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.
Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili is observing events closely:
It’s Friday, July 25th. The clock has picked up speed. Paulina and Mariusz are present upstairs and downstairs. The administrator works from home in the morning. After a few hours, he gets in the car and disappears. Attempts to discipline Paulina prove futile. She’s in her element. The administrator calls her granddaughter and lets her do whatever she wants. She, the new owner of the house, is introducing a new order. She’s taken over the “Letters,” the computers, the garden. Always with Julia, who does whatever she wants with the administrator. It might seem he’s given his whole heart to these two women—one just over a year old, the other 28. However, it seems that something much more serious is happening in the other house. He’s also on the phone with Justyna, explaining what she needs to read and write now that he’s dealing with the adoption. There’s much, much more. Julia tried to poke me in the eye today.
In Polish:
Jest piątek, 25 lipca. Wskazówki zegara nabrały rozpędu. Paulina i Mariusz są obecni na górze i na dole. Administrator rano pracuje w domu. Po kilku godzinach wsiada do samochodu i znika. Próby zdyscyplinowania Pauliny okazują się bezskuteczne. Ona jest w swoim żywiole. Administrator nazywa ją wnuczką i pozwala jej na wszystko. Ona, nowa właścicielka domu, wprowadza nowe porządki. Przejęła „Listy”, komputery, ogród. Zawsze z Julią, która robi z Administratorem, co chce. Mogłoby się wydawać, że oddał całe swoje serce tym dwóm kobietom – jednej mającej niewiele ponad rok i drugiej mającej 28 lat. Wygląda jednak na to, że jakieś znacznie poważniejsze sprawy dzieją się w tym drugim domu. Równocześnie rozmawia przez telefon z Justyną i wyjaśnia, co ma czytać i pisać teraz, kiedy on zajmuje się adopcją. Jest dużo, dużo więcej. Julia próbowała mi dziś włożyć palec w oko.
And if you can name the Beatles song that ends with the title of this post, you’ll get my warm congratulations. I’m cooling my heels at the Reykjavik Airport, and just discovered to my horror that IcelandAir does not offer any free food on the flight from Iceland to Chicago, though you can purchase food at an inflated price (see here).
Fortunately, I now have time to prowl the airport for better comestibles. It’s a normal airport with nothing distinctive, but I did see a very bright rainbow over the sea on my ride here. Normally I’d think that would suggest an upcoming brood of ducks, but it’s too late.
Off to find comestibles. . . .
Unless my plane crashes, you’ll next hear from me from Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili has been explaining things to Justyna
The administrator is indeed on vacation, returning only for the night. The house was completely empty, and Paulina had also left. We didn’t miss them. Before going to bed, the administrator was writing his account of the first day of vacation. It turns out that it’s impossible to determine whether this was the first day of vacation since November 1998, or whether he and his wife had been on continuous vacation since 1998, and today’s trip to the countryside is just a new form of more active recreation.
In Polish:
Administrator rzeczywiście jest na urlopie, wraca tylko na noc. Dom był całkiem pusty, Paulina też wyjechała. Nie tęskniliśmy za nimi. Administrator przed snem spisywał swoją relację z pierwszeg dnia urlopu. Okazuje się, że nie daje się ustalić, czy był to pierwszy dzień urlopu od listopada 1998 roku, Czy też on i jego żona mieli nieustający urlop od 1998 roku, zaś dzisiejsza wyprawa na wieś, to tylko nowa forma bardziej aktywnego wypoczynku.
This is apparently a done deal, though probablydone for the wrong reasons. The NYT headline gives the important result; click on it below or read the archived version here:
A summary:
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee quietly changed its eligibility rules on Monday to bar transgender women from competing in Olympic women’s sports, and now will comply with President Trump’s executive order on the issue, according to a post on the organization’s website.
The new policy, expressed in a short, vaguely worded paragraph, is tucked under the category of “USOPC Athlete Safety Policy” on the site, and does not include details of how the ban will work. Nor does the new policy include the word “transgender” or the title of Mr. Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” referring to it instead as “Executive Order 14201.”
The committee’s new policy means that the national governing bodies of sports federations in the United States now must follow the U.S.O.P.C.’s lead, according to several chief executives of sports within the Olympic movement. Those national governing bodies oversee many, but not all, events in Olympic sports for all ages, from youth to masters’ competitions.
In a letter sent by email to the “Team USA Community,” the U.S.O.P.C. acknowledged on Tuesday that its policy had changed. The letter, from Sarah Hirshland, the U.S.O.P.C.’s chief executive, and Gene Sykes, the president, said the committee had held “a series of respectful and constructive conversations with federal officials” since the executive order was signed.
