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.
Reader Amy called my attention to this awesome product from The Ozark Source. Somehow I can’t justify spending the dosh on it, but oy, is it awesome!
This is too menial a task to call the duck “James,” but “Billzebub” fits it nicely.
It’s bad enough that the White Sox baseball stadium, once Comiskey Park, then U.S. Cellular Field, is now called “Guaranteed Rate Field” after a mortgage company paid big bucks to rename it. Yes, baseball franchises are greedy, and few major league ballparks don’t bear the names of companies, but really—Guaranteed Rate Field? It sticks in the craw.
But now my own school, The University of Chicago, has renamed an entire department—our renowned Department of Economics—after being given a $125 million donation. This was announced on Leiter Reports (Brian Leiter is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School), and was confirmed in an announcement by the University.
Now it’s true that the $125 million given to the U of C by the The Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund wasn’t just to change the name: most of the dosh, it seems, will go to fund scholarships and research in economics. But you’d better believe that the department isn’t being renamed just out of gratitude for the money. Somebody made a deal to do this:
In recognition of this gift, the Economics Department will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics.
On his website, Leiter asks “whether anyone can think of a similar case where an academic department–not a business school, or a law school, or a medical school–sold naming rights to the department?” Several people give examples, so we’re not unique. Still, we’re the University of Chicago, a school I’m proud to be associated with, and I don’t at all like department names to be sold off like so much chattel. Can you imagine what would happen if this continues? Will my own department be renamed The Monsanto Department of Ecology and Evolution? And can you imagine the Preparation H Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy?
h/t: Greg
Reader Alexander sent a link to an article in Publisher’s Weekly (PW), which Wikipedia describes as “an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, “The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling”. With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews.”
The report on that site is about the retail chain Family Christian Stores, formerly America’s largest chain of stores purveying Christian merchandise (books, jewelry, movies, geegaws and the like) I say “formerly” because the chain is closing. (You can read the CEO’s official announcement here, signed “In His Service”.) After declaring bankruptcy in 2015, the chain is shutting down: lock, stock, and barrel. And it’s no small chain, either, as it has 240 stores in 36 states. As PW reports:
Family Christian Stores, the largest retailer of Christian books and merchandise in the country, is closing all of its outlets. The chain, which went through a bankruptcy proceeding in 2015, cited changing consumer behavior and declining sales when it announced its decision to shutter on Thursday. FCS operates 240 stores in 36 states.
According to various sources, a board meeting was held at FCS’s Grand Rapids, Mich., headquarters on Wednesday afternoon to determine whether the beleaguered retailer would close or finance another year. To continue, sources said, board members said that they needed to see a path to profitability by 2018.
. . . “We prepared for this,” said Jonathan Merkh, v-p and publisher at Howard Books. The planning, though, doesn’t take away the sting. “Financially, it may not affect the industry in the short run, but it will in the long run. There are 240 less stores selling books.”
Mark D. Taylor, chairman and CEO of Tyndale House Publishers, told PW that it will be hard to lose a company which has been a cornerstone of the segment for so long. “The entire Christian community—indeed the entire nation—will be poorer as a result of this pending closure,” he said.
The Christian community may be the poorer, but I think the nation will be the richer, for this not on facilitates the secularization of the U.S., but is a strong sign of that secularization. People just don’t want to buy Christian stuff any more, and that coincides with the rise of the “nones”: those Americans who don’t identify with an established church. While people like Rodney Stark keep claiming that Christianity is doing better than ever, they’re like the captain of a ship proclaiming how sound the vessel is as it’s going down
By the way, here’s PW’s list of subject editors. It’s supposed to deal with the entire publishing industry, but notice that there are three religion editors and no science editors! We still have a way to go.
SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
Calvin ReidASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
John MaherCHILDREN’S BOOKS
Diane Roback, Children’s Book Editor
John A. Sellers, Children’s Reviews Editor
Emma Kantor, Associate Editor
Matia Burnett, Assistant EditorPlease contact Matia Burnett for queries concerning review submissions of children’s books.
FEATURES EDITOR
Carolyn JurisRELIGION
Seth Satterlee, Religion Reviews Editor
Emma Koonse
Lynn GarrettDEPUTY REVIEWS EDITOR
Gabe HabashSENIOR REVIEWS EDITORS
Peter Cannon
Rose FoxREVIEWS EDITORS
Alex Crowley
Annie Coreno
Everett JonesBOOKLIFE EDITOR
Adam Boretz
Several venues, including Fortune and PuffHo, report that as of January, customers flying in the cheapest seats on United Airlines will no longer be able to put their luggage in the overhead bins, but will be restricted to carry-on items that fit below the seat. Since United already charges $25 to check a bag, this automatically puts most passengers trying to economize out by $25, for who can go away for a week with only what fits under your seat?
The “no overhead bin” fares won’t be cheaper than present economy fares; they’ll be the same. You’ll have to pay more for the privilege of choosing your seat and stowing your gear overhead. As Fortune reports:
United, the No. 3 U.S. airline by passengers carried, said customers who bought its cheapest fares would not be assigned seats until the day of departure, meaning people on the same ticket may be split apart.
United will also prohibit these travelers from carrying on bags that can only fit in overhead bins, and they will not accrue miles toward elite status.
The company expects the moves to add $4.8 billion to its annual operating income by 2020, although the figure does not include rising wages.Fare initiatives such as “basic economy” will account for $1 billion of this, as more customers pay to check bags or select higher fares that give them two “free” carry-ons.
“Free” carry ons my tuchas! Who do they think they’re fooling? And, in PuffHo, you can read the pathetic excuses that United gives, trying to make it seem that the passengers are benefiting from this avarice:
“Customers have told us that they want more choice [!!!!] and Basic Economy delivers just that,” Julia Haywood, United’s chief commercial officer, said in a news release.
