39 – Titus, Roman emperor (probable; d. 81)
1865 – Rudyard Kipling, Indian-English author and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1936)
The Kipling family lived in Vermont for a while, and that’s where he began writing The Jungle Books. Here he is in his Vermont study in 1895:
1910 – Paul Bowles, American composer and author (d. 1999)
1914 – Bert Parks, American actor, singer, television personality, and beauty pageant host (d. 1992)
1928 – Bo Diddley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2008)
Her real name was Mary Frances Penick, and below is my favorite song of hers, and the song she’s known for. It reached #2 on the Billboard pop chart in America, though it’s basically a country song. It’s good!
1935 – Sandy Koufax, American baseball player and sportscaster
Koufax was not only the best Jewish baseball player up to the present, but one of the best Major League pitchers of all time, and the youngest man ever elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame (he was 36, and retired early because of arthritis in his elbow). Here are some career highlights:
1945 – Davy Jones, English singer-songwriter and actor (d. 2012)
1946 – Patti Smith, American singer-songwriter and poet
A great songwriter, he wrote the music for, among other shows, Pal Joey, A Connecticut Yankee, On Your Toes,Babes in Arms,Oklahoma!, Flower Drum Song, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. That’s a great lineup. Here he is (seated) with his later partner Oscar Hammerstein in 1945:
2006 – Saddam Hussein, Iraqi general and politician, 5th President of Iraq (b. 1937)
2012 – Carl Woese, American microbiologist and biophysicist (b. 1928)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, I get a special birthday Hili dialogue! Hili is shown as a kitten:
Hili: Since when have I known Jerry?
A: Since you were three months old.
Hili: Yes, I thought I always loved him. Happy birthday, JERRY!
In Polish:
Hili: Od kiedy ja znam Jerrego?
Ja: Od trzeciego miesiąca życia.
Hili: Tak mi się zdawało, że zawsze go kochałam. Wszystkiego najlepszego, Jerry!
Kulka is outside on the windowsill, and wants to come inside where it’s warm:
From Barry. who asks, “Is there a more magnificent jellyfish than this?” My answer: I don’t know of any.
"BIGGER THAN A SOCCER BALL" I've been studying jellyfish for 12 years and this is a first for me! This stunning box jelly was spotted around Papua New Guinea, and is possibly a rare Chirodectes says @collins_noaasi! 📽️Scuba Ventures Kavieng https://t.co/zvQxeIEa1x#DailyJellypic.twitter.com/Zo0cvM5BWB
I was asked whether this bird would breed. Perhaps not because a similar pale bird found by @JWentomologist in Devon remained unpaired for 4 years. Other Robins are likely unimpressed by the lack of the usual orange ‘badge’. But if it sticks around I’ll try to find out.
Tweets from Matthew. As he says, “See thread. First puzzle shows them making a puzzle of that famous photo of New Year’s Eve in Manchester (see below for photo):
Some very useful knowledge from physicist Jim Al-Khalili
If you’ve run out of Christmas leftovers, can’t be bothered to cook and fancy getting a pizza takeaway, just remember that one 18” pizza is larger than two 12” ones.
Just a bit of fun, but the headline below is true. The survey on which it’s based is reported in this article in from the Independent, which you can see by clicking on the screenshot:(you can register for free with email and a password if it’s blocked; there’s no paywall)
So, here are some results given in the article:
More than half of Americans believe “Arabic numerals” – the standard symbols used across much of the world to denote numbers – should not be taught in school, according to a survey.
Fifty-six per cent of people say the numerals should not be part of the curriculum for US pupils, according to research designed to explore the bias and prejudice of poll respondents.
The digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are referred to as Arabic numerals. The system was first developed by Indian mathematicians before spreading through the Arab world to Europe and becoming popularised around the globe.
A survey by Civic Science, an American market research company, asked 3,624 respondents: “Should schools in America teach Arabic numerals as part of their curriculum?” The poll did not explain what the term “Arabic numerals” meant.
Some 2,020 people answered “no”. Twenty-nine per cent of respondents said the numerals should be taught in US schools, and 15 per cent had no opinion.
