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.
Today’s photos are from Matt Young, who often posts both prose and photos at The Panda’s Thumb. Matt’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
I was in the Galápagos Islands during the end of December 2005, and the beginning of January 2006, bearing my trusty Canon PowerShot S30, with 3 megapixels and a 3X zoom. I took one or two pictures through an 8X monocular, but other than that I was on my own.
The first thing I saw when I got off the airplane were these flamingos (Phoenicopterus ruber):
So let’s look first at some of the birds I managed to photograph. Here, first, a nestling Magnificent Frigatebird, Fregata magnificens,
A juvenile:
And an adult male (the only pictures in this batch taken through the monocular):
Reptiles. First, a couple of marine iguanas, Amblyrhynchus cristatus. I think they are males having a disagreement:
Another, more colorful one:
A Floreana Giant Tortoise, Chelonoidis niger. They differ from island to island. This species has a long neck and kind of an open collar so they can reach higher up to forage:
While I was photographing something or other with the S30, someone dashed out of a building, very excited, and asked me for the serial number of the battery in the camera. Evidently his was dead, and he would have to order a new one from Japan. I happen to have had a nearly dead battery for backup, good for 6 shots or so, so I gave it to him. He reappeared, twice, with the following turtle:
And then:
Finally, here is the last reptile I encountered, a Lava Lizard, Microlophus albemarlensis.
Welcome to Christmas Eve: Saturday, December 24, 2021: National Eggnog Day. I’ve never had a version I’ve liked: this is the libation equivalent of Christmas fruitcake. Nobody likes them, but they are proffered anyway.
Don’t forget to send me one good photo (and a few words) showing your cat or cats with a Christmas theme. The deadline is 5 pm Chicago time today.
It’s Christmas Eve, of course, with these related holidays:
Christmas Eve (Christianity) and its related observances:
Wine of the Day: The top of the label (not shown) has the year: 2016—a very ggod year for red wines in Europe, including Rioja. Muga makes top-of-the line-Riojas, and the Selección Especial is their top of the top. It was pricey ($37), but this is my special Christmas treat with a rare ribeye steak, so I figured I deserve it. I bought it because the 2016 vintage was rated highly by all sources.
And it was (I have half a bottle left): rich but not tannic, and one of the best Riojas I’ve ever had, made in the old-fashioned gutsy style. I decanted it, but five years weren’t enough to produce much sediment. I’d like to try this puppy again in four or five years, but alas, I had but one bottle, and it’s a dead soldier.
News of the Day:
*Guilty: Kimberley Potter, a former Minneapolis police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April (after the stop, the cops found that he had an outstanding warrant). The case made extra headlines because Potter is white and Wright was black, and because Potter claimed that the shooting occurred because she mistook her gun for a taser. The jury, which deliberated for 27 hours, didn’t buy that, convicting Potter of first- and second-degree manslaughter. Potter, 49, faces at least 11 years in prison, but the d.a. has asked for a longer sentence.
*Now Putin is rattling his saber even more loudly. Yesterday the evil Russian President held a four-hour press conference in which he quite emphatically blamed the U.S. and NATO for “the situation”, the “situation being that Russia continues to mass troops on the border between that country and Ukraine, while demanding notarized promises, signed in blood, that NATO won’t expand further into Eastern Europe:
Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week published sweeping demands it presented to the United States and NATO that would effectively bar all other former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, from joining or cooperating with the alliance.
Putin described the U.S. response to Russia’sproposals — what Moscow refers to as “security guarantees” — as “positive.” He added that he expects to holdnegotiations with a White House delegation about Ukraine and NATO in Geneva next month.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki underscored Putin’s comments about diplomatic talks and said the United States also believes that diplomacy is the “best path and the right path.” She dismissed the idea that either NATO or Ukraine was threatening Russia, noting that NATO is a “defensive alliance, not an aggressive alliance.”
“Facts are a funny thing, and facts make clear that the only aggression that we are seeing at the border of Russia and Ukraine is the military buildup by the Russians and the bellicose rhetoric from the leader of Russia,” Psaki said.
*Jurors are deliberating for the third day in the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos trial, but there’s no sign of a verdict yet. Holmes faces up to 20 years in jail. Likewise for the Ghislaine Maxwell trial for procuring women for underage sex with Jeffrey Epstein and his pals. That jury has deliberated for 16 hours with no verdict, and will resume deliberations on Monday. Maxwell is charged with six federal counts and faces up to 70 years in prison. Even half of that would be a life sentence, as she’s 59.
*The New York Times is still osculating the rump of faith with an unctuous op-ed by former Republican speechwriter and full-time believer Peter Wehner. The title: “Why Jesus never stopped asking questions.” Wehner has not a scintilla of doubt that Jesus existed and did and said what the New Testament reports:
Twenty centuries after his birth, Jesus still holds a revered place in the hearts of billions of people. I am among them. I imagine that it has influenced almost every area of my life, like food coloring dropped in water.