The boarding process will also be faster because fewer customers will be searching for overhead bin space, United said.
Chicago-based United said it would begin selling the no-frills fares in the first quarter of 2017 for travel starting in the second quarter. Prices will be comparable to low fares it now charges for the economy cabin, but with more restrictions.
Do we look like we just fell off the turnip truck, United? The airlines I use most frequently are United and Southwest, and I have many frequent-flyer miles on each one. But if United pulls a stunt like this, I can’t say I’m going to remain a loyal customer. Southwest gives you two checked bags for free, has SNACKS, and loyal customers like me get drink coupons periodically. And if you buy a ticket and have to change it, you don’t pay any fee; all your money is saved for a future Southwest flight or used toward your new ticket.
If you want to complain to United Airlines, you can use the form here. I’ve already made a complaint.
I’ve long complained about the Dutch publisher Elsevier’s price-gouging behavior, involving exorbitant costs for academic libraries to get its journals (either hard-copy or electronic), its blocking of public access to scholarly articles (often funded by the public), and its “bundling” policies, forcing libraries to subscribe to groups of journals, often at very high costs (my earlier post on this issue showed Elsevier to be the most rapacious academic publishing, sometimes charging more than a million dollars a year to libraries at top-flight research universities!). I’ll reproduce one table I put in my earlier post, which gives bundle prices charged by different publishes for different for three grades of university libraries:
This is unconscionable. Academics are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it any more. Inside Higher Ed has now reported that some academics are voting with their feet: all six editors and 31 editorial board members of Lingua, a highly reputed linguistics journal that has the misfortune to be published by Elsevier, have resigned in protest of high library and bundling fees and of Elsevier’s refusal to convert the journal to open access. As the website reports, “As soon as January, when the departing editors’ noncompete contracts expire, they plan to start a new open-access journal to be called Glossa.”
And check out how much they pay the editor for two to three days work per week:
Johan Rooryck, executive editor of the journal until his resignation takes effect at the end of the year, said in an interview that when he started his editorship in 1998, “I could have told you to the cent what the journal cost,” and that it was much more affordable. Now, he said, single subscriptions are so expensive that it is “unsustainable” for many libraries to subscribe. Rooryck is professor of French linguistics at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, where academic and government leaders have been sharply critical of journal prices.
Rooryck said Lingua and most journals publish work by professors whose salaries are paid directly or indirectly with public funds. So why, he asked, should access to such research be blocked?
By quitting his position, Rooryck will give up his current compensation from Elsevier, which he said is about 5,000 euros (about $5,500) a year. He said the pay is minimal for the two to three days a week he works on the journal. “I would be better off going to flip burgers in that time,” he said.
You can read Elsevier’s lame response on the IHE site, and learn that other linguists are expressing solidarity with what these editors did. I do, too. I denounce Elsevier’s profiteering involving taxpayer-funded research, and have publicly refused to publicize them, review for them, or do anything to help that company. You can, too: just sign the petition at The Cost of Knowledge, which now has 15,306 researchers vowing that they won’t support any Elsevier journal until they change their nefarious practices.
h/t: P. Puk
This being American, they just can’t let the poor, deformed cat be—she has to be turned into a cash cow.
Besides, if Grumpy could speak she wouldn’t sound like that at all. She’d sound more like Joan Rivers.
h/t: Grania
After you watch the 18-minute video below, or read the article about it in the Guardian, you may stop eating shrimp and prawns—at least those sold at places like Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco, and the supermarkets Morrisons, the Co-operative, Aldi, and Iceland. Those are some of the places that, after a six-month investigation by the paper, are implicating in human trafficking by buying shrimp fed on slave-produced fishmeal.
We all know about sweatshops producing computers and clothing in Southeast Asia, but this is worse, for it’s true slavery. Immigrants to Thailand, often from Burma, are dumped on trawlers to work off the costs of their migration, and often don’t see land again for over a year. On the boats they’re treated horribly: they get a plate or so of rice a day, have to work more than 20 hours catching “trash fish” for the fishmeal, and are beaten—or worse:
Life on a 15-metre trawler is brutal, violent and unpredictable. Many of the slaves interviewed by the Guardian recalled being fed just a plate of rice a day. Men would take fitful naps in sleeping quarters so cramped they would crawl to enter them, before being summoned back out to trawl fish at any hour. Those who were too ill to work were thrown overboard, some interviewees reported, while others said they were beaten if they so much as took a lavatory break.
Many of these slave ships stay out at sea for years at a time, trading slaves from one boat to another and being serviced by cargo boats, which travel out from Thai ports towards international borders to pick up the slave boats’ catch and drop off supplies.
. . . Of the 15 current and former slaves the Guardian interviewed during the investigation, 10 had witnessed a fellow fisherman murdered by his boat captain or net master.
Ei Ei Lwin, the Burmese fisherman, claims he saw “18 to 20 people killed in front of me”.
“Some were shot, others were tied up with stones and thrown into the sea, and one was ripped apart,” he says. “He hated his captain and tried to beat him to death. But the captain escaped by jumping into the sea. The other captains came and pinned [the fisherman] down. Then they tied up his hands and legs to four separate boats and pulled him apart.”
The whole system is riddled with corruption: the Thai government knows about it yet does nothing about it, and likewise with the Western food firms that purvey the product. It’s deeply disturbing.
It’s all documented in the article linked above, but if you’re the visual type, watch this video, which you can see by clicking on the screenshot below (note, some of the stuff depicted in this documentary is pretty horrible):
If you want to complain, just click on the links below to go to the customer service site; all these firms are, according to the Guardian, involved in supporting slavery:
h/t: Natalie