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.
As we Boomers age, we’re going to suffer the loss of many musical idols of our youth. The latest was Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac fame, who passed away on Wednesday. She was 79, which is close to a reasonable life expectancy, but still. . .
From the NYT:
Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said that she died at a hospital but did not specify its location. The statement also did not give the cause of her death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.
Just for grins, here’s the list of the top internet searches that brought people to this site in the last couple of days:
The Russian one translates as “atheist Mark Tegmark”. I have no comment on #4 save that if I were a Catholic priest, I’d respond, “It depends where you touch.”
UPDATE: Elliott may have been “de-fired”, an addendum to the video says this:
As of yesterday my student ID was listed as invalid. I made this video because my assumption was that they terminated me due to my speaking out. Tonight, my ID was reinstated and I was able to login again. Please see my subsequent video update for details.
I suspect that Antioch had second thoughts about how firing her would look. Regardless, the counselor training degree program should be revamped.
_____________________
About a week ago I wrote about Leslie Elliiott, a graduate student in mental-health counseling at Antioch University in Seattle—part of the whole Antioch College consortium. Elliott had posted a video on YouTube about how her fellow students were being taught to force their counseling practice into a racial or identitarian mold, no matter what their problems. Her complaints, which you can see at the site linked above, were reasonable ones: she wanted to counsel people based on their needs, not cram a progressive ideology down the throats of vulnerable patients.
Further, Elliott refused to adhere to a pledge included in her course syllabi, a pledge I mentioned earlier:
The pledge, which Elliott says is now included in most syllabuses, reflects the social justice mission of Antioch. It states: “I acknowledge that racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, ageism, nativism, and other forms of interpersonal and institutionalized forms of oppression exist. I will do my best to better understand my own privileged and marginalized identities and the power that these afford me.” Antioch added the statement starting in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.
What Elliott got for her efforts, as I wrote at the time, was not unexpected but still reprehensible. .
. . . a response from Antioch sent to all students in the college—save Elliott (what a rookie move!)—implicitly singling her out for promulgating “white supremacy” and “transphobia”. Here we have the college acting like an online social-justice mob. The author of the college’s email, and presumably at least part of the “Commitment to Social Justice” statement, is Shawn Fitzgerald, CEO of Antioch’s Seattle campus and Dean of the Graduate School of Counseling, Psychology, and Therapy.
Clearly the “one person who posted online” is Eliott, who, according to her own school, stands accused of transphobia, white supremacy, and “harmful ideologies”, as well as “hate speech”. The statement was certainly inspired by Elliott’s video above. Elliott has posted another video detailing what’s below and giving her response.
Finally, Elliott wrote to the administration explicitly saying she would not stop calling out Antioch’s misguided social justice and asking them not to retaliate against her.
But they did. She was just kicked out of Antioch. She made a short YouTube video recounting what happened to her, which you can see below.
I don’t have any reason to doubt what she says, and it’s shameful that Antioch let her go, much less kicking her out without telling her directly. They’re not only quashing her freedom of speech, but promulgating an ideology that could be harmful to the patients of their students. And they’re cowards.
I wonder if she could sue them, but of course, if she returned to the school, that lawsuit would make her life.
The Reith Lectures, named after Lord Reith, the BBC’s first director-general, are intended, as Wikipedia notes, “to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC each year invites a leading figure to deliver the lectures. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about issues of contemporary interest.”
Delivered on the radio, they’ve been going yearly since 1946, when Bertrand Russell gave the first one. (Only one year was missed—1992, when the Beeb couldn’t find anyone to deliver the talk). Each speaker customarily gives four talks.
This year, however, there will be four Reith lecturers—the first time that more than one speaker has done the series. As the BBC’s Radio 4 page on the lectures notes:
Four speakers will feature in this year’s BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lord Rowan Williams Darren McGarvey and Dr Fiona Hill will deliver lectures inspired by Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech. Each speaker will explore one of Roosevelt’s themes: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
The first one is online now, and you’d best listen soon as it will vanish. It’s by acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and, according to reader David, who sent me the link, “She’s a powerful and eloquent speaker, and as I listened to her, I couldn’t help thinking of Christopher Hitchens and his robust defence of the same ideas.” Well, listen for yourself. I’m doing so at the moment, and I like it very much.