Among the things that have long fascinated people about Jesus and explain his enduring appeal is his method of dialogue and teaching. He asked a lot of questions and told a lot of stories in the form of parables. In fact, parables form about a third of Jesus’ recorded teachings. The Gospels were written decades after he died, so his questions and parables clearly left a deep impression on those who bore testimony to him.
So why so many questions, Mr. Jesus?
Kerry Dearborn, a professor emerita of theology at Seattle Pacific, told me that in terms of the ways in which Jesus communicated, “I’m convinced he used questions and stories as a means of connection and transformation — to awaken us, to whet our appetites, to invite us to draw nearer, that we might open up more fully to God and to God’s purposes in and for us.”
That’s truly profound! But wait! Yes, WAIT! There’s still more, but waiting is the point:
. . . Kate Bowler, an associate professor at Duke Divinity School who was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 35, told me, “Jesus’ tender birth and violent death leave the problem of suffering unanswered until the end of days. We must learn to live and die in the not-yetness of suffering and empire, fear and uncertainty. But our questioning hearts in the face of evil is not an affront to faith. Jesus simply says: Wait. All will be revealed.”
No thank you, Jesus. Nothing will be revealed, and I don’t much like not-yetness.
*The writer Joan Didion, whose nonfiction I much admired, died in Manhattan yesterday at age 87. The cause: complications of Parkinson’s Disease. My favorite books of hers were her two early essay collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, and her later heartbreaking account of the death of her husband and the concurrent illness of her daughter, The Year of Magical Thinking.
Health care worker Nazir Ahmed carries a cooler with vaccines and looks out from a hillock for Kashmiri shepherds to vaccinate in Tosamaidan, southwest of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, on June 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)Stephen Mudoga, 12, tries to chase away a swarm of locusts on his farm as he returns home from school, at Elburgon, in Nakuru county, Kenya, on March 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
*The Guardian reports the depredations of another genuine cat burglar. Click on the headline below to read about the thieving moggy (h/t Matthew)
This cat is a perv! An excerpt:
A New Zealand cat with a reputation as a talented thief has taken his habit to new lows by bringing home drugs and a pair of lacy black knickers, according to his owners.
Keith’s crime wave started three years ago, when he began stealing bras from nearby clothes lines and bringing home live eels from the local Heathcote river in Christchurch.
But his ambitions have grown. According to owners Ginny and David Rumbold, in recent weeks the five-year-old black cat has brought home a bong and a ziploc bag containing unidentified white powder. He also left a pair of knickers on the back fence.
. . .The Rumbolds have resorted to filling two plastic boxes outside their front gate with their cat’s ill-gotten gains so that neighbours can swing by to retrieve them. But returning the goods has proven to be little deterrent to Keith, who has a habit of repeatedly stealing the same items.
A particular favourite are the steel-toed boots of a local tradesperson. Despite the man weighing down his shoes with fluorescent green 2.5 kilogram weights, Keith still manages to haul them home unseen – one shoe at a time.
I have no idea why cats do this, unless they’re bad at hunting and need to bring something home.
Speaking of New Zealand, if you want a snarky take on the big kerfuffle about whether indigenous “ways of knowing” should be taught coequal to modern science in science class, read this short article in BFD, “Is there something in the water?”
1826 – The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy begins that night, wrapping up the following morning.
The cadets got drunk and brawled after they smuggled a barrel of whisky into the Academy, which was forbidden. When the dust settled, 70 cadets were implicated and 20 were court-martialed.
1865 – Jonathan Shank and Barry Ownby form The Ku Klux Klan.
The Klan marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928:
This happened in several years when soldiers on opposing sides met, unarmed, in no man’s land. Here’s a photo that Wikipedia labels ”
British and German troops meeting in no man’s land during the unofficial truce (British troops from the Northumberland Hussars, 7th Division, Bridoux–Rouge Banc Sector)
1943 – World War II: U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Supreme Allied Commander for the Invasion of Normandy.1
1968 – Apollo program: The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed ten lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures.
Carson wearing a beaver hat. His exploits included engaging in the genocide of Native Americans:
1822 – Matthew Arnold, English poet and critic (died 1888)
1868 – Emanuel Lasker, German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher (died 1941)
Lasker, born in Germany as the son of a Jewish cantor (religious singer), held the world’s chess championship for the longest period of anyone to date: 27 years. Here he is in Berlin in 1933:
1903 – Joseph Cornell, American sculptor and director (died 1972)
Cornell was famous for his “art boxes”: assemblages of stuff in wooden, glass-fronted boxes. Here’s one:
1905 – Howard Hughes, American businessman, engineer, and pilot (died 1976).
Hughes became a recluse and an eccentric. As Wikipedia notes,
Dietrich wrote that Hughes always ate the same thing for dinner, a New York strip steak cooked medium rare, dinner salad, and peas, but only the smaller ones, pushing the larger ones aside. For breakfast, Hughes wanted his eggs cooked the way his family cook, Lily, made them. Hughes had a “phobia about germs”, and “his passion for secrecy became a mania.”
