Peter Singer’s talk censored in Canada as shouting students accuse him of “euthanasia”

March 10, 2017 • 1:00 pm

I’m a a big admirer of philosopher Peter Singer, for he deals with philosophical problems affecting the real world, not with arcane stuff like compatibilism; and he really lives his philosophy, donating a substantial portion of his income to charity, not eating meat, and not wearing leather. His work on practical ethics, altruism, and animal rights has been immensely influential. And he’s just a nice guy, as I discovered from a brief correspondence with him.

But some people don’t think so because of Singer’s views on “euthanasia” of newborns, which is that it might be moral behavior to euthanize some hopelessly ill or deformed babies even after they were born—but soon after birth. This has led, as I have noted, to his de-platforming in several places, and even calls for his resignation from Princeton (see also here and here),  The protestors, who accuse Singer of “ableism” and calling for the killing of the disabled, almost always misunderstand or distort his position. Here are two interviews in which he’s clarified his position (see first and second links above):

Q. You have been quoted as saying: “Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.” Is that quote accurate?

A. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term “person” to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future.  As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.  That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do.  It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.

Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment.  That will often ensure that the baby dies.  My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection – but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.

Q. What about a normal baby? Doesn’t your theory of personhood imply that parents can kill a healthy, normal baby that they do not want, because it has no sense of the future?

A. Most parents, fortunately, love their children and would be horrified by the idea of killing it.  And that’s a good thing, of course.  We want to encourage parents to care for their children, and help them to do so. Moreover, although a normal newborn baby has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person, that does not mean that it is all right to kill such a baby.  It only means that the wrong done to the infant is not as great as the wrong that would be done to a person who was killed. But in our society there are many couples who would be very happy to love and care for that child.  Hence even if the parents do not want their own child, it would be wrong to kill it.

or this (NZZ is the Neue Zürcher Zeitung):

NZZ: Next week, you are due to receive an award for the reduction of animal suffering. This has provoked protests because you, allegedly, want to have disabled children killed. Is that true?

PS: There are circumstances where I would consider that to be justified, yes. For instance, when an extremely premature baby suffers from a cerebral hemorrhage so massive that it will never recognize its mother and smile at her. If such a child requires artificial respiration, almost all doctors would advise to switch the device off and let the child die. The artificial respiration is terminated because they do not want the baby to live. But if the child is already capable of breathing on its own, killing it requires a lethal injection. Why should it be morally relevant whether I switch off a device or give the child an injection? In both cases, I decide over the child’s life. [JAC: People often make a distinction here between a direct action that terminates life and an indirect action that allows life to end, but I consider that a distinction without a difference.]

NZZ: Would you also kill a new-born child with a mild disability?

PS: If the disability is compatible with a good quality of life, it should be possible to find a couple willing to adopt the child if the parents do not want it. Why should it be killed then?

In fact I agree with Singer here for cases in which a child is so horribly deformed or diseased that it will either die very soon or will be an intolerable burden on its parents—as with a baby in a vegetative state, or incurably demented. But people with, say, cerebral palsy or other handicaps, who can live decent lives and enjoy those lives, think—or deliberately misrepresent—that Singer is calling for the euthanasia of people like them.

He’s not. All you have to do is read what he’s written or said. It’s one of those moral positions that at first sounds repugnant but actually makes considerable sense. You can argue about it, of course, but what you shouldn’t do is demonize Singer for a well thought out view—or no-platform or censor him.

But that is exactly what happened to Singer on March 1 at an “Effective Altruism” Club at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where a presentation of his TED talk was scheduled, followed by Singer answering questions via Skype. The topic wasn’t euthanasia, but effective altruism: how to do the best for humanity you can with your limited resources.

As martlet reports, a group of students interrupted the presentation, standing in front of the stage, making noise, and accusing Singer of ableism. Ultimately, it sounds as if the talk was simply inaudible. As martlet noted:

Prior to the event, a candlelight vigil was set up in the main SUB hallway in honour of the the Disability Community Day of Mourning, which was coincidentally on the same day. A chalkboard with the names of disabled victims of filicide — murder by one’s caregiver or family member — stood on display for passersby to see.

As people slowly entered the auditorium, a small group of students stood on stage with a microphone and read out a list of names of disabled people killed throughout 2016 and 2017.