“As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,” the letter said, adding that the committee would work with the national governing bodies to implement the new policy.
. . .Those new rules still allow trans women to compete, but only in the men’s category.
All others who aren’t eligible for the women’s category, including nonbinary athletes, transgender men and intersex athletes, will also be limited to competing in the men’s category, the policy says.
The right reason for such a ruling is because it because it’s fair to women, and because trans-identified men, especially but not exclusively those who have gone through male puberty, have on average an athletic advantage over biological women.
But fairness doesn’t seem to undergird this ruling was made. After all, the Olympics has had years to ponder this issue, and basically punted on it, saying that each sport had to make its own rules. The clue: the USOPC explicitly cited Trump’s Executive Order when announcing its decision, and without federal support, Los Angeles would be unable to host its scheduled Summer Olympics in 2028. In other words, the decision was likely made not out of fairness, but out of fearfulness. It’s sad when bullying and fear replaces fairness in this way.
But I’ll still take it, because regardless of the reasons, this is what I’ve always thought was the right thing to do. It is not transphobic, nor does it “erase” trans people. Trans people or those who aren’t biological women can nevertheless still compete in athletics if they wish, but in men’s divisions. Alternatively, and perhaps more fairly than that, there could be an “other” division for those who aren’t either biological males or biological females. (I can’t deal with all other exceptions now, as they will take careful consideration.)
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that majorities of U.S. adults favor or strongly favor laws and policies that:
Require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth (66%)
Ban health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors (56%)
The first issue is the one at hand, and two-thirds of American adults favor what the USOPC just did. But you can bet that this doesn’t settle the issue for the distant future. After all, Trump won’t be President forever (despite what some readers think!), and a “progressive” President could easily change things back. On the other hand, I think the moral arc of athletic fairness is bending towards justice, especially with the data increasingly showing general athletic advantages of trans-identified males over biological women.
This article at The Conversation, by a climatologist at the University of Wellington and a lecturer in design (?) at the University of Auckland, is a desperate attempt to buttress Māori “ways of knowing” by showing how they align with modern science conducted in Antarctica. It is purely performative, meant to sacralize Māori “science,” but in fact adds nothing to modern science. Its only aim is to show that if you twist Māori lore sufficiently, and squint hard enough, you can sort of see some similarities with modern science.
The article is embarrassing and should not have been published in The Conversation. Its appearance can be understood only as an attempt to make up for earlier oppression of indigenous people by overstating their contributions to modern science. This of course is one of the aims of New Zealand’s government, and the article and attendant trip for the authors to Antarctica were in fact paid for by several sources of government support, including the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden fund designed to
. . . drive world-class research in New Zealand by supporting and incentivising excellent researchers to work on their best and boldest ideas leading to new knowledge and skills with the potential for significant downstream impact for New Zealand.
Shoot me now!
UPDATE: I’ve learned that part of the Marsden Fund also supports “Vision Mātauranga” projects designed “to unlock the innovation potential of Māori knowledge, resources and people to assist New Zealanders to create a better future.” I suspect that this is why Winton and Hoeta produced such a misguided paper, extolling Māori knowledge but not giving examples of how it’s informed modern science.
Have a look at the piece and see if excellent research with big potential is described (click on the headline below to read):
First, though authors and government support are shown below:
Now that we’ve determined that the NZ taxpayer is funding this palaver, let’s look at what it’s about. As the beginning shows, it’s merely an “exploration” of how one might comport Māori lore with modern science. There is nothing in the whole piece that shows how Māori lore can add to modern science. All the bolding below is mine:
Antarctica’s patterns of stark seasonal changes, with months of darkness followed by a summer of 24-hour daylight, prompted us to explore how a Māori lunar and environmental calendar (Maramataka) might apply to the continent and help us recognise changes as the climate continues to warm.
As if there aren’t better ways to measure the effects of global warming! Reducation of fixed ice and movement of animals, for example. But let’s proceed:
Maramataka represent an ancient knowledge system using environmental signs (tohu) to impart knowledge about lunar and environmental connections. It traces the mauri (energy flow) between the land (whenua), the ocean (moana) and the sky and atmosphere (rangi), and how people connect to the natural world.
During matiti muramura, the third summer phase that aligns with the summer solstice, the environment offers tohu that guide seasonal activity. The flowering of pohutukawa is a land sign (tohu o te whenua), the rising of Rehua (Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius) is an atmospheric sign (tohu o te rangi), and sea urchins (kina) are a sea sign (tohu o te moana).
When these signs align, it signals balance in nature and the right time to gather food. But if they are out of sync (such as early flowering or small kina), it means something in the environment (te taiao) is out of balance.