That dinner doesn’t sound too bad, except the part about the big peas.
1907 – I. F. Stone, American journalist and author (died 1989)
It is my considered opinion that Ava Gardner was the most beautiful movie actress of all time, and one of the world’s most beautiful women. She married three times, all to famous people: Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra (during that marriage, she had an affair with Robert Mitchum and, before that was involved with Howard Hughes and many other notables [see above]). Unfortunately, she died young (67) because she had lupus but also chain-smoked and drank like a fish. She was an atheist later in life.
Here she is in the movie Show Boat(1951). Maybe I like her because she has a feline appearance.
Here’s an informative video biography:
I was once going to ask readers to list their most attractive actress and actor. Here are my choices:
Most attractive actress: Ava Gardner
Most attractive actor: Robert Redford
Please add you choices in the comments below; I really want to know them!
1940 – Anthony Fauci, American physician, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Voerderman was also a great beauty, and went to Cambridge University; how many men watched the t.v. show “Countdown”, which she co-hosted, just to see her? (I was one.) Here she is in action:
1962 – Kate Spade, American fashion designer (died 2018)
Those whose relatives thought would meet their maker on December 24 include:
1524 – Vasco da Gama, Portuguese explorer and politician, Governor of Portuguese India (born 1469)
1863 – William Makepeace Thackeray, English author and poet (born 1811)
1984 – Peter Lawford, English-American actor (born 1923)
1993 – Norman Vincent Peale, American minister and author (born 1898)
1994 – John Boswell, American historian, author, and academic (born 1947)
As I’ve said before, John (known as “Jeb” because his initials were J.E.B.) lived across the hall from me sophomore year at William and Mary. It was whispered then that he was gay, but he later came out and became a famous historian at Yale, writing about the history of homosexuals. He was also a pious Catholic. Sadly, he died of AIDS at only 47. A photo of Jeb:
1997 – Toshiro Mifune, Chinese-Japanese actor and producer (born 1920)
Here’s an overview of Mifune’s many samurai roles:
2008 – Harold Pinter, English playwright, screenwriter, director, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1930)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the pessimistic Hili looks out the window at the night:
A: What do you see there?
Hili: Darkness, my dear, darkness.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tam widzisz?
Hili: Mrok, mój drogi, mrok.
Andrzej sent a picture of Kulka gazing out at the snow (which she does not like):
Tweets from Matthew: Now here’s a female walrus where she’s not supposed to be. She should meet up with the errant walrus Wally, head north, and breed:
Freya – the WALRUS first seen in Germany, Netherlands & Northumberland – spending her second week with us here in #Shetland. This morning she was at Muckle Roe where we watched her feeding in the shallows and hauling out on offshore rocks. An absolutely magical experience. pic.twitter.com/djiMjdeNOY
I hadn’t realized that if, in the UK, if you express lawful speech, you can still be put in police records for creating a “hate incident”, described by the first link below (from the BBC) this way:
A hate incident is “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice”, according to the College of Policing’s guidance on hate crimes.
(Note that it’s the perception of the “victim”—or anyone else—that makes it an “incident”. Intention itself doesn’t matter, just the perception of intention.)
And a Brit named Harry Miller, a retired policeman, created a “hate incident” by issuing, in 2018 and 2019, a number of tweets that were considered “transphobic”, including one that questioned whether transgender women were “real women”. Another tweet said “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.” That was reported as another transphobic hate tweet.
So someone complained, the cops showed up at Miller’s house and questioned him, and although his speech was legal, a record and a report of Miller’s behavior was made by the police.
It was recorded on a national database as a non-crime hate incident.
But the Court of Appeal ruled on Monday the guidance was wrongly used and it had a “chilling effect” on Mr Miller’s freedom of speech.
Speaking outside court, Mr Miller, from Lincolnshire, said being offensive was “one of the cornerstones of freedom”.
“Being offensive is not, cannot and should not be an offence,” he said.
“Only when speech turns to malicious communication or targeted harassment against an individual should it be a problem.”
That, in effect, is what the First Amendment in the U.S. stipulates. While Twitter can take down Miller’s tweets as “violating community standards,” the government, in the form of the police, cannot prosecute you, nor can it give you a permanent record for doing nothing illegal.
Miller first challenged Humberside Police’s actions at the High Court, which ruled in February 2020 that the force’s response was unlawful and a “disproportionate interference” with Mr Miller’s right to freedom of expression; but also ruled that the guidance itself was legal, served “legitimate purposes” and was “not disproportionate.” That’s when Miller took his case to the higher Court of Appeals.
And the Court of Appeals just ruled for Miller (Britain’s Free Speech Union helped with the appeal):
The Court of Appeal said national rules set by the College of Policing had placed too much emphasis on the perception of transphobic hostility, despite no evidence recorded by police.