“People who were their caregivers, who were meant to provide stability and care and love, decided these people weren’t worthy of life,” said Tareem Sangha, one of the students on stage.

Effective Altruism attempted to begin the TED Talk at 3:30 p.m., but were temporarily deterred by the resounding vocal response from the protesters. After a few minutes, they proceeded anyway, with the video’s captions on and sound amplified to compensate.

. . . What began as two conflicting defenses of free speech soon hindered discussion of any kind, as the Effective Altruists and protesters battled with the volume to deafening proportions. Protesters used a megaphone to read prepared text to the audience, and numerous audience members shouted back at them to leave.

One protester even temporarily unplugged the adapter connecting Effective Altruism’s computer to the projector before fleeing out the side door of Cinecenta. The club was able to quickly start the video back up with a replacement adapter.

All the while, Singer’s TED Talk and Q&A continued, and the room grew cacophonous. Shouts of support for Singer’s free speech were met with chants of “eugenics is hate” and “disabled lives matter,” and neither side showed any signs of backing down.

“It’s a trainwreck,” said one student in the audience. “I wanna leave, but if I leave now, [the protesters] get their way.”

. . .Despite the stated focus on the effective altruism movement, Singer was in fact asked to address his views on euthanasia, but his answer was inaudible over the din of the auditorium. Though the club did record a portion of the event, the recording of Singer’s answer has not been made publicly available as of yet.

You can see a video of the disruption by clicking on the screenshot below. What you’ll see is a bunch of entitled whiners trying to censor Singer’s speech. It’s reprehensible:

 

There was also a change.org petition calling for the de-platforming of Singer because he was advocating “the killing of people with disabilities.” That is a disingenuous summary of his views. (The petition got only 89 signers.)

Will the University of Victoria do anything about this, like disciplining the protestors, or even issuing a statement in favor of free speech? I haven’t found such a statement.

I am sick to death of students trying to censor those whose views offend them, and in this case Singer’s views should most certainly be heard. There was a time when such protests would arise over assisted suicide, an act now legal in several U.S. states and other countries. Society has progressed. We need to consider whether infants of the kind Singer discusses might also constitute an intolerable and unnecessary burden on society, so that they should be allowed to die. It’s surely worth discussing.

h/t: Jiten, Barry

Feminist author: girls shouldn’t read any books written by men

March 10, 2017 • 11:00 am

Over on the Penguin Books blog, author, journalist, and feminist Caitlin Moran explains why she think that young girls should not read any read any books written by men. Those books, she says, will infect women with Toxic Masculinity, erode their self-image, and denigrate them to the point they’re not prepared to deal with the opposite sex. When girls get older, says Moran, and have been sufficiently buttressed in their self-esteem by reading only female authors, then they can do battle with the Authorial Patriarchy:

In The Guardian last week, Gloria Steinem – brilliant, bad-ass, pioneering, pack-mother feminist Gloria Steinem – was asked which book changed her life.

“Little Women,” she replied. “Because it was the first time I realised women could be a whole human world.”

Oh man, she’s right – so right I yelped when I read it. Because if I had one piece of advice for young girls, and women, it would be this: girls, don’t read any books by men. Don’t read them. Stay away from them. Or, at least, don’t read them until you’re older, and fully-formed, and battle-ready, and are able to counter someone being rude to you, in conversation, not with silent embarrassment, or internalised, mute fury, but a calm, “Fuck you very much, and goodbye.”

So for young Ms. Moran (born 1975), there was no Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hemingway, Faulkner, Rushdie, Proust, Plato, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or even Keats, Shelley, or Dylan Thomas. No, because her assumption is that every male author has the potential to poison the wells of female self-esteem. She preferred reading books that promoted a feminist ideology, at least implicitly:

Home-educated, we were simply left to choose what books we read – no reading lists for us, no GSCE English demands to read Catcher In The Rye. Instead, I was free to read whichever books I chose – and, without thinking about it, all I wished to read were female authors.