John Dick, who happens to be the head of Civic Science, issued this tweet with the data in graphic form, which I’ve put below as well:
Ladies and Gentlemen: The saddest and funniest testament to American bigotry we've ever seen in our data. pic.twitter.com/Bh3FBsl8sR
Now Dick thinks this is an example of bigotry—”Islamophobia,” I suppose. I’m not so sure. Although I am sure that many of us know that Arabic numerals are the numerals we use every day, some people don’t, and, this being America, it’s possible that nobody has told children that they are learning “Arabic numerals.” The 56% figure could thus represent ignorance rather than bigotry, although both could play a role. But Dick seems wedded to the latter explanation. Regardless, if it is ignorance, it’s pretty appalling. After all, everyone knows what Roman numerals are!
In its headline Snopes says “It’s difficult to answer survey questions if you don’t fully understand the meaning.”I’m pretty sure, from following them, that Snopes is woke,but their assumption that there’s no anti-Arabic bigotry involved is just a guess.
You can read their analysis, in which they reluctantly admit that the claim is true, by clicking on the screenshot below.
But wait! There’s still more! You get this special grapefruit-cutting knife if you read on—for free!
Snopes:
Those were the results of a real survey question posed by the polling company Civic Science. John Dick, the Twitter user who originally posted a screenshot of the survey question, is the CEO of Civic Science.
The full survey doesn’t appear to be available at this time (we reached out to Civic Science for more information), but Dick has posted a few other questions from the poll, as well as some information regarding the purpose of the survey.
Dick, who said that the “goal in this experiment was to tease out prejudice among those who didn’t understand the question,” shared another survey question about what should or shouldn’t be taught in American schools. This time, the survey found that 53% of respondents (and 73% of Democrats) thought that schools in America shouldn’t teach the “creation theory of Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre” as part of their science curriculum. Here are the results:
33% of Republicans, a whopping 73% of Democrats, and 52% of independents thought that Lemaître’s theory should NOT be taught.
Now this question is more unfair, because, really, how many Americans know what the “creation theory of Georges Lemaître” was? If you read about science and religion, or have followed this site for a while, you’ll know that, although he was a Catholic priest, Lemaître held pretty much the modern theory of the Big Bang and the expanding Universe. As Wikipedia notes:
Lemaître was the first to theorize that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by an expanding universe, which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble. He first derived “Hubble’s law”, now called the Hubble–Lemaître law by the IAU, and published the first estimation of the Hubble constant in 1927, two years before Hubble’s article. Lemaître also proposed the “Big Bang theory” of the origin of the universe, calling it the “hypothesis of the primeval atom”, and later calling it “the beginning of the world”.
Yes, and Lemaitre did other science, including analyzing cosmology using Einstein’s theories of relativity. He was a smart dude, and should have gone into physics instead of the priesthood. There’s a photo of him with Einstein below.
Why did so many people answer that Lemaître’s theory, which is, as I said, is pretty much the current theory of the Universe’s origin, NOT be taught? Surely it’s because the question identified Lemaître as a “Catholic priest”. That means that people probably thought his “theory” was the one expounded in Genesis chapters 1 and 2—God’s creation. So they didn’t want a religious theory taught in school.
Two points: most Republicans didn’t mind as much as Democrats of Independents, and that may be because more Republicans are creationists than are Democrats. But why did so many Democrats not want Lemaître’s theory taught? Are they that much less creationist than are Republicans? Perhaps that’s one answer. Another is that they are more anti-Catholic, but that seems less likely. But underlying these data—as perhaps underlying much of the data about Arabic numerals—is simple ignorance. I, for one, wouldn’t expect the average Joe or Jill (oops!) to know what Lemaître said.
One final remark: Accommodationists sometimes use the fact that Lemaître got it right as evidence that there’s no conflict between science and religion. I’m not sure if Lemaître thought God created the Universe, but if he did, he might have thought that the Big Bang was God’s way of doing it. (He was surely NOT a Biblical literalist). So yes, religious people can and have made big contributions to science. But that doesn’t mean that religion and science are compatible—any more than Francis Collins’s biological work shows that science and Evangelical Christianity are compatible. I’ve explained what I mean by “compatible” before, and it’s NOT that religious people can’t do science.