Dame Victoria Sharp, one of England’s most senior judges, said: “The net for ‘non-crime hate speech’ is an exceptionally wide one which is designed to capture speech which is perceived to be motivated by hostility… regardless of whether there is evidence that the speech is motivated by such hostility.
“The volume of non-crime hate speech is enormous and the police do not have the resources or the capacity to investigate all the complaints that are made.
“There is nothing in the guidance about excluding irrational complaints, including those where there is no evidence of hostility and little, if anything, to address the chilling effect which this may have on the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.”
The court heard the guidance had been revised with updates including “a strong warning against police taking a disproportionate response to reports of a non-crime hate incident”.
However, Dame Victoria added: “In my opinion [the revisions] do not go very far or not nearly far enough to address the chilling effect of perception-based recording more generally.”
An analysis of what all this means was made by Dominic Casciani, the Home and Legal Correspondent for the BBC:
Today’s ruling backs Harry Miller’s legal right to speak his mind and potentially cause offence – a freedom that he says is fundamental in the battle of ideas in a democratic society.
His victory is a headache for the College of Policing, which now has to come up with new “safeguards” to ensure that any future recording of non-crime hate incidents does not disproportionately interfere with the legal right to speak one’s mind.
That means rethinking guidance that dates back to the fallout from the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Mr Miller says it was obvious back then what the police should have been recording: genuinely hateful gestures that were a prelude to awful crimes. He urges them today to remember that lesson and to focus on rooting out hate speech – rather than taking it upon themselves to police provocative thought and debate.
So the College of Policing has been called off, and has to rethink what it does vis-à-vis “hate speech”.
What this has come down to is a tentative ruling that takes British law on speech closer to the U.S. First Amendment, but it’s not all the way there yet. For example, saying “gas the Jews” is legal in America, but almost certainly not in Britain. And posting a video on YouTube of a dog making a Nazi salute might violate YouTube’s standards, but it’s not illegal in America. But in the UK it is, for in 2018 Mark Meechan was convicted of a “hate crime” in Scotland for an action that caused physical damage to nobody. It only hurt feelings. As the Washington Post reported:
[Meechan was] guilty of a charge under the Communications Act that he posted a video on social media and YouTube that was “anti-semitic and racist in nature” and was aggravated by religious prejudice.
Meechan was fined £800 pounds, which was seized from his bank account. I’m sure you remember the Nazi Dog Incident.
I don’t see America as the best country in the world, but it is one of the best for freedom of speech, and is superior to the UK in dealing with “hate speech”. For “hate speech” is a slippery term, and there is no good reason I can see for someone training a dog to make a Nazi salute or emitting tweets that weren’t really transphobic (though truly tranphobic tweets, like, “transsexuals shouldn’t have the same legal rights as cis people”, would also be legal). The issue is whether society incurs damage by allowing such speech, or whether it’s damaged more by chilling such speech. My view aligns with that of Mill and Hitchens, and goes along with the American court’s interpretation of the First Amendment: unless your speech creates immediate, predictable, and imminent harm to people or property, it is legal. Private companies can ban it, but the government cannot.
Miller was clearly being “chilled” by the UK’s hate-speech policy. If the government can decide that speech that hurts nobody, and is merely offensive, is illegal or can give you a mark against your name for perpetuating a “hate incident”, then speech has the potential to be impeded. And, as we know in these fraught days, nearly anything can be seen as hateful or offensive.
There’s a time when “blarney” becomes crazy and harmful, and we have two cases that appeared at the same time. The first represents the New York Times‘s recent presentation of woo in extenso, with almost no critical remarks. The editors are soft on astrology, they’re soft on dowsing, they’re soft on religion, and now they’re soft on a mixture of religion and spiritual healing. Click the screenshot to read:
As the article reports, there are a number of faith healers in Ireland who have what they call “the cure”. It’s nothing new; it’s the old “laying on of hands” by believers, often accompanied by prayer, holy water, etc., to effect cures. The guy in the photo above, Joe Gallagher in Pullough, is the seventh son of a seventh son (not that rare in Catholic Ireland, but increasingly rarer), and this is supposed to give him special healing abilities. Here’s how the author, Megan Specia, describes “The Cure”:
Mr. Gallagher is just one of hundreds of men and women across Ireland who are healers, or have “the cure,” an approach to health care that interweaves home remedies with mysticism, superstition, religion and a sprinkle of magic.
It’s part of a belief in folk medicine, curing charms and faith healers that is still a way of life for many in Ireland, if a fading one.
Some who are believed to have the cure are seventh sons, like Mr. Gallagher, a birth order long thought to bestow special powers.
Others are keepers of family customs that range from rituals, prayers and charms to herbal tinctures, offered up as treatments for everything from burns and sprains to rashes and coughs.
Since his childhood, people have sought out Mr. Gallagher. “I think you must have the belief,” he said, acknowledging that the process doesn’t always work. “I wouldn’t say that I can do miracles.”