These tohu remind us how deeply land, sea and sky are connected, and why careful observation matters. When they’re out of sync, they call us to pause, observe and adapt in ways that restore natural balance and uphold the mauri of te taiao.
Have a look at the last link to see if there are any practical implications of observing sea urchins and stars and birds. And remember, this is from Antarctica, but the implications are apparently for New Zealand. (Note also the plethora of Māori words, whose presence is irrelevant to nearly all readers but constitute a big sign of virtue for the authors.)
Why on Earth did they go to Antarctica to suss out things to do in New Zealand? No explanation is given, but note that the sentence in bold above denotes not a search for truth, but an “exploration” of how Māori lore might allow things in Antarctica to help people in New Zealand. The connection is still unclear to me.
A bit more “exploration.” Again, this exercise is not to find anything out, but merely to construct metaphors:
One of the key tohu we observed in Antarctica was the mass arrival of Weddell seals outside New Zealand’s Scott Base at the height of summer.
Guided by Maramataka authorities, we explored other local tohu using Hautuu Waka, an ancient framework of weaving and wayfinding to navigate a changing environment. Originally used for navigating vast oceans, wayfinding in this context becomes a metaphor for navigating the complexities of today’s environmental and social challenges.
That is not science, and it’s not even sociology. It’s simply storytelling. And it’s opaque.
Remember, the NZ government sent two researchers to Antarctica (not a cheap proposition) to produce stuff like this:
While the tohu in Antarctica were vastly different from those observed in Aotearoa [JAC: the Māori word for “New Zealand”, untranslated, of course], the energy phases of the Maramataka Moon cycles aligned with traditional stories (pūrākau) describing snow and ice.
At Scott Base, we observed feather-like snow (hukapuhi) and floating snow (hukarangaranga). Further inland on the high-elevation polar plateau, we found “unseen” snow (hukakoropuku), which is not always visible to the naked eye but felt on the skin, and dust-like snow (hukapunehunehu), akin to diamond dust. The latter phenomenon occurs when air temperatures are cold enough for water vapour to condense directly out of the atmosphere and form tiny ice crystals, which sparkle like diamonds.
In te ao Māori, snow has a genealogy (whakapapa) that connects it to wider systems of life and knowledge. Snow is part of a continuum that begins in Ranginui (the sky father) and moves through the god (atua) of weather Tāwhirimātea, who shapes the form and movement of clouds, winds, rain and snow. Each type of snow carries its own name, qualities and behaviour, reflecting its journey through the skies and land.
Note the religious aspect of MM that worms its way into the “science” above.
And here’s the part where the authors implicitly claim that indigenous ways of knowing (Mātauranga Māori, or MM) supplement modern science. This is the basis for the government’s and educators’ attempts to teach MM alongside modern science as an alternative form of “knowing”.
Connecting Western science and mātauranga Māori
Our first observations of tohu in Antarctica mark the initial step towards intertwining the ancient knowledge system of mātauranga Māori with modern scientific exploration.
Observing snow through traditional practices provided insights into processes that cannot be fully understood through Western science methods alone. Mātauranga Māori recognises tohu through close sensory attention and relational awareness with the landscape.
Is there anything in the following actually contributed to science by MM, or anything new at all? Not that I see. The stuff about ice cores was figured out by modern science:
Drawing on our field observations and past and present knowledge of environmental calendars found in mātauranga Māori and palaeo-climate data such as ice cores, we can begin to connect different knowledge systems in Antarctica.
For example, just as the Maramataka contains information about the environment over time, so do Antarctic ice cores. Every snowflake carries a chemical signature of the environment that, day by day, builds up a record of the past. By measuring the chemistry of Antarctic ice, we gain proxy information about environmental and seasonal cycles such as temperature, winds, sea ice and marine phytoplankton.
The middle of summer in an ice core record is marked by peak levels in chemical signals from marine phytoplankton that bloom in the Ross Sea when sea ice melts, temperatures are warmer and light and nutrients are available. This biogenic aerosol is a summer tohu identified as a key environmental time marker in the Maramataka of the onset of the breading season and surge in biological activity.
I’m highly doubtful that the traditional Māori lunar calendar incorporates “biogenic aerosol signals from marine phytoplankton in the Ross Sea.” Or do they just mean that it’s getting warmer? The embarrassing piece ends this way (again, my bolding):
The knowledge of Maramataka has developed over millennia. Conceptualising this for Antarctica opens a way of using Māori methods and frameworks to glean new insights about the continent and ocean. Grounded in te ao Māori understanding that everything is connected, this approach invites us to see the polar environment not as a remote but a living system of interwoven tohu, rhythms and relationships.
