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.
Happy New Beer’s Eve! Yes, it’s a thing. It marks the day before the sale of beer became legal again when Prohibition ended.
In 1909 Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole along with Inuits Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo and Ooqueah.
In 1930 the Salt March, or Dandi Satyagraha came to its triumphant end in India. This was Gandhi’s nonviolent protest against the salt production tax levied by the British that attracted worldwide attention to the cause.
In 1974 Swedish supergroup ABBA won the Eurovision contest with their song Waterloo. I gather that the USA got to see the Eurovision competition for the first time in 2016, so now you too can share our trauma. ABBA was nevertheless the least worst thing to come out of it. But I kinda liked them, even when they were painfully uncool. Waterloo may have won, but we’re going to listen to Chiquitita.
Over in Poland, Hili is up to something.
A: Are you hiding from somebody?
Hili: No, I’m looking to see who is hiding from me.
In Polish:
Ja: Chowasz się przed kimś?
Hili: Nie, patrzę kto chowa się przede mną.
As a lagniappe, we have a really cute photo of a thieving squirrel courtesy of Don. He writes:
Our squirrel-proof feeder isn’t. The perching deck on the feeder is spring-loaded. The chickadees, nuthatches, finches, and even grosbeaks can light upon it without having their weight cause the lid to close. It works pretty well until late in the season when the red squirrels finally figure out how to hang by their hing legs from the top of the seed bin to avoid putting any weight on the perching bar. Then they can hang there munching away.
I’ve put some Vaseline on foil on the bin frame. That discourages them until the Vaseline eventually freezes or dries out, as it has here. In years past we’ve had flying squirrels (at night) visit the feeder. They’re such lightweights that they can sit directly on the bar like the birds. But we haven’t seen any of them in at least ten years.
Seeing as owls are Honorary Cats™, I think it’s worthwhile to call attention to a book published last month by Yale University Press: Enigma of the Owl, by Mike Unwin, with photographs by David Tipling. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but the publisher’s website says it’s “lavishly illustrated”, and an article in the New York Times bears witness to that, being accompanied by a small sample of wonderful photos. I was immediately drawn to the photo of the burrowing owl with a frog dangling from its beak, which on closer inspection appears to be half a frog (the other half may have already been swallowed). But I chose to show the following, because it brings out the owl’s cat-like nature.
A small owl in a big cactus. From NY Times, Rick & Nora Bowers/Alamy, via Yale University Press
The latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “code”, is based on a Mirror article about a new fracas in Britain. It seems that Cadbury, the confectionary company, dropped the word “Easter” from ads for its annual “Easter egg hunt,” in which Cadbury eggs are sequestered at various Natiinal Trust sites throughout Britain, with clues given to their location.
The latest ad (see below), does indeed call it the “Cadbury Egg Hunt,” which the company apparently didto appeal to children of all faiths. But that angered Prime Minister Theresa May, who said this:
“I’m not just a vicar’s daughter – I’m a member of the national trust as well.
“I think the stance they [Cadbury? National Turst? Both?] have taken is absolutely ridiculous.
“I don’t know what they are thinking about frankly.”
“Easter’s very important. It’s important to me. It’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world.
As the Mirror notes, Archbishop of York also complained, but, as you can see below, the word “Easter” is right there in the ad.What’s everyone beefing about?
Lord, what a tempest in an eggcup! Anyway, here’s the Jesus and Mo take:
Claire Lehmann, editor of the true liberal website Quillette, made a 4-minute video on feminists’ growing celebration of Islamic “modesty culture”—a video that deserves wider airing. Yes, it’s put out by the right-wing site Rebel Media, but who else would sponsor and air a video like this?
Claire is in fact not at all a conservative, but a liberal in the classical mold. And it takes a classical liberal to make these simple points:
“Wearing a headscarf is not an achievement. It is certainly not a feminist statement.”
And her point about hijabophiles wanting attention is right on the money. Something has gone awry with feminism when it fetishizes and worships a symbol of male oppression. If a true patriarchy exists, it is Islam.
Here’s a dollop of photos taken around and in Rotorua, where I was magnificently hosted by artist Geoffrey Cox and his wife, radiologist Barbara Hochstein.
On the long intercity bus ride from Wellington (7.5 hr), we stopped for lunch at a cafe where, the bus driver said, they had famous “lamburgers”, made from ground lamb. Of course I had to have one, and it was great, served with grilled onions, tomatoes, a special dressing, and salad.It was a juicy burger, and more people should serve these in New Zealand. I washed it down with a banana smoothie.
Waiting for the bus to leave, I found a ram to pet in a field next to the cafe. When I put my knee through the fence, he butted me!
Late afternoon sun on Lake Taupo, a large caldera lake that is the largest lake in New Zealand.
Sunrise from Geoffrey and Barbara’s house on Lake Rotorua. It was a gorgeous home, with a fantastic garden filled with native plants and a lovely interior filled with art.
The birds are New Zealand scaup, also called black teal (Aythya novaeseelandiae). It’s an endemic species.