Indeed!
People come from miles around to see healers like Gallagher, who are reputed to cure things like:
burns
sprains
coughs
rashes
warts
shingles
ringworm (in dogs, too!)
An example:
Bart Gibbons, 57, who owns a grocery store in the village of Drumshanbo in County Leitrim, has a cure for warts that was passed down from his father and his father’s father before him.
It involves taking a bundle of rushes and saying a combination of prayers as they are held over the affected area. Then, he buries the reed-like plants. The belief is that when they decay, the warts are gone.
They don’t get paid, so at least that’s good, but have they done controlled trials with these shamans? I don’t think so. At least they’re cheaper than doctors, but isn’t there a form of national healthcare in Ireland? And, as you know, warts sometimes go away by themselves.
The only comments that are negative in this longish piece are these:
Attributing positive outcomes of the cure to something like a placebo effect makes sense to Ronald Moore, an associate professor of public health at University College Dublin who has spent years researching folk cures and who emphasized there is little scientific evidence for the efficacy of these practices.
Well, then, why not just give the people sugar pills? And the statement above is quickly followed by this:
But that doesn’t mean the medical community completely dismisses potential benefits, with some doctors known to send their patients for the cure, often for skin issues or other minor troubles.
“Modern practices on the one hand pooh pooh this, as scandalous and outrageous and quackery,” Dr. Moore said. “But in fact, and in reality, they utilize it.”
Those doctors are shameful. At least they don’t send patients to the Irish shamans for maladies like cancer and heart disease. (Shamans may, however, try to cure people of more serious stuff.)
Although the practice is “deeply religious”, it works on dogs, too! Can dogs lose their ailments by “The Cure”? I thought Edward Feser maintained that dogs don’t have souls. But here’s the last picture of healing in the piece; I’ve included the paper’s caption. The picture makes me laugh out loud: a real LOL:
Mr. Keane performing the cure for ringworm on one of the dogs from a neighboring house in Cloghans.Credit…Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times
Once again the New York Times is touting quackery by publicizing it and only bringing in one lone dissenter, who is immediately countered by a physician enthusiast. What is going on with this newspaper?
****************
This article with its hilarious title is a serious piece in another Times—the Irish Times. Being a Catholic coutry and all, I suppose papers there have more article like this one. If you read the piece, you’ll see that “lay theologian” (indeed!) Brendan Butler is deeply besotted with God and baby Jesus, the “eternal Cosmic Christ.” And Jesus is said to be the “culmination of 13.8 billion years of evolution.” This implies that evolution in humans has stopped, but yet we’re still evolving and so is every other species. Read and weep to find out why Jesus is the End of Evolution:
Okay, here’s the whole scientific explanation of why Jesus is the culmination of evolution (it’s part of a longer piece that sounds like a sermon):
How to reconcile a human and a divine nature in one person became the subject of controversy until it was resolved in 431 at the council of Ephesus by declaring Mary as ‘Theotokos’ – the mother of God.
But this led to another question: why did the eternal creator God become a mortal and fragile human creature? Various explanations were put forward, with the most common being that it was necessary for God the Son to become human and die on a cross for the sins of the human race.
However, another explanation associated with the Franciscan theologian John Dun Scotus, fits in with our post-Darwin, post-Einstein and post-Hubble world. In this view the baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was the culmination of 13.8 billion years of the evolutionary process.
He was born with the substance of the stars and molecules of prehistoric life present and active in his body. In this Christology the baby is not just a child of the universe but the eternal Cosmic Christ who released that primal energy which burst forth and created the universe.
Evolutionary process
This Christ remained an integral part of the evolutionary process, sustaining it and driving it forward towards greater and greater complexity until the apex of that movement emerged as homo sapiens.
It was always God’s plan that the creator Christ, already present in the universe as an invisible presence, would become fully human and be born as a human being.
I think Mr. Butler should take a course in evolution, where he’d learn that there is no evidence that evolution is teleological, and that it was going on for 3.5 billion years before Baby Jesus was born. Who sustained evolution until then? But I’m pleased to learn that Jesus, like the rest of us, was made of billion-year-old carbon. Still, he’s got to get himself back to the garden (of Eden).
It’s just tripe, of course, but why would the Irish times give a millimeter of space to stuff like this?
Below: the author with the paper’s caption; Butler is apparently Jesus’s ghostwriter:
Brendan Butler is a lay theologian and author of My Story by Jesus of Nazareth
I had a bit of a hard time fully understanding this absorbing 20-minute video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, but I think I get most of it. The main problem I had was understanding the notion of “superdeterminism” in quantum mechanics (QM) and what it really means for things like the famous double-slit experiment. But, like reader Darrell, who sent it to me, I think you need to listen. She might convince you that quantum mechanics isn’t really indeterministic!