Click on screenshot below to go to the “listen” link. There’s a brief introduction, and the lecture proper begins at 3:45. It’s short (about half an hour), and finishes at 34:23. It’s followed by another half hour of questions by the interlocutor and the audience. If the link disappears, email me for a substitute.
The talk is anti-authoritarian, and Adichie is uncompromising in her defense of free speech (reminiscent of Mill) and in her criticism of book banning. I can’t say that she’s a new incarnation of Hitchens—whose eloquence can never be equaled—but she is, as David says, “powerful and eloquent” in her own way.
One quote from her talk:
“Literature is increasingly viewed through ideological rather than artistic lenses. Nothing demonstrates this better than the recent phenomenon of ‘sensitivity readers’ in the world of publishing—people whose job it is to cleanse unpublished manuscripts of potentially offensive words. This, in my mind, negates the very idea of literature.”
She also takes up (and rejects) the mantra that “speech is violence”.
In today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “play”, Mo expresses approbation for the World Cup as a showcase for Islam. Jesus sets him straight, but Mo never learns. . .
Dear readers, we are in serious trouble, for the photo tank is nearly dry. If you have good wildlife pics (or landscape or travel photos), send them in—pronto. Thanks!
Today’s batch comes from UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison. Her notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Fall Harvest
This fall, unusual numbers of Lewis’s Woodpeckers (Melanerpes lewis) descended upon some of our riparian oak woodlands around Davis, California. These spectacular birds live in loose social groups that shift locations over time. They catch flying insects rather than drilling for grubs like other woodpeckers, and in fall they also harvest and cache acorns. In early October they were busy at both activities.
Acorn gathering puts them in competition with the much commoner Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus), which form close-knit colonies of related individuals that raise their young communally, and which create “granary trees” studded with thousands of stored acorns. In early October when the Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) acorns ripened, there was much chattering and chasing between the two woodpecker species.
By mid-November the hubbub seemed to have calmed, and the Lewis’s Woodpeckers already appeared to be eating cached acorns. I’ll be curious to see how the two species interact as winter progresses. Will there be cache robbing?
Lewis’s Woodpecker with a partly eaten acorn:
California Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma californica) gather acorns and cache them in the ground, where sometimes the acorns turn into seedlings instead of bird food.
California Scrub-Jay with Oregon Oak (Quercus garryana) acorn:
This tiny Bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) was in possession of a tiny acorn:
This Nuttall’s Woodpecker (Picoides nuttalli) was eating Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversiloba) berries:
Overwintering birds have now arrived, including this White-Throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), a species abundant in the eastern US but uncommon in California:
Neotropical migrants have left, except for a few late-lingering individuals like this Townsend’s Warbler (Setophaga townsendi):
Phainopeplas (Phainopepla nitens) are year-round residents of our oak-lined stream banks. They are found mainly in Mexico and Central and South America, and reach their northern range limit in our area:
White-Tailed Kites (Elanus leucurus) are another year-round resident that adds an exciting southern element to our local fauna:
Greetings! It’s a Hump Day again (“Ngày bướu” in Vietnamese): Wednesday, November 30, 2022. Tomorrow it will be December. But today is National Mousse Day. Here’s a chocolate moose:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the November 30 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The railway workers’ unions have been fruitlessly negotiating with railroad management for two years, and a strike had become imminent. Now, according to Nancy Pelosi, Congress is set to to pass a bill that will avert a potentially disastrous strike (think supply chain) but by giving the unions a lot of what they want. And yes, Congress can do this:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said that House lawmakers will take up legislation on Wednesday to stop a nationwide strike by railroad workers, saying Congress needs to intervene to prevent devastating job losses.
In a press conference, Mrs. Pelosi said that the House will aim to quickly pass legislation that accepts the original labor union agreement negotiated by Biden administration officials plus additional railway worker benefits added from subsequent negotiations.
“I don’t like going against the ability of unions to strike, but weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike. Jobs will be lost, even union jobs will be lost, water will not be safe, product will not be going to market,” she said Tuesday after meeting with President Biden and congressional leaders of both parties at the White House. “That must be avoided.”
. . .Under the Railway Labor Act, Congress can make both sides accept an agreement that their members have voted down. Lawmakers also can order negotiations to continue and delay the strike deadline for a certain period, or they can send the dispute to outside arbitrators.