The Railway Children, Jane Eyre, Ballet Shoes, What Katy Did, Anne of Green Gables, Gone With The Wind, Pride and Prejudice, To Kill A Mockingbird, I Capture The Castle and, of course, Little Women – what I instinctively gravitated towards was stories about girls, and women. Stories about their lives – struggling with money, wondering what their careers would be, reading books, learning skills, finding clothes that made them happy, learning how to have relationships with siblings, friends and parents, chafing against societal restrictions, getting angry about the injustices of a wider world. Grieving. Hoping. Carrying on. [JAC: as if no books written by men deal with these issues!]

My world, in short. My life. Everything I thought and felt was reflected in these books – I felt befriended by these imaginary girls, spread across the centuries. I felt like we were all in this together. I felt normal. I felt like my life was a story, too – something to rejoice in; to share without fear, or embarrassment, or stumbling to find the right words. I felt – as you should, at that age – that me, and girls like me, were the centre of the world, and that we were important.

This is a woman who didn’t want her viewpoints challenged, nor to see the views of the half of the world that comprises men. Her assumption is that all male authors are sexist and that their books distort the views of women. If she had been Asian, would she have read books only by Asian authors, or, if black, by black authors? (I of course would recommend giving marginalized kids literature that shows them in a good light, but not only self-esteem-boosting books.)  The privileged Moran is a Snowflake, who can’t find a single book written by a man that didn’t crush her ego. Did she perhaps read Anna Karenina or The Master and Margarita?

It was only years later – quite recently, really – that I started reading all the books you’re supposed to read: the books by the Great White Males. Faulkner, Chandler, Hemingway, Roth. The canonically brilliant. The men in them are brilliant, clever, awkward, compelling, complex – their stories drag you in, their voices are unstoppable. The dazzle and flair is undeniable. As both a writer, and a reader, I bow down to them.

But as a woman?  What I noticed, straight away, was how unwelcome these books made me feel. How uncomfortable. As someone reading a book with my heart open, waiting to find out how the author would see me; talk to me; evaluate me, as a girl who might be in these books – as I was in the others I read – my heart was broken in the first few pages. Or else, slowly, creepingly chilled, until I had to stop, two chapters in: all love quietly crushed.

Is there no male-authored book that could speak to her as a human, and not just as a girl who already sees men as The Enemy? After all, men and women do share many traits of character that can lead one to enter into the spirit of a character different from yourself–that is, unless, you think that only a female character can speak to a female reader. And if she has that attitude, would she not be getting distorted views of men from books written by women? Or do women authors portray men accurately, while men always portray women in a misogynistic way?

Now is is true that there are distorted images of women—and sexist ones—in books written by men. Particularly in earlier times, women were seen as inferior, and that’s often reflected in literature. But Moran’s one example, which she belabors at too great a length, is Raymond Chandler. Raymond Chandler—that world famous producer of literature?

For as soon as a female character enters a story written by these dazzling, confident, 20th century men, the author is apt to look a her with a cold, cold eye. Describing how she looks in a way that I  – raised on female authors, with their gentleness, pride and respect for female bodies – was wholly unused to. That famous Raymond Chandler line – a line which, in isolation, I thought so brilliant? “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

When you read that, in Farewell, My Lovely, it makes you think, in quick succession, “Man, that is a beautiful line,” and then, “Christ, what an exhausting thing to be.” A woman who makes bishops want to kick holes in stained glass windows. How’s her day going? What’s her story? How is she navigating this difficult life – of driving bishops insane, and violent, just by walking into a room?

As a girl, like her, I feel like putting my arm around her, and saying, “Dude – shall we go for a drink somewhere – somewhere away from cathedrals – and sigh over how difficult life is?” I think any grown, adult, confident woman reading it would.

And yet, in Chandler’s world – and for Chandler’s male readers –  that’s the best thing a woman can be. This woman – surrounded by crazy men – is supreme.

I seriously doubt that all of Chandler’s male readers today embrace that view of women.

But yes, Chandler’s is a view of women as beautiful objects, and, though I haven’t read him, I’m prepared to accept that he sees women like that. But do all male authors? Has she read, for instance, Tender is the Night? The Grapes of Wrath? Women in Love? The Dead (in which the female is sensitive, her husband a dolt, and the author a male)? Ulysses? No, it’s all that misogynistic Chandler prose that made her neglect authors having a Y chromosome.