Hossenfelder is intrigued by the notion of libertarian free will (which she rejects) and maintains that a belief in this sort of dualism was held by many physicists working on QM. As you probably know, interpretations of quantum mechanics have differed historically, with some having maintained that QM is truly indeterministic. (Hossenfelder defines “determinism” as the system in which “everything that happens is a result of what happens before”.) Most advocates of QM think that it is not deterministic, but inherently indeterministic. Einstein never believed that, rejecting that idea with his famous assertion that God doesn’t play dice with the universe.
As far as I knew, “Bell’s theorem” and subsequent tests of it completely rejected any determinism of quantum mechanics and verified it as inherently indeterministic. But, as Hossenfelder argues in this video, this is not so. She argues that a sort of “superdeterminism” holds in quantum mechanics, so that, in the end, everything in the universe is deterministic according to the known laws of physics.
I’m not quite sure what “superdeterminism” means is on the level of particles, but it appears to be something like this: “What a quantum particle does depends on what measurement will take place.” And once the measurement system is specified, somehow a quantum particle is determined to behave in a certain way. That’s what I don’t get.
But my inability to understand it may be because the idea of superdeterminism is inherently mathematical (she gives a simply equation for “superdeterminism of quantum physics”). Like in QM itself, everyday interpretations of superdeterminism might not make sense. Any reader who understands the concept is invited to explain it below. (Briefly, if possible!)
At any rate, Hossenfelder agrees with Einstein: there is no dice-playing, and quantum mechanics is deterministic. But she still rejects libertarian free will (see here, here, and here).
But the part that especially interested me beyond superdeterminism is that many physicists rejected such deterministic interpretations of QM simply from their own emotional commitment to dualistic free will. For if determinism be true everywhere, say some physicists, then free will cannot be true. Indeed, Bell himself believed in libertarian, you-could-have-chosen-otherwise free will, while Einstein, a hardnosed determinist, didn’t. As I’ve reported before, physicist, atheist, and Nobbel Laureate Steve Weinberg also believed in libertarian free will. He sat next to me at the Moving Naturalism Forward meeting in Stockbridge, MA several years ago, and after I gave my spiel on the nonexistence of libertarian free will, Weinberg told me that he didn’t accept that his behaviors were determined by the laws of physics.
What I find fascinating is that physicists were conditioning their ideas and research directions on a philosophical belief that humans must have libertarian free will. Perhaps that impeded the ideas of “superdeterminism”.
I have no dog in the indeterminism vs. superdeterminism interpretation of QM; I don’t know enough. That’s my fault, and it’s probably my fault that I don’t fully understand Hossenfelder’s explanation of superdeterminism in the video. She is a great communicator of science, and except for that puzzling bit, I greatly enjoyed her clear explanation. (A transcript of her video is here.)
So I’m with Hossenfelder in our rejection of libertarian free will, which is the most common view of free will. I don’t give a hoot about compatibilism, which I see as a matter of semantics that is far less relevant than accepting the implications that pure naturalism—including any quantum indeterminism—has for society and for human behavior.
Weigh in below, but watch the video first. It’s excellent, especially in how it interweaves science with an a priori personal commitment to libertarian free will.
And if “superdeterminism” of QM is now widely accepted, let me know.
Today we have photos from Emilio d’Alise, and they’re of my favorite bird: the mallard! Emilio’s intro is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
These mallards were all photographed in Monument, Colorado, on a pond behind the Public Library. There is a large population of ducks and geese that inhabit the pond nearly year-round, in part because people feed them.
First, don’t forget to send me a Christmas-themed cat photo as I requested yesterday evening. A few words of explanation (and the moggy’s name) will also be useful. Thanks!
Welcome to Thursday, December 23, 2021: National Pfeffernüße Day. These are iced gingerbread cookies (see photo below and go here for a recipe), and I love them.
It’s also Festivus, National Re-gifting Day, National Roots Day (about your ancestry, and I’ll soon have my results from 23AndMe), as well as Night of the Radishes in Oxaca, Mexico, Tibb’s Eve in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Tom Bawcock’s Eve in one of my favorite British towns, Mousehole(pronounced “Muzzle”) in Cornwall. Tom Babcock was a fisherman who went out in a storm to help catch fish to relieve a town famine. In his honor, the residents eat a most disgusting pastry: Stargazy Pie, a fish pie with fish heads protruding from the pie!:
The Night of the Radishes celebrates the radish in Oaxaca, native to China but introduced by the Spanish into Mexico (colonialism and cultural appropriation). People compete to carve the best radish, all of them displayed in Oaxaca’s town square (tonight!) Note the radish tacos!
News of the Day:
*Two pieces of good Covid-10 news in the face of the Christmas surges and lockdowns. First, research in South Africa shows that the omicron variant may be less severe than thought—even less severe than the delta variant
. . . A study by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) suggested that those infected with Omicron were much less likely to end up in hospital than those with the Delta strain. read more
COVID-19 cases also appear to have peaked in South Africa’s Gauteng province, where Omicron first emerged, it said.