Any House-approved legislation would also need passage in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said at Tuesday’s press conference that he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) have agreed to work together quickly for the legislation to pass the Senate.
The unions don’t like it (they wanted the issue to play out normally), and neither do some Republicans and Democrats in the House. But when push comes to shove, the Democrats will fall into line, and the bill will also pass the Senate given that both Chuck Schumer and Mitch “Tortuga” McConnell have said they’ll work together to ensure passage. Bipartisanship in the cause of union-busting!
*Here’s bipartisanship to protect LGBTQ rights. The Senate voted yesterday to legalize same-sex marriage, which is already legal countrywide, but needed a law to protect it from the dark intentions of Clarence Thomas, who alluded in the abortion-bill hearings to gay rights being in danger as well. And the vote was bipartisan: 61-36 to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act:
The 61-to-36 vote put the bill on track to become law in the final weeks before Republicans assume the majority in the House of Representatives at the start of the new Congress in January. It marked one of the final major legislative achievements for Democrats before Republicans shift the focus in the House to conducting investigations of President Biden’s administration and family members.
The bill must now win final approval by the House in a vote expected as soon as next week, which would clear it for Mr. Biden, who said he looked forward to signing it alongside the bipartisan coalition that helped shepherd it through the Senate.
In a statement, the president said the vote reaffirmed “a fundamental truth: Love is love, and Americans should have the right to marry the person they love.”
There was little question that the bill’s embrace in the Senate, where proponents had a breakthrough this month in drawing a dozen Republican supporters and overcoming a filibuster, gave it the momentum required to become law.
Amen!
One kicker, though:
The bill would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to same-sex couples. It prohibits states from denying the validity of an out-of-state marriage based on sex, race or ethnicity. But in a condition that Republican backers insisted upon, it would guarantee that religious organizations would not be required to provide any goods or services for the celebration of any marriage, and could not lose tax-exempt status or other benefits for refusing to recognize same-sex unions.
No more gay wedding cakes in the South. . . . .
*Here are the World Cup results from yesterday (see below for more0:
In the ideologically big match, the US beat Iran by just one goal (at the cost of a valuable player), but now the Iranians are out and must go home, and right into Evin Prison. Seriously, though, will they face punishment for their tiny show of resistance to the regime?
The job for the United States soccer team was simple, really: Win.
The stakes and the stage and the politics all made things harder going in to their game against Iran on Tuesday night at the World Cup. The own goal by their own federation’s social media team, the Iranians’ great umbrage at the perceived insult to their flag, the chatter and the threats and the intrigue all added to the spice of the matchup. But the task, at its heart, left no room for nuance at all: If United States wanted to keep playing in this tournament, it had to beat Iran on Tuesday night.
And so it did.
The price of victory may be a high one: Christian Pulisic, perhaps the Americans’ brightest star and the scorer of its only goal in a 1-0 victory, was forced from the game at halftime with an abdominal injury sustained when he crashed into Iran’s goalkeeper finishing his goal.
Highlights of that game: The sole U.S. goal, a nice one, is at 1:20. There’s another U.S. goal that was nullified by an offside call. Had this game tied, the U.S. would have been out of the Cup.
and
England won Group B after a 3-0 victory over Wales, which was eliminated. The U.S. needed a win and nothing less against Iran, and it got it, by a 1-0 score. The U.S. will face the Netherlands in the round of 16 on Saturday while England will meet Senegal on Sunday.
Here are the England/Wales highlights. England advances to the knockout round; Wales goes home after the rout:
Four years after missing the World Cup completely, the Netherlands beat Qatar 2-0 on Tuesday at Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, Qatar, to top Group A and advance to the knockout stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Peep! Peep! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! It’s all over at Al Bayt Stadium, where the Netherlands have won with the bare minimum of fuss. They advance to the last 16 of the tournament while Qatar become the first host nation in World Cup history to go out of their own tournament without winning a single point.
and:
The sight of a couple of Ecuador players slumped face-down on the turf sobbing uncontrollably tells you all you need to know. Senegal have held on to beat the South American side 2-1 and advance to the Round of 16, where they will face England if Gareth Southgate’s side finish top of Group B tonight.