And that’s bigoted and despicable: the form of feminism that sees men as the enemy from the outset, and seeks to reinforce that prejudice by reading only books that keep her in her safe space.  Pity she couldn’t read Elie Wiesel’s Night, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, or Primo Levi’s If This is a Man or The Periodic Table, for the authors had that toxic Y chromosome. She couldn’t learn about the camps.

Of course once she’s buttressed herself with books written by women, then, loins girded (was that sexist?), she’s ready to read The Men, who have somehow transmogrified into an ageist “old men”:

No. They are not the right books to read, if you are a young girl. They are not the voices you should allow in your head. Until you are grown – until you can argue, with confidence, with a narrator; with a genius; with a world-view – girls, do not read books by old men. They live in another century, and you are the future. You, and all those brilliant, beautiful girls, writing in the past.

No, the future, in both life and books, is men and women together, with a mutual understanding that can come only from learning about each other’s thoughts. Girls should read books written by both women and men.  But I wonder if Moran thinks that boys should also read books written only by women, for that would reinforce the Patriarchy.

Fortunately Penguin UK still puts out books for both adults and children written by men and women.

But to check on my views, I asked Grania to read the piece to get at least one woman’s take. Here is her reaction to Moran’s piece:

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the sentiment, I can remember one very clear feeling as an avid, voracious child-reader – I very often felt marginalised if there were no relevant female characters in the book I was reading. I also sometimes came across characterisation of girls and women that made me choke in indignation (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe springs to mind). That is a genuine problem, and one that any educator of a child, whether formal (teacher) or informal (parent/guardian) can take steps to fix by including books in children’s reading lists that have female characters and female protagonists.

But you don’t achieve this by eliminating male authors. There are many male writers who have written books that girls and boys love. Roald Dahl, for example. Terry Pratchett. Neil Gaiman. All of these men write and wrote for their daughters and granddaughters and the love they have for women and girls shines through every book they’ve written. It would be a sad adult who removed these writers from their children’s libraries.

I might not expect a 19 year-old self-righteous twit to know this. But I’m very surprised that someone associated with Penguin—who are, I understand, in the business of publishing those flappy paper things with scribbles in them—apparently does not.

And that’s the way it is.

Building a girl: keep them away from male writers

Defining species: a new but problematic species concept

March 10, 2017 • 9:15 am

A few days ago I was interviewed by , a science writer for the Christian Science Monitor. She wanted to discuss a new paper on speciation in birds, a commentary published in The Auk by Geoffrey E. Hill of Auburn University: “The mitonuclear compatibility species concept” (free download, reference at bottom). She also interviewed several other evolutionary biologists and ornithologists.

Hill’s idea is that speciation in birds proceeds largely through the mitochondria of one isolated population evolving divergently from the nuclear genomes of another population, so when the populations encounter each other after a long period of isolation, the mitochondrial genes of one species are mismatched with some nuclear genes from the other, and the hybrids become either sterile or inviable. That would make them different species if the hybrid problems are severe as gene flow between the populations would be very low. The strongest evidence Hill has for his hypothesis is that for the two bird “species,” the blue-winged warbler and golden-winged warbler have very low divergence in the nuclear genes (0.03% to be exact), but the mitochondria differ much more strongly—3%.  They are considered species because they have different markings and maintain their marking distinctness when they meet.

Here they are:

Blue-winged warbler (Vermivora cyanoptera):

Golden-winged warbler (V. chrysoptera):

Hill’s “mitonuclear compatibility species concept” proposes that when a certain degree of genetic difference between mitochondria of different groups is seen, that is indicative of mitonuclear incompatibility, and the groups should be called different species:

As a result, once populations diverge in coadapted mitonuclear genotypes, the reduced fitness of offspring due to mitonuclear incompatibilities prohibits exchange of mt and N-mt genes and effectively isolates individuals with shared coadapted N and mt genotypes. Given these considerations, I propose that avian species can be objectively diagnosed by uniquely coadapted mt and N genotypes that are incompatible with the coadapted mt and N genotype of any other population. According to this mitonuclear compatibility species concept, mitochondrial genotype is the best current method for diagnosing species.

But he doesn’t say how much difference between mitochondrial DNA would mandate a diagnosis that two populations are different species.

To Hill, the warbler mtDNA divergence suggested that the big divergence of mitochondria played the major role in preventing gene flow between these species. But this is problematic for several reasons.