In the case of Lemaître, Francis Collins, or other religious scientists, they are victims of a form of unconscious cognitive dissonance: accepting some truth statements based on the toolkit of science, and other truth statements based on the inferior “way of knowing” of faith. And that is the true incompatibility: the different ways that we determine scientific truth as opposed to religious “truth.”
But I digress, and so shall stop.
George Lemaître (1894-1966), photo taken in 1930:
From Wikipedia:
(From Wikipedia): Millikan, Lemaître and Einstein after Lemaître’s lecture at the California Institute of Technology in January 1933.
In an op-ed in the Times of San Diego, we read that a Dean at San Diego State University, a public California college, emitted some pretty inflammatory tweets dissing Republicans and making other extreme political statements. The question is not whether this is a free speech issue (it isn’t, despite what the headline below implies), but whether the Dean’s speech was wise, advisable, and could have the effect of chilling other people’s speech. And there’s another question about whether SDSU really defends everyone’s speech, or only the speech of faculty having the “correct” ideology (i.e., that of the “progressive” Left).
Click on the screenshot below to read.
From author Herman:
On Dec. 1. Monica Casper, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University, tweeted: “Just so we’re clear on the Right’s agenda — racism good, abortion bad, money good, women bad, capitalism good, sustainability bad, stupidity good, science bad, power good, equality bad, white people good, nonwhite people bad. Stench, indeed.”
And a day later, Casper followed up with this observation about the Supreme Court: “Two sexual predators, a white lady, and some racists walk into a courtroom…” Sure enough, the conservative media picked up the story.
First, on Dec. 21, The College Fix, a right-leaning online news site focusing on higher education, ran a story about how an “SDSU dean publicly criticizes ‘stench’ of conservative agenda.” The next day, Fox News ran a more extensive story on their national site which has garnered, as of this writing, over 8,000 comments.
Just so we're clear on the Right's agenda – racism good, abortion bad, money good, women bad, capitalism good, sustainability bad, stupidity good, science bad, power good, equality bad, white people good, nonwhite people bad. Stench, indeed.
And here’s the tweet she wrote when the Supreme Court began hearing the Dobbs v. Jackson case, about Mississippi’s new and draconian anti-abortion law:
First of all, is this free speech? Yes, of course! She’s tweeting from her personal Twitter account, where she can say pretty much what she wants. I’m not sure whether deeming two Supreme Court justices—presumably Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh—”sexual predators” would constitute defamation, but I’ll leave it to the lawyers here to decide. I have no quarrel with the content of her tweets vis-à-vis the First Amendment.
Is it advisable speech? Well, if I were Dean I wouldn’t have said these things for two reasons. First, it paints Casper as a hothead, and someone so woke that she sees the Rittenhouse verdict as an example of “white supremacy”. And even I, as someone opposed to the Republican Party and what it stands for, wouldn’t paint Republicans with such a broad brush. After all, the party contains a lot of women, and not all of its adherents are racists. Nor would I diss the Supreme Court that way, though I’ve argued strenuously that it’s now full of religion-soaked conservatives that have created a right-wing activist court.
But there’s another reason why Casper’s tweets were inadvisable. As the Dean with the most power, what she says, whether or not it’s prohibited by the Constitution, will have a tendency to chill the speech of faculty and students over whom she has power. Faculty and students alike will be aware of her rather extreme views, and that is liable to inhibit the speech of those who take issue with her views—especially students and faculty, whose promotions and tenure she presumably vets. This chilling of speech is the topic of the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, prohibiting the University from making official statements on politics, ideology, and morality.
But again, her statements aren’t official ones, so she didn’t violate the Kalven report’s dictates, even though no school other than ours has such a report. No, what’s wrong with Casper’s statements is that they paint her as a hotheaded and non-judicious person, which could be damaging to her, and they’re also liable to make those below her at SDSU keep their mouths shut if they’re more conservative than she. In other words, she had a right to say all that on Twitter. But, like somebody standing outside a synagogue with a “Gas the Jews” sign, her speech is legal but unwise. Deans should have better sense than to issue such stuff. But she should not be punished. She should be countered with words that are critical, like the ones I’ve just written.