Mr Gevrekoglu was loading equipment into the boot of his car after the trip to the Kizlan Plateau when his dog jumped on the back of a friend, stepping on the trigger of a shotgun, the Cumhuriyet newspaper reported on Sunday.
The 32-year-old hunter, who reportedly became a father just two weeks earlier, died from a bullet wound in his stomach before paramedics arrived at the scene.
This is the deceased with a dog, but probably not the killer dog. They should have taken the d*g into custody instead of one of Gevrekogulu’s hunting companions. But it’s really sad: he had a newborn kid.
*John McWhorter’s NYT column this week (is he producing just one a week now?) is called “Harvard, Herschel Walker, and ‘Tokenism‘”, and he sees both Walker’s candidacy and affirmatvie action as “tokenism”: the advancement of a black person because of skin color rather than merit. A few quotes:
Our theoretically enlightened idea these days is that using skin color as a major, and often decisive, factor in job hiring and school admissions is to be on the side of the angels. We euphemize this as being about the value of diverseness and people’s life experiences. This happened when we — by which I mean specifically but not exclusively Black people — shifted from demanding that we be allowed to show our best to demanding that the standards be changed for us.
. . . When the Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action in higher education admissions, as it almost certainly will, it will eliminate a decades-long program of tokenism. I’ve written that I support socioeconomic preferences and that I understand why racial ones were necessary for a generation or so. But for those who have a hard time getting past the idea that it’s eternally unfair to subject nonwhite students to equal competition unless they are from Asia, I suggest a mental exercise: Whenever you think or talk about racial preferences, substitute “racial tokenism.”
As for Walker, McWhorter does not go gentle:
At the same time, Republicans, despite generally deriding affirmative action and tokenism as leftist sins, are reveling in tokenism in supporting Walker’s run for Senate and are actually pretending to take him seriously. But to revile lowering standards on the basis of race requires reviling Walker’s very candidacy; to have an instinctive revulsion against tokenism requires the same.
There’s no point in my listing Walker’s copious ethical lapses. Terrible people can occasionally be good leaders. With him, the principal issue is his utter lack of qualification for the office. Walker in the Senate would be like Buddy Hackett in the United Nations. It is true that Republicans have also offered some less than admirably qualified white people for high office. But George W. Bush was one thing, with his “working hard to put food on your family.” Walker’s smilingly sheepish third-grade nonsense in response to even basic questions about the issues of the day is another.
I’m with McWhorter on both socioeconomic rather than racial affirmative action, and of course anybody with more than a handful of neurons knows what an idiot Walker is. If he wins, I will be both upset and even angrier at Republicans, who put this mushbrain up for election.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s pissed off because she didn’t get the right noms Look at that face! I had to make it my profile picture on Twitter.
Hili: You bought the cheap cat food again.
A: They had only this one in the shop.
Hili: Order it on the Internet.
In Polish:
Hili: Znowu kupiłeś tanią karmę.
Ja; Innej w sklepie nie było.
Hili: Zamów przez Internet.
***************
A multiple groaner from David:
From Malcolm: a pas de deux with a border collie:
More Revenge from a Wronged Woman:
From Masih: Three videos in one:
These children left school and chanting “women, life, freedom”, in Iran. They also chant against clerics. The girls are forced to wear hijab from the age of 7. Regime killed more than 60 children during the uprising. Where is @UNICEF?#MahsaAmini
“Here’s a new clue for the prevalence of religiosity. It turns out to be inversely correlated to the distance from the Pacific Ocean (I calculated Pearson’s r = -0.796). Who would have guessed that?”
From Luana; a paper that’s worth reading by Buss and von Hippel, which you can find here. It’s curious but not surprising that these people accept Darwinian evolution of the body, but not of the mind (aka evolutionary psychology). It explains the widespread rejection of evolutionary psychology as a whole.
Only about half of social psychologists believe that Darwinian evolution applies to the human mind. pic.twitter.com/Q6xfLIOzvo
From the Auschwitz Memorial. I’m guessing that husband and wife were separated before they were gassed, so they didn’t even get to be together as they died.
30 November 1902 | A German Jewish woman, Käthe Dworsky, (nee Kranzdorf) was born in Königsberg.
In February 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after the selection together with her husband Selig. pic.twitter.com/7pLeBMgmPe