Most of those who claim the importance of indigenous knowledge systems make the argument that those systems show that “things are connected.” But of course that’s nothing new to science! To make such a claim not only bespeaks desperation, but also adds nothing to modern science. The sentence in bold above gives not one example of how MM can help us “glean new insights about the Antarctic continent and ocean. That also goes for the whole article. Weak parallels are not knowledge.
I conclude that the authors, especially Dr. Winton, should be embarrassed to have written this piece, that the attempt to beef up modern science with indigenous knowledge is a pretty futile effort, and, as always, that New Zealand should not be funding this kind of endeavor. If the indigenous people are still suffering from decades of oppression, well, fix that suffering. But don’t try it by mixing indigenous “knowledge” into modern science! That’s harmful to both Māori and the other inhabitants of New Zealand.
UPDATE: I learned that Dr. David Lillis has also analyzed the Winton and Hoeta paper in a piece at BreakingViews@Co.Nz called “Intertwining Knowledge Systems.” I deliberately didn’t read it before I wrote the above, but now I have, and we come to the same conclusions.
Lillis takes The Conversation piece apart paragraph by paragraph. Here’s just one example. The first paragraph is a quote from the Winton and Hoeta paper, the second Lillis’s analysis:
“In te ao Māori, snow has a genealogy (whakapapa) that connects it to wider systems of life and knowledge. Snow is part of a continuum that begins in Ranginui (the sky father) and moves through the god (atua) of weather Tāwhirimātea, who shapes the form and movement of clouds, winds, rain and snow. Each type of snow carries its own name, qualities and behaviour, reflecting its journey through the skies and land.”
Here we have a charming allegory. Of course, we can teach it to children, along with similar allegories from other populations in New Zealand, but not literally nor as science. Of course, science also has names for various types of snow, each characterized by particular formation and texture. These types include powder snow, packed snow, corn snow, crud, slush and ice.
His long and devastating piece concludes that the pablum pushed by Winton and Hoeta is not science in the way it’s practiced now:
Let us preserve and value traditional beliefs but not confuse them with modern world science. We owe it to future generations to get this very critical matter right.
Amen! Sadly, they’re not getting it right in New Zealand.
If you think about it, you’ll realize that, at bottom, all morality is based on people’s preferences. Despite the argument of Sam Harris that what alternative more “well being” is more moral, that, too, is a preference. (How, for example, do we balance the “well being” of animals and humans who eat them?) Objectively, is abortion moral? I could go on and on, but won’t.
And a God is not an objective arbiter of morality, either, as the Euthyphro argument shows.
Yestday I took an eight-hour bus tour to see the famed “golden circle” of tourist sights near Reykjavic in Iceland.. Wikipedia delineates what we saw:
The Golden Circle (Icelandic: Gullni hringurinn[ˈkʏtlnɪˈr̥iŋkʏrɪn]) is a tourist route in southern Iceland, covering about 300 kilometres (190 mi) looping from Reykjavík into the southern uplands of Iceland and back. It is the area that contains most tours and travel-related activities in Iceland. The term for the “Golden Circle” was a marketing tactic developed by the Icelandic Tourism board to improve travel.
The three primary stops on the route are the Þingvellir National Park, the Gullfoss waterfall, and the geothermal area in Haukadalur, which contains the geysers Geysir and Strokkur, which erupts every 10-15 minutes. Though Geysir has been mostly dormant for many years, Strokkur continues to erupt every 5–10 minutes. Other stops include the Kerið volcanic crater, the town of Hveragerði, Skálholt cathedral, and the Nesjavellir and Hellisheiðarvirkjun geothermal power plants.
Below is a map from Always Around the World of the route we took, which involved about 7.5 hours of total travel and 270 km of driving. Sadly, we went by Keri∂ Crater (a sunken volcanic crater filled with an emerald-green lake), but didn’t have time to see it. We did, however, see lots of the Icelandic countryside, which is flat and grassy, both because it comprises farms but also because the terrain has been flattened by glaciers and the climate is not conducive to trees.
The three sights we visited were Thingvellir National Park, the site where the conjunction of two tectonic plates is most obvious in the world, Geysir, an area of geothermal activity with, yes, geysers, and Gullfoss, one of the most beautiful waterfalls I’ve ever seen (I haven’t been to Niagra).
First, the rift park:
Þingvellir (Icelandic:[ˈθiŋkˌvɛtlɪr̥], anglicised as Thingvellir) was the site of the Alþing, the annual parliament of Iceland from the year 930 until the last session held at Þingvellir in 1798. Since 1881, the parliament has been located within Alþingishúsið in Reykjavík.