Of course people complained, and the President of SDSU did what she should have done: asserted that Casper had a right to say what she did. Fox News provided a response of President Adela de la Torre:
“It is important to know that faculty speech is protected by both the First Amendment and academic freedom principles, which are advanced by the American Association of University Professors,” the school said in a statement to Fox News. “At SDSU, we encourage all members of our community, including our faculty, to engage in open discourse, as it is our responsibility as a public institution to uphold and protect free speech. We know that open dialogue may introduce conversations about topics that are uncomfortable for some.”
That’s what the University of Chicago would say in any similar case.
de la Torre’s own Twitter feed is very tame, touting the achievements and goodness of her school. She would not, I think, get embroiled in ideological issues.
Well, actually she did—at least once. The op-ed in the Times of San Diego reports this:
In 2018, shortly after President Adela de la Torre arrived, someone sought to discredit a conservative economics professor by digging up and publishing satires that this person published when he was an undergraduate over twenty years ago. Rather than defending this distinguished member of the faculty and denouncing the use of ancient juvenilia to discredit him, the university responded by condemning the professor: “The language and sentiments expressed in these posts are counter to the values of any institution which supports the principles of diversity and inclusion.”
And yes, here’s the President’s tweet from 2018, which is very different from her response to Casper’s intemperate tweets:
This apparently refers to SDSU Professor of Economics Joseph Sabia, who is reported in the school paper, The Daily Aztec, of having made offensive blog posts when he was a Ph.D. student at Cornell between 2001 and 2003—fifteen or more years before the President declared that his posts were “contrary to the values of diversity, respect, and inclusion.” The paper reports some of what he said in these posts; I’ll give two examples from the Daily Aztec (now deleted but archived). Note that the op-ed maintains that these statements were satirical, not serious:
One of the blog posts, written by economics professor Joseph Sabia, attempts to strike a metaphor between gay sex and campaigns against high-fat foods.
“In gay sex, we have an activity that is clearly leading to disastrous health consequences,” Sabia wrote in the 2002 blog post. “What rational person would engage in this sort of activity? There is only one solution – let’s tax it.”
Note that Sabia is gay!
There’s more:
Another blog post, published in March 2002, attacks the sexual promiscuity of girls in college.
“The chant of Gen. Y college babes might as well be ‘We’re here, we’re whores, get used to it! No, most girls are not actually uttering those words, but the slutty sentiments are implicit in the standard female college behavior – wearing tight shirts and pants, getting publicly drunk, hanging on every guy around, and engaging in random sex,” the blog post read.
Yes, these are stupid and offensive, even if satirical, but he had a right to say what he wanted. And SDSU could have found them before they hired him and promoted him to full professor. Now it’s too late.
The statements came to light in 2018 only when Sabia was invited to testify before a House Committee, but someone dug up the old blog posts and so the committee canceled Sabia’s appearance. That’s when an outcry brought those early statements to the notice of SDSU’s president.
Should Sabia be disciplined? Of course not: those statements constituted free speech, and only came up years after he made them. One of them is clearly satirical, as Sabia is gay. And Sabia apologized for them in 2018:
“I regret the hurtful and disrespectful language I used as a satirical college opinion writer 20 years ago,” said Sabia. “I am a gay man in a long-term, committed relationship and these charges of homophobia deeply hurt both me and my family.”
“My peer-reviewed professional work on veterans’ health, school shootings, discrimination against LGBTQ individuals, the opioid crisis, and the minimum wage are a more accurate representation of my more than 14-year career as an applied microeconomist,” Sabia continued.
So was President de la Torre justified in condemning Sabia’s blog posts as her “personal response”? Well, that’s disingenuous, because most of what she said is also an official response of SDSU published on the official SDSU News Site. The official response, though not identical to what de la Torre wrote, is so similar that it was probably written by her and tweaked by Legal (or vice versa):
The language and sentiments expressed in these posts are counter to the values of any institution which supports the principles of diversity and inclusion. SDSU unequivocally rejects any sentiment which seeks to undermine or devalue the dignity of any person based on their gender, orientation, ability, or any other difference among people which has been an excuse for misunderstanding, dissension or hatred.