First, for a deleterious mitochondrial mt/nuclear DNA interaction, the nuclear DNA would have to have diverged as well in some places. We know that there are six regions in these species that have marked divergence in nuclear DNA, and these include the genes for body color (there are also ecological differences). But why couldn’t the speciation of these groups have involved sexual selection, so that they’ve diverged in both male color and female preference, rather than hybrid inviability due to mt/nuclear DNA divergence?

Or maybe ecological differentiation plays a role. One problem with Hill’s theory, pointed out by evolutionists Darren Irwin and Brian Sidlauskas in the Monitor piece, is that it assumes that nuclear/mtDNA incompatibility is the cause of speciation, when it could (if it even exists; see below) might have followed speciation that had already occurred through sexual selection or other processes.

But if that’s the case, why are the mitochondria so diverged compared to the nuclear DNA? I have my own theory on that, which I imparted to Ms. Botkin-Kowacki, but which she didn’t mention in her piece. In birds, females are the heterogametic sex (the sex with unlike sex chromosomes), having ZW females and ZZ males. This is the reverse of the situation in mammals and insects, in which males are heterogametic, with XX chromosomes in females and XY chromosomes in males (Lepidoptera are like birds in this respect.)

We also know, in a phenomenon called “Haldane’s Rule” (after biologist J.B.S. Haldane), that in hybrids between species and populations, if only one of the two sexes is sterile or inviable, it is almost invariably the heterogametic sex. So in species hybrids in birds and butterflies, the females are often sterile or inviable, while in mammals and insects it’s usually the males. I spent much of my career working on this phenomenon, and my work and that of others have suggested some explanations, which I won’t go into here.

If Haldane’s rule applies in these warblers, then the female hybrids could be more sterile or inviable than males. Since females but not males pass on mitochondrial DNA, this would—because female hybrids couldn’t mate with males of either parental species—prevent the mitochondrial DNA from moving between the two species. This wouldn’t apply to nuclear DNA, which could move between species when male hybrids mated with either parental species. But those male hybrids wouldn’t pass on their mitochondrial DNA, which is transmitted only by the female parent. This phenomenon alone would account for the disparity in mitochondrial versus nuclear DNA divergence, without having to invoke any bad interactions between mitochondrial and nuclear genes. It’s simply a phenomenon of genetics–if part of the DNA can’t move between species, then that part will diverge faster. And that would knock down Hill’s strongest evidence. (His evidence for his theory isn’t very strong anyway, though we have seen the phenomenon in some copepods).

There are other problems with Hill’s theory:

  • It’s subjective: how much divergence between mitochondrial DNA of two groups would make them count as different species? While the Biological Species Concept (BSC), which counts species as different if gene flow between them is severely impeded, is subjective in some cases of incomplete gene flow, in many others it’s objective: humans can’t exchange genes with chimps, or Drosophila simulans with D. melanogaster (hybrids are completely sterile or inviable).
  • Hill’s species concept is merely a subset of the BSC: it’s just one of many ways that gene flow can be interrupted, and we now of many species, like ducks, that maintain distinctness through other reproductive barriers not involving mt/nuclear DNA problems.
  • Hill’s species concept isn’t general: we know of many species in other groups for which gene flow is prevented not by hybrid sterility or inviability, but things like differences in ecology, mating preference, or time of mating, or use of different pollinators.
  • As Hill admits, there is no direct evidence in any bird species for hybrid problems being caused by deleterious interactions between the mitochondrial DNA of one species and the nuclear DNA of another. It’s a a purely speculative theory based on observations, like the warbler data, that have other and better explanations.
  • In other groups like mammals and flies, it is the mitochondria that move easily between species while the nuclear DNA is more divergent. This is explained by Haldane’s Rule (in those groups fertile hybrid females can move mtDNA between species), but not by Hill’s idea that mitochondria are genetically incompatible with nuclear DNA.

As I told Ms. Botkin-Kowacki, I thought Hill’s theory was somewhat interesting, but was surprised that she was writing an article on it since it wasn’t that earth-shaking. She replied that the idea of “species” is always being revised, and now there was yet another species concept.  I then told her why I thought the BSC was the most useful one in understanding the “species problem” that intrigued evolutionary biologists during the Modern Synthesis, and my explanation is below:

Jerry Coyne, a biologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of the book “Speciation,” agrees that Hill’s hypothesis could only be one aspect of what is going on as part of the classic biological species concept. “He hasn’t established that this is a better criterion for a species concept than the one that is traditionally used,” Dr. Coyne says in a phone interview with the Monitor. “It always comes down to reproductive isolation.”