The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, compared South African Omicron data from October and November with data about Delta between April and November.
“In South Africa, this is the epidemiology: Omicron is behaving in a way that is less severe,” the NICD’s Professor Cheryl Cohen said.
But caveat emptor. These results are preliminary and not yet published.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s drug for adults and children ages 12 and older with a positive COVID-19 test and early symptoms who face the highest risks of hospitalization. That includes older people and those with conditions like obesity and heart disease, though the drug is not recommended for patients with severe kidney or liver problems. Children eligible for the drug must weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kilograms).
The pills from both Pfizer and Merck are expected to be effective against omicron because they don’t target the spike protein where most of the variant’s worrisome mutations reside.
. . . Patients will need a positive COVID-19 test to get a prescription. And Paxlovid has only proven effective if given within five days of symptoms appearing. With testing supplies stretched, experts worry it may be unrealistic for patients to self-diagnose, get tested, see a physician and pick up a prescription within that narrow window.
See the third tweet at the bottom for what may be the best Covid-19news of all.
*The Washington Post has a report, a photo, and a link to a paper describing the best preserved unhatched dinosaur ever found (h/t Paul). First, the stunning photo of the fossil, an ovoraptor found in China.
(From the article): Nicknamed Baby Yingliang, one of the most well-preserved dinosaur embryos in the world suggests that dinosaurs tucked their heads before hatching, a practice that is common among modern birds. (Lida Xing/University of Birmingham/AFP/Getty Images)
And some text:
In one of the most well-preserved dinosaur embryos ever found, a baby dinosaur curled its back and tucked its head in a position that is similar to modern birds before they hatch, a discovery that scientists say could shed new light on how dinosaurs developed in their early stages.
A peer-reviewed article, published Tuesday by iScience, said the dinosaur had its head placed between its legs and under its body, with its back bent along the eggshell. The research team said this position, previously not found in any non-avian dinosaurs, is comparable to pre-tucking in a bird embryo like that of a chicken.
By tucking their heads under their wings in the days before hatching, chicks can stabilize them and have a better chance of surviving the birthing process, the paper explained, adding that this behavior was thought to be unique in birds but now may be traced to dinosaurs.
*The two big trials of the moment, those of Ghislaine Maxwell and Elizabeth Holmes, are now in the hands of jurors. The Miami Herald reports that the jury’s repeated questions to the judge indicates that they’re carefully scrutinizing the testimony of the accusers (who say they were procured by Maxwell for sex when underage), and these questions have heartened the defense attorneys. The jury has taken a break for Christmas.
In the Holmes case, the Washington Post reports that the jurors asked the judge whether they could take the 39 pages (!) of jury instructions home with them to “review them at length.” No dice:
The request was swiftly denied by the judge.
“All deliberations must occur in the jury room,” Judge Edward J. Davila said he would write in response to the jurors. “No.”
Lawyers on both sides agreed with his decision. The jurors have three months of evidence to sift through while considering their decision on whether Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing start-up Theranos, should be convicted on 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The jury is scheduled to be off Wednesday and reconvene Thursday.
*I didn’t know about the Netflix show “Emily in Paris,” but an old Paris hand, Jason Farago, takes it apart in the NYT in one of the funniest nasty reviews I’ve seen. What really twists Farago’s shorts is that they filmed an episode in one of his favorite and little-known bistros, now sure to attract hordes of tourists. I feel his pain! A bit of the review:
I have friends who say they watch idiotic television like this to “turn their brains off,” but I had the opposite sensation: My brain was so untaxed it started working overtime. When I wasn’t scrolling on my phone, I found myself involuntarily writing new episodes that could bring a little real Paris into the Place Emily. After an hour they just started writing themselves: Emily mistypes an address in her taxi app, and ends up at an Éric Zemmour rally. Emily’s best friend from Dubai visits, but her head scarf causes a commotion at Savoir …
But Paris, in “Emily in Paris,” is less a city than a series of convertible backdrops. Lunch at the Café Marly at the Louvre. Coffee on the roof of Galeries Lafayette. Drinks at the bar of the Lutetia Hotel. Above all there is the Place Emily, the perfect little left-bank hideaway, where our American takes over my square for her own private dinner party.
1688 – As part of the Glorious Revolution, King James II of England flees from England to Paris, France after being deposed in favor of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.
1783 – George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.
It was between identical twins, and so was a success—the recipient lived 8 more years and died of nephritis from his pre-transplant condition. This was the first time surgery had ever been performed on a patient (the donor) without anything being wrong. In 1990 Murray shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology & Medicine with E.D. Thomas for work on transplantation.
Here’s the transplantation team: (left to right): Harrison, Merrill, Murray
1968 – The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after eleven months of internment in North Korea.