Þingvellir is now a national park in the municipality of Bláskógabyggð in southwestern Iceland, about 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík. Þingvellir is a site of historical, cultural, and geological significance, and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland. The park lies in a rift valley that marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the boundary between the North American and Eurasiantectonic plates.
I saw no remnants of its parliamentary history, but was delighted to see the signs of the two tectonic plates. I don’t know of any other place on Earth where their conjunction is so obvious. They are moving apart now, at about the rate your fingernails grow: about 1 cm per year. This movement has created a wide valley containing lake as well as numerous cracks in the earth created as the plates separate. These fissures are all parallel, running from northeast to southwest.
Here’s the rift valley, which we were told is abut 7 km across. You can see the mountains on the other side and the lakes in the valley, while I took the picture from above, on the North American plate:
Here are a few of the fissures in the ground nearby:
This is a big one that people walk through. I have to add that, according to our guide, this was the busiest tourist day this summer. Although it was a Monday, it was sunny and warm: 23º C (73.4° F), and I quickly took off all my outer layers except for a tee-shirt. As you can see below, there were tons of tourists about. It’s summer, July and August are vacation months for the locals, and many of the visitors were Icelandic.
Regardless, I was tremendously excited to see the actual results of plate tectonics, though I’ve seen them before (e.g., the Himalayas). But actually standing on an area where the plates are moving apart was, at least for me, a huge thrill.
On to Haukadalur with its geothermal activity and geysers (I’ve never seen a geyser although the U.S. has the famous “Old Faithful” in Yellowstone National Park).
The geothermal activity is clear even from the parking lot of the visitor center. Many of these small craters emitting steam also have bubbling hot water. (I have video but can’t post it here; more later.) There are ample warnings to stay away from the water, which is 80-100°C.
Below: the Icelandic geysers compared to others in the world. “Geysir,” the biggie, is no longer active, but Strokkur is, and erupts irregularly with an average about ten minutes. You can see the Strokkur isn’t that much smaller than Old Faithful, but Geysir, when it was active topped them all. I saw about four eruptions of Strokkur (see below). Old Faithful in the U.S. erupts about 20 times a day.
When I asked my guide where the big geyser was, she responded, “Just walk into that area. You’ll know.” And, sure enough, I did:
These people are waiting for Strokkur to erupt, which, as I said, does so irregularly with a mean of about ten minutes. Because the eruption takes only a second or two, you have to be ready, and it does tire your arms to hold your camera up, focused on the likely eruption spot. I got three shots, with the last missing the top of the largest eruption. It’s a pretty impressive sight (these are three separate eruptions):
And the biggie (I wasn’t prepared for the height):
This is a good YouTube video of what it’s like to be in the area and see the eruptions:
Despite the heat and sulfur, plants and moss grow near the hot effluent. Life is tenacious. Here’s one photo:
Finally, the waterfalls of Gullfoss, as explained in the sign below. Originally it was to be made into a hydroelectric plant, but the locals saved it. Now it’s part of a permanent conservation area:
From Wikipedia:
The Hvítá river flows southward, and about a kilometre above the falls it turns sharply to the west and flows down into a wide curved three-step “staircase” and then abruptly plunges in two stages (11 metres or 36 feet, and 21 metres or 69 feet) into a crevice 32 metres (105 ft) deep. The crevice, about 20 metres (66 ft) wide and 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) in length, extends perpendicular to the flow of the river. The average amount of water running down the waterfall is 141 cubic metres (5,000 cu ft) per second in the summer and 80 cubic metres (2,800 cu ft) per second in the winter. The highest flood measured was 2,000 cubic metres (71,000 cu ft) per second.
As it was a rare day of full sun, I had the luxury of seeing a rainbow at these lovely falls. The roar is impressive, and the falls go down in several steps. I have video but again you’ll have to wait to see that. But I’ve put a video below. First, a few photos I took of the falls. Notice the rainbow (and plethora of tourists):
Here’s a video which gives you a sense of what it’s like to be near this enormous waterfall: Even a gazillion tourists couldn’t drown out the roaring:
A plant I photographed nearby. Botanists: what is it?
And three superfluous photos. First, a teeshirt in the gift shot at Gullfloss (all the tchotchkes are the same in all the shops). Notice the accuracy: the third puffin, which is Paul on the Abbey Road cover, is barefoot, just as Paul was:
Yesterday’s gull levitating a roll with its bill. The gull must have been magical:
And my post-trip reward: ice cream (hazelnut and crème brûlée). Guess what it cost? But, as Hemingway would say, ‘I deserved it, and it was good.”