Among Geoffrey’s interests are moas, and he’s illustrated books on them. He makes models of their skeletons, which takes weeks of work, since every detail is accurate and worked out in advance. First, a bit on moas from Wikipedia:
The moa were nine species (in six genera) of flightless birds endemic to New Zealand. The two largest species, Dinornis robustus and Dinornis novaezelandiae, reached about 3.6 m (12 ft) in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about 230 kg (510 lb).When Polynesians settled New Zealand around 1280 CE, the moa population was about 58,000.
Moa belong to the order Dinornithiformes, traditionally placed in the ratite group. However, their closest relatives have been found by genetic studies to be the flighted South American tinamous, once considered to be a sister group to ratites. The nine species of moa were the only wingless birds lacking even the vestigial wings which all other ratites have. They were the dominant herbivores in New Zealand’s forest, shrubland and subalpine ecosystems for thousands of years, and until the arrival of the Māori were hunted only by the Haast’s eagle. Moa extinction occurred around 1300 CE – 1440 CE ± 20 years, primarily due to overhunting by Māori.
Moa species names and numbers are in flux, as several species, once thought distinct, were found to be highly sexually dimorphic, with females 1.5 times as large as males and weighing up to three times more. Copulation must have been difficult!
Here’s Geoffrey with his handmade clay model of the giant moa Dinornis. You can have Geoffrey make one of these for you—or nearly anything else—by going to his webpage:
A smaller moa; sadly, I’ve forgotten the species but I’ll ask Geoffrey:
H0w big were they? Below is a figure from Wikipedia. Given the lack of land mammals in New Zealand when the Maori arrived about 1280 AD, these birds would have been tempting targets, and easy to hunt. With drumsticks like these (the Maori didn’t eat much of the other parts), it’s no wonder all species were driven extinct in about 100 years of hunting.
Here’s Geoffrey’s preliminary sketch for the big moa model shown above. Tons of preliminary work go into the planning:
Moas lacked even external vestiges of wings, which even kiwis have. They were, in effect, the world’s only two-limbed vertebrates. The wing bones would have been attached to these bones underneath the ribs:
The moa’s tiny tail:
Geoffrey has done the artwork for three entire series of New Zealand postage stamps. One was of the extinct birds of New Zealand, and here’s a first day cover of the giant moa. The stamp itself is embedded in the portrait, center to the right:
A cast of the skull of a giant moa, with a $2 New Zealand coin for scale (about the size of an American quarter). This was made from a rubber mold used on a real moa skull in an Auckland museum. Surprisingly, many moa bones survive, though not many entire skeletons or the fragile skulls. Geoffrey even told me that two entire moa eggs, shells intact (but empty) were found by Europeans floating in a river in New Zealand.
Geoffrey also has a moa foot, with three big toes in front and a much smaller one in the rear. The bones are genuine except for one replica bone and all the claws:
Geoffrey’s model (see coin for scale) of the fearsome talon of a Haast’s Eagle (Harpagornis moorei), a giant raptor that made its living by preying on hapless moa. When the moa went extinct,the eagle did, too. After having killed a moa, the eagle could consume it at leisure since there were n0 other carnivores to steal its prey.
Geoffrey will make you a replica of almost any creature by special order. Here’s his lovely model of the skeleton of a Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius).
They’re the Atom Spy Couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Both were executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage. Today is the day they were convicted. Their children were 10 and 13 when their parents were executed.
In 1976 Howard Hughes died. The larger than life businessman, aviator and movie director’s life became the subject of the movie Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator in 2004.
Onto happier things (ha!); today is Pharrell Williams’ birthday (1973), he of Happy fame. He’s also the man responsible for the now slightly infamous song “Blurred Lines” performed by Robin Thicke, a song that managed to go to No 1 in the charts and be in the lead for worst songs ever recorded which is kind of a feat all by itself.
Spanish composer Alonso Lobo (1555-1617) died on this day. As is typical of people of this period, not much detail is known of his life. Most of it seems to have been spent in cathedrals, from choirboy to canon to maestro de capilla.
In Dobrzyń Hili is staging a sit-in to protest her oppression by gravity.
A: Couldn’t you climb any higher?
Hili: Unfortunately, I’m blocked by a glass ceiling.
In Polish:
Ja: Wyżej już nie mogłaś wejść?
Hili: Niestety, ogranicza mnie szklany sufit
Finally, we get a video of Gus who is mercifully unoppressed and enjoying the Spring.
If you know about the civil rights struggle in the U.S., you’ll know the story of Emmett Till. An African-American boy from near Chicago, Till, aged 14, went to visit relatives in Mississippi in 1955. There he was falsely accused of whistling at and flirting with a white woman. (It’s recently come to light that she completely fabricated that story.) Because of his supposed “crime”, Till was tortured and killed by the woman’s husband and his half brother.
The two men were arrested and tried for the kidnapping and murder of Till, but—as usual back then—were acquitted by an all-white jury, though the men later admitted they did the deed. (Laws against double jeopardy prevented another trial.)