Freedom of speech is the right of every individual, and that right affords the responsibility to challenge and to oppose the spread of fear and intolerance. This responsibility extends to challenging and reflecting on our own former statements and beliefs. We believe that diversity and inclusion is a journey, not a destination and that many individuals will change their perspectives over time. SDSU promotes open expression of our individuality and our diversity within the bounds of courtesy, sensitivity and respect.
Whoever wrote the statement above violated the principles of our own Kalven report and produced words that could chill free speech. Who decides what the “values of San Diego State University” are? Do ALL the faculty, alumni, and students agree with her? If you criticize Islam, is that also “counter to the values of SDSU”? And as for the President’s “personal statement” asserting that free speech is a “two way street” (always be aware of hedges like that), it’s only so because if you speak freely, you invite others to challenge you by speaking freely. You might be demonized, and that goes with the territory. But what de la Torre means by a “two way street” is that you’re free to speak, but you’d better speak responsibly!
By calling out Sabia many years after the fact, and asserting that his earlier statements violated the “values of SDSU”, President de la Torre overstepped her bounds. Yes, again what she said was not illegal, but it was certainly chilling of the speech of others. What she should have said is exactly what she said in defense of the Republican-hating speech of Professor Casper, which I repeat:
“It is important to know that faculty speech is protected by both the First Amendment and academic freedom principles, which are advanced by the American Association of University Professors,” the school said in a statement to Fox News. “At SDSU, we encourage all members of our community, including our faculty, to engage in open discourse, as it is our responsibility as a public institution to uphold and protect free speech. We know that open dialogue may introduce conversations about topics that are uncomfortable for some.”
In fact, Sabia wasn’t even on the faculty when he made the offending statements! (The President could have added that.) But a version of this same statement would have served as a response to the Sabia kerfuffle.
Or does SDSU defend only liberal faculty and condemn the speech of conservative faculty as “contrary to its values”?
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “dried2”, is a reprise from 2009. I hadn’t seen it, but didn’t know that Mo was such a wit—especially about the faith that he founded.
Today’s photos come from reader Athayde Tonhasca. He notes, “As the tank is draining, please consider a cultural/historical tour of Scotland.” And so that’s what we’ll have today.
The captions are his, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. This is part 1 of two sets.
Crossing the Strait of Corryvreckan, with the uninhabited Scarba Island in the background; this spot is not far from the island of Jura, where George Orwell finished Ninteen Eighty-four just before his death. And not far from the Corryvreckan whirlpool.
(From Wikipedia). The sphincter-tightening Corryvreckan whirlpool, the world’ third largest. Some brave – or crazy – divers plunge into this maelstrom.
JAC: I put a video of the whirlpool, and people sailing into it, below. It also explains the whirlpool:
The last working Clyde Puffer, a type of coal-fired cargo ship. These vessels were the lifeline to the western isles.
Staffa Island, about 10 km west of the Isle of Mull. Its stony columns are volcanic debris.
The Commando Memorial near Spean Bridge, dedicated to Churchill’s bad boys (commandos adhered to a “butcher and bolt” doctrine). Recruits would arrive by train at a station nearby, then march with all their equipment to the training centre, 13 km away. Not surprisingly, most volunteers could not keep up with the grueling regime, and were sent back to their units. As far as I know, the Latter-day Puritans have not tried to topple the monument yet.
Andrew Carnegie‘s birthplace in Dunfermline, today a museum. Carnegie was ruthless and cunning as any Robber Baron could be, but he was also one the greatest philanthropists of all times (“The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”). He created over 2,800 free libraries around the world, 660 of them in the UK. Davis Nasaw is the author of an excellent biography (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), unimaginatively titled Andrew Carnegie. One of the museum’s curators told me she no longer put the many American visitors straight about the pronunciation of “Carnegie”: it’s a lost cause, she said.]
The short trip from Edinburgh to Dunfermline requires going over the Forth Bridge. Opened in 1890, this World Heritage Site still holds the world’s record for the longest cantilever bridge. It is 2,467 m long, and its highest point is 110 m above high water. Its construction took 53,000 tonnes of steel, 6.5 million rivets and 57 lives. To the enduring chagrin of nationalists, the bridge was designed by two English engineers, Sir John Fowler and Sir Benjamin Baker.