The Pueblo is now an anti-American museum moored in Pyongyang. Here’s a DPRK propaganda photo of the prisoners, secretly flipping off the photographer:
(From Wikipedia): North Korean Propaganda Photograph of prisoners of USS Pueblo. Photo and explanation from the Time article that blew the Hawaiian Good Luck Sign secret. The sailors were flipping the middle finger, as a way to covertly protest their captivity in North Korea, and the propaganda on their treatment and guilt. The North Koreans for months photographed them without knowing the real meaning of flipping the middle finger, while the sailors explained that the sign meant good luck in Hawaii.
1972 – The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days, surviving by cannibalism.
13 survivors were ultimately rescued after two of them first climbed the peak behind this memorial as the crash site, but had to return. The rescue occurred when two hiked down and saw some men across a river. They threw a letter, wrapped around a rock, across the river, which led to the rescue.
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
The note that brought rescue:
1986 – Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.
Amazing: they were aloft for 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds. Here’s a 13-minute video of the flight from start to finish:
Notables born on this day include:
1745 – John Jay, American jurist and politician, 1st Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1829)
1805 – Joseph Smith, American religious leader, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement (d. 1844)
1854 – Henry B. Guppy, English botanist and author (d. 1926)
1902 – Norman Maclean, American author and academic (d. 1990)
Maclean was one of our: a professor of English at the University of Chicago. He’s best known for his wonderful book, A River Runs Through It.
1929 – Chet Baker, American jazz trumpet player, flugelhorn player, and singer (d. 1988)
Here’s Chet Baker and his Quintet in Belgium in 1961:
1952 – William Kristol, American journalist, publisher, and political activist/pundit
Tartt (below) wrote The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2013. I’ve been contemplating reading it—should I? Tartt is five feet tall and dresses in men’s clothes, sometimes with combat boots. Here she is interviewed by Charlie Rose:
1967 – Carla Bruni, Italian-French singer-songwriter and model
Those who took their last breath on December 23 include:
1939 – Anthony Fokker, Indonesia-born Dutch pilot and engineer, designed the Fokker Dr.I and Fokker D.VII (b. 1890)
Right before he was arrested in 1945, he tried to shoot himself in the heart but missed and survived, only to be hanged in three more years. Here’s after his botched suicide attempt. Wikipedia says this:
After recovering from his injuries, Tojo was moved to Sugamo Prison. While there, he received a new set of dentures, made by an American dentist, into which the phrase “Remember Pearl Harbor” had been secretly drilled in Morse code. The dentist ground away the message three months later.
Beria was a nasty piece of work. As Stalin’s head of the secret police (NKVD), he was responsible for the death of thousands, including 22,000 Polish intellectuals and soldiers shot in the Katyn Forest in 1940 (Stalin always claimed that the Nazis had done it). He was also a sexual predator who kidnapped and raped hundreds of women, and killed many of them. In the end, Beria was tried for treason shortly after Stalin’s death and shot; reportedly on his knees and begging for his life.
Here’s the evil man:
And here’s an important document, the order for the Katyn Massacre (caption from Wikipedia):
The first page of Beria’s notice (oversigned by Stalin and several other officials), to kill approximately 15,000 Polish officers and some 10,000 more intellectuals in the Katyn Forest and other places in the Soviet Union
1973 – Charles Atlas, Italian-American bodybuilder and model (b. 1892)
Remember these ads for his body-building system?:
2007 – Oscar Peterson, Canadian pianist and composer (b. 1925)
2013 – Mikhail Kalashnikov, Russian general and weapons designer, designed the AK-47 rifle (b. 1919)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili again bemoans the death of reason. Someone give her Pinker’s new book!
Hili: Skepticism is a niche for reasonable people.
A: A tiny niche.
In Polish:
Hili Sceptycyzm jest niszą rozsądnych.
Ja: Bardzo malutką niszą.
From Divy:
From Bruce:
From somewhere on Facebook (I can’t recall): a woman sharing a snack with a gorgeous mallard hen:
From Ken, who says, “This one should send the anti-vaxxers into lower earth orbit.” What could go wrong?
A Swedish company has come up with a microchip that can be inserted under the skin so that users can carry their Covid passports in their arm. pic.twitter.com/Vkl82q7dGR
Also from Ken, who adds, “One needn’t be able to read the past-performance charts in The Daily Racing Form to figure this one out”. The first group are infection cases; the second group is deaths.
Latest CDC data by vaccine status:
Unvaccinated: 451 cases per 100k Vaccinated: 134 cases per 100k Boosted: 48 cases per 100k
Unvaccinated: 6.1 deaths per 100k Vaccinated: 0.5 deaths per 100k Boosted: 0.1 deaths per 100k
Tweets from Matthew, who love mimicry as much as I do. And I have NEVER heard of a feather mimic! Note that the video was taken by the late great Andreas Kay, naturalist nonpareil and rediscoverer of my eponymous frog Atelopus coynei.
An incredible feather mimic caterpillar from Ecuador
even taking steps back periodically to give the appearance of a dropped feather, moving in the breeze.