Here’s Till a year before his murder:
When Till’s body was returned to Chicago, his face battered and mauled, his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see what had been done to her boy. I won’t show the picture, but you can see it here; it was published in the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, and then republished widely, horrifying both black and white Americans. Till’s death and the open-coffin funeral did have a galvanizing effect on the civil rights movement, probably helping fuel the Montgomery (Alabama) bus boycott in late 1955.
Now, however, a painting based on the open-casket photo has stirred a big controversy in the art world—because it was painted by a white woman, artist Dana Schutz. The painting is below:
At the centre of the battle over cultural appropriation is artist Dana Schutz’s expressionist painting Open Casket (2016), a gruesome depiction of Emmett Till, lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
The painting, on display at the Whitney Biennial exhibition, initially drew swift condemnation from critics who claimed Schutz, who is white, was taking advantage of a defining moment in African American history.
Wikipedia‘s bio of Schutz gives more detail about the accusations of cultural appropriation:
Artist and Whitney ISP graduate Hannah Black started a petition for the painting to be removed, writing:
“
… it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time. Although Schutz’s intention may be to present white shame, this shame is not correctly represented as a painting of a dead Black boy by a white artist — those non-Black artists who sincerely wish to highlight the shameful nature of white violence should first of all stop treating Black pain as raw material. The subject matter is not Schutz’s; white free speech and white creative freedom have been founded on the constraint of others, and are not natural rights. The painting must go.
”
Schutz responded, “I don’t know what it is like to be black in America, but I do know what it is like to be a mother. Emmett was Mamie Till’s only son. The thought of anything happening to your child is beyond comprehension. […] It is easy for artists to self-censor. To convince yourself to not make something before you even try. There were many reasons why I could not, should not, make this painting … (but) art can be a space for empathy, a vehicle for connection.”
Josephine Livingstone and Lovia Gyarkye of the New Republic argued Open Casket is a form of cultural appropriation disrespectful toward Mobley’s intention for the images of her son. [JAC: see that article here.] Describing how the painting undermines the photograph they wrote, “Mobley wanted those photographs to bear witness to the racist brutality inflicted on her son; instead Schutz has disrespected that act of dignity, by defacing them with her own creative way of seeing.” Scholar Christina Sharpe, one of 34 other signers of Black’s letter, argued for the destruction of the painting so that neither the artist nor future owners of the painting could profit off it. Schutz’s work reportedly goes for up to $482,500 at auction.
Here’s Parker Bright protesting the painting:
Art News has published Hannah Black’s open letter to the Whitney asking that the painting be removed. Besides the bit above, Black wrote this:
As you know, this painting depicts the dead body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the open casket that his mother chose, saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” That even the disfigured corpse of a child was not sufficient to move the white gaze from its habitual cold calculation is evident daily and in a myriad of ways, not least the fact that this painting exists at all. In brief: the painting should not be acceptable to anyone who cares or pretends to care about Black people because it is not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun, though the practice has been normalized for a long time.
. . .Through his mother’s courage, Till was made available to Black people as an inspiration and warning. Non-Black people must accept that they will never embody and cannot understand this gesture: the evidence of their collective lack of understanding is that Black people go on dying at the hands of white supremacists, that Black communities go on living in desperate poverty not far from the museum where this valuable painting hangs, that Black children are still denied childhood. Even if Schutz has not been gifted with any real sensitivity to history, if Black people are telling her that the painting has caused unnecessary hurt, she and you must accept the truth of this. The painting must go.
To Parker Bright, Hannah Black, and other critics of this painting, I say this:
I completely reject your criticism. If only artists of the proper ethnicity can depict violence inflicted on their group, then only writers of the proper ethnicity can write about the same issues, and so on with all the arts. And what goes for ethnicity or race goes for gender: men cannot write about suffering inflicted on women, nor women about suffering inflicted on men. Gays cannot write about straight people and vice versa.
The fact is that we are all human, and we are all capable of sharing, as well as depicting, the pain and suffering of others. I will not allow you to fracture art and literature the way you have fractured politics. Yes, horrible injustices have been visited on minority groups, on women, on gays, and on other marginalized people, but to allow that injustice to be conveyed only by “properly ethnic or gendered artists” is to deny us our common humanity and deprive us of emotional solidarity. No group, whatever its pigmentation or chromosomal constitution, has the exclusive right to create art or literature about their own subgroup. To deny others that right is to censor them.
To those who say this painting has caused them “unnecessary hurt” because it is by a white artist about black pain, I say, “Your own pain about this artwork is gratuitous; I do not take it seriously. It’s the cry of a coddled child who simply wants attention.”
As for the accusation that this painting was done for “profit and fun,” that’s a disgusting and reprehensible thing to say. We cannot allow the Culture of Offense to rule the Culture of Art. If art is to flourish in a free society, it can be criticized, but it cannot be censored.
Emmett Till was black, but his story belongs to all of us.