Men demonstrating the cantilever principle in 1887.
Loch Ness, of Nessie fame. The lake (‘loch’ is a pretentious way of saying ‘lake’) has the largest volume of fresh water in Great Britain. But it is quite dull, really. So tourism relies heavily on the allure of the Loch Ness Monster, with no discouragement from authorities. Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online promotes this balderdash: “many sightings of the so-called Loch Ness monster have been reported, and the possibility of its existence – perhaps in the form of a solitary survivor of the long-extinct plesiosaurs – continues to intrigue many.”
Bafflingly, Sir Peter Scott, a renowned British ornithologist and conservationist, fed this nonsense by giving the imaginary monster a scientific name: Nessiteras rhombopteryx. Even more baffling, Nature published this ‘scientific work’ (Scott, P. & R. Rines. 1975. Naming the Loch Ness monster. Nature 258: 466-468). But alas, the exercise was for nought. According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, N. rhombopteryxis not valid because there is no type specimen to go with it.
Rigging of RRS Discovery, moored in Dundee. Launched in 1901, she was the last wooden three-masted ship to be built in the United Kingdom. Her first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, which carried Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first journey to the Antarctic. In 1914, Shackleton led the failed Trans-Antarctic Expedition, one of the greatest adventure stories ever. This thrilling undertaking was best narrated by Alfred Lansing (Endurance: Shackleton’s incredible voyage, 1959). Recent editions contain fantastic photos of the expedition.
A Highland cow. These are gentle and calm animals, although distance from those horns is advisable: a cow swinging her head for a leg scratch can do a lot of unintentional damage. Besides, they stink! Their shaggy hair keeps them warm in winter and protects them from the thicket and flies. The few cow’s eyes I managed to see were blue. By the way, you can’t herd one if you are intoxicated. According to the Licensing Act 1872, it is a criminal offence to be drunk whilst in possession of a loaded firearm, in charge of a carriage, a steam engine, a horse, or a cow.
Good morning on Hump Day, or, as they say in Russia, Горбатый день. Yes, it’s December 29, 2021, the fifth and penultimate day of Coynezaa. It’s National “Get on the Scales” Day, which is impossible because I don’t own scales and never did. They’re just a source of anxiety: I judge my weight gains and losses by how my pants fit.
*Even the New York Times has taken the CDC to task for ham-handedness, the latest incident being the agency’s inaccurate estimation of the prevalence of the omicron variant among all Covid cases. The revisions have been drastic and constant, and, to be sure, it’s hard to estimate given that variants must be sequenced to be reported. Still, perhaps the CDC, if there is so much uncertainty involved, might either admit that it doesn’t know, or hedge its estimates by saying they could be considerably off.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that the Omicron variant now accounts for roughly 59 percent of all Covid cases in the United States, a significant decrease from the agency’s previous estimate. The update shows how hard it is to track the fast-spreading variant in real time and how poorly the agency has communicated its uncertainty, experts said.
Last week, the C.D.C. said that Omicron accounted for approximately 73 percent of variants circulating in the United States in the week ending Dec. 18. But in its revision, the agency said the variant accounted for about 23 percent of cases that week.
In other words, Delta, which has dominated U.S. infections since summer, still reigned in the United States that week. That could mean that a significant number of current Covid hospitalizations were driven by infections from Delta, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, suggested on Twitter. Hospitalizations typically lag several weeks behind initial infections.
This matters because, as far as we know, the Delta variant is more likely to do in adults than the omicron variant. I know that these estimates are like trying to fix a car when it’s moving, but perhaps a lot of the public distrusts the CDC (and the vaccine) because they hear about these drastic revisions. The latest one, reducing quarantine time from 10 to 5 days for the asymptomatic people or those with abating symptoms, was made not for health but for public convenience, and it’s based on the “honor system.”
*Your Tax Dollars At Work Department: The New York Post (and the Times of London) report that, using government money, NASA has hired 24 theologians (that’s right, 24) Why? The Post explains (h/t Barry):
Between heaven and Earth, where do aliens fit in?
That’s the question that NASA hopes theologians at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) in Princeton, New Jersey, can answer, in a recent effort to understand how humans will react to news that intelligent life exists on other planets.
University of Cambridge religious scholar Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison, who also holds a doctorate in biochemistry from Oxford, is one of the 24 theologians enlisted to help with the project, the Times UK reported last week.
In a recent statement on the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity blog, Davison says his research so far has already seen “just how frequently theology-and-astrobiology has been topic in popular writing” during the previous 150 years.
Remember, it’s unlikely we’ll learn about life on other planets any time soon. This is just an exercise in wheel-spinning, giving theologians something to do besides interpreting works of fiction.
But wait! This isn’t the first time that NASA has given money to the enter for Theological Inquiry:
This is the latest dispatch to come in a partnership between the US space agency and the religious institute. In 2014, NASA awarded CTI a $1.1 million grant to study worshippers’ interest in and openness to scientific inquiry called the Societal Implications of Astrobiology study.
Studies have shown links between religiosity and belief in extraterrestrial intelligence. Research published in 2017 found that people with a strong desire to find meaning, but a low adherence to a particular religion, are more likely to believe aliens exist — indicating that faith in either theory may come from the same human impulse.
What about the separation of church and state? I don’t want my taxes used to line the pockets of theologians of any stripe, especially when they’re engaged in project as frivolous as these.
* Reader Ken tells us this (his quote):
“According to a Gallup poll released yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts has the American public’s highest job-approval rating among federal officials.”
Sure, he’s a “centrist” in comparison to the five harcore conservative justices to his right, but let us not forget that he’s also the author of the Court’s two majority opinions gutting the Voting Rights Act, Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, as well as a host of other horrid opinions.”
Here are the other ratings. Note that Uncle Joe tops out at 43% approval, just one point below Kamala Harris, but Mitch “666” McConnell bottoms out at 34%. What do these numbers mean?
Click screenshot to enlarge:
*”Mr. Football”, aka John Madden, died yesterday at 85. No cause of death was given—just that he died “unexpectedly.” After coaching the Oakland Raiders football team for seven years, and winning one Superbowl—as ESPN notes, “Madden compiled a 103-32-7 regular-season record, and his .759 winning percentage is the best among NFL coaches with more than 100 games—he retired from coaching at 42 and became really famous for broadcasting and announcing football on television for decades. To the American public, he was the face and voice of the National Football league. Here he is:
*According to reader Gert, who sent the link, the BBC reports that Russia’s oldest civil rights group has been, well, legally “liquidated” by the courts. It’s very sad. According to the report:
Russia’s Supreme Court has ordered the closure of International Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group.
Memorial worked to recover the memory of the millions of innocent people executed, imprisoned or persecuted in the Soviet era.
Formally it has been “liquidated” for failing to mark a number of social media posts with its official status as a “foreign agent”.
That designation was given in 2016 for receiving funding from abroad.
But in court, the prosecutor labelled Memorial a “public threat”, accusing the group of being in the pay of the West to focus attention on Soviet crimes instead of highlighting a “glorious past”.
Founded in 1989, Memorial became a symbol of a country opening up to the world – and to itself – as Russia began examining the darkest chapters of its past. Its closure is a stark symbol of how the country has turned back in on itself under President Vladimir Putin, rejecting criticism – even of history – as a hostile act.
*The words of speech pioneer Thomas Paine are now being censored on Twitter and Instagram, according to Reclaim. (h/t Anna)
Whatever the case, multiple Facebook and Instagram users were saying on Twitter on Monday and Tuesday that their posts were either removed or that they had their accounts temporarily blocked for uploading a picture of Paine and his quote, reading, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest,” that comes from Paine’s writings in the Pennsylvania Journal, 24 April, 1776.
According to Facebook’s censorship machine, that is false information, worthy of bans and deletions.
The irony of yet another instance of suppression of speech is particularly painful here (no pun intended) given Paine’s own pro-freedom, individual liberty and human rights, as well as anti-slavery stances, that made him a prominent Enlightenment figure.
Here are two examples, the first from Instagram and the second from Facebook, about suspensions, the first showing the horrifying post that violates “community standards” (apparently the community being Oceania:
This post apparently was just of the meme above, and had nothing to do with information about vaccination and health. Nevertheless, Big Brother deep-sixed it:
Here’s the entire movie Becket (1964), starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. The murder scene begins at 2:18:40, but the movie goes on a bit after that. In reality, he wasn’t killed like they show: the top of his head was sliced off with a single sword blow, and that did him in.
Here’s a representation of the Powhatan princess—the only one made during her lifetime. The long caption is from Wikipedia:
Engraved portrait of Matoaks or Rebecka, the Native American woman better known as Pocahontas, made in 1616 during her trip in England, where she died shortly after. It is the only known representation of her made during her lifetime. “It is believed that Simon van de Passe (1595-1647), the Dutch engraver, sketched her likeness in an actual sitting, then created the engraving for the Virginia Company to use in their publicity campaign. This is the closest we’ll ever get to knowing what Pocahontas looked like. […] The clothes that Pocahontas is wearing in the portrait are meant to show how well integrated she was into English life in order to reassure investors that the natives could be made to adopt English ways.” — Kevin Miller, in: Miller, Kevin (2018). Portraits. Pocahontas Lives!.
1845 – The United States annexes the Republic of Texas.
A signed first edition of this book will run you around $45,000:
1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution.
1989 – Czech writer, philosopher and dissident Václav Havel is elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia.
2003 – The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.
Sami were formerly known as Lapps, and the language was spoken in northern Scandinavia. Recordings of it still exist, but it’s not spoken as a regular language.
Notables born on this day include:
1800 – Charles Goodyear, American chemist and engineer (d. 1860)
Goodyear is the man who learned to “vulcanize” rubber by combining it with sulfur and heating it, toughening the rubber. His name lives on in the company he started. Here’s Goodyear:
1808 – Andrew Johnson, American general and politician, 17th President of the United States (d. 1875)
1876 – Pablo Casals, Catalan cellist and conductor (d. 1973)
1911 – Klaus Fuchs, German physicist and spy (d. 1988)
In both the Dick van Dyke show and her own eponymous show, MTM was fantastic. Remember this opening of The Mary Tyler Moore show? Her hat-tossing at the end of the intro has been memorialized in Minneapolis (where the show took place) with a bronze statue:
1943 – Rick Danko, Canadian singer-songwriter, bass player, and producer (d. 1999)
Remember the stories about her being found naked and wrapped up in a rug when the cops raided a party at Mick Jagger’s house (she was his girlfriend for a while)? Here’s a classic photo; caption by Wikipedia:
Michael Cooper, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Shepard Sherbell, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and Brian Jones at the Royal Concertgebouw on 1 September 1967
1894 – Christina Rossetti, English poet and hymn-writer (b. 1830)
1926 – Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and author (b. 1875)
1937 – Don Marquis, American journalist, author, and playwright (b. 1878)
If you haven’t read his poetry and picture books about archy and mehitabel, starring a typing cockroach and an old female alley cat, do so immediately. One drawing:
Henderson was second only to Duke Ellington as a composer and arranger of jazz, and also conducted an orchestra. Here’s his big band playing his “Wrappin’ It Up”, a later hit for Benny Goodmen (though Henderson wrote the song). You can hear the echoes of earlier jazz but also a distinct style that influenced Ellington:
1967 – Paul Whiteman, American violinist, composer, and conductor (b. 1890)
1986 – Harold Macmillan, English captain and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1894)
2004 – Julius Axelrod, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)
2020 – Pierre Cardin, Italian-French fashion designer (b. 1922)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili takes Andrzej’s question literally.
A: We have to return to reality.
Hili: Which way?
In Polish:
Ja: Trzeba powrócić do rzeczywistości.
Hili: Którędy?
And Szaron in a nook by the fireplace where they keep the firewood.
From Mark Plotkin. No explanation yet for this phenomenon:
And Now for Something Completely Different: People with covid jabs have been markedly less likely to die of other causes | The Economist https://t.co/K6bwUSaIi8
I believe the Webb has already deployed the solar panels, but I’m not certain:
This is where the James Webb Telescope get its power. The 20-foot solar panel the "powerhouse" of the telescope, will supply energy to all of the telescope's scientific instruments, to propulsion and communication systems.pic.twitter.com/TOIaLMKfcj