“If you ask why nature is lumpy,” he says referring to the groupings that scientists call species, “you can hardly arrive at any other conclusion other than that the things that would make these lumps a continuum instead of a lumpiness are reproductive barriers.”

Trying to find a one-size-fits-all species concept might not be the best approach for biologists, Irwin says. “It may be that different concepts work better in different groups of animals or plants and it may be that different processes are sort of occurring in different cases,” he says. “There may not be a perfect species concept.”

I don’t think there’s one species concept that covers both asexual and sexual groups (you can’t have reproductive isolation in a group that doesn’t reproduce!), but that the BSC has proven the most useful one in understanding nature’s discontinuity. I also told her that every paper of which I’m aware that discusses the process of speciation uses the BSC, so biologists implicitly realize that reproductive isolation is crucial in maintaining the distinct groups in nature we call species.

______________

Hill, G. E. 2007. The mitonuclear compatibility species concept. The Auk 134: 393-409. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1642/AUK-16-201.1

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 10, 2017 • 8:00 am

Mark Sturtevant sent a bunch of insect photos, and he’s a specialist in great arthropod pix. His notes are indented:

There are 16 pictures in this batch, and I have 6 or 7 more batches in the queue. Hope you like insects!

I spent some time watching a thriving colony of aphids on sunflowers that we grow in our garden. These seem to be Uroleucon nigrotuberculatum, or something very close to that. During most of the summer the aphids are all female and they reproduce by parthenogenesis, giving birth to live offspring. Watching a colony for just a few minutes, I could generally see at least one aphid being born. The first several pictures show the tail end of a birth. At first, the baby is still wrapped in an egg membrane that is too thin to be visible here. The membrane splits away after several minutes, and the legs are free. As the mother lowers her body, the teeny legs stretch for the substrate, and then. . . touchdown! After this, the mother raises her abdomen and proceeds to completely ignore her tiny clone standing behind her.

Unless aphids are tended by ants, most aphids in a colony will be found facing the same direction. My hypothesis, which is mine, is that this is because they are born facing in the same direction as their mother, and they just don’t turn around.
Many predators and parasites live among the aphids. For example, I saw quite a few syrphid flies hovering about, dropping off eggs. On more than one occasion a small Crabionid wasp would zip in and carry off a bright red aphid in her jaws. These will be used to provision her larder for her larvae.

The next picture shows a giant among the aphid predators. This is our largest ladybug, the fifteen-spotted ladybug (Anatis labiculata).
Next is another brightly colored beetle that I found in a forest. This is a banded net-winged beetle (Calopteron terminale). Like the ladybug, these beetles are not palatable, and so they advertise the fact with their warning colors. This kind of net-winged beetle scarcely looks like a beetle, with its soft wing covers. They are part of a mimicry complex with several other insects that include other beetles, and members of other insect orders.

The next picture is a slender robber fly, Dioctria hyalipennis.

Next is one of our butterflies, the Northern pearly-eye (Enodia anthedon). These largish butterflies are fun to stalk as they flit erratically through wooded areas and then suddenly dive for a landing spot under cover. One has to sneak up on them pretty carefully to get close enough for a picture, and more often than not they will take off before I can get close enough. But they are highly territorial, and so I generally just have to stand still and there is a good chance they will come zipping by again before long so I can have another go.
Although they are brown all over and lack structural iridescent colors, their wing pattern has similarities to the related but much larger morpho butterflies. (See here, for example.) Also like their spectacular cousins, the pearly-eyes almost always sit with their wings tightly closed. I have seen dozens, but not once have I seen them resting with their wings open.

Dragonflies are often given cool names like skimmers, cruisers, and hawks. One day I was hunting with my camera and I saw a large dragonfly settling under some tree branches. I crept in for a picture with my zoom lens, and I could only get this one picture before it took off. This is called the shadow darner (Aeshna umbrosa), aptly named because of its habit of lurking around tree canopies. Unlike some of the big Aeshnid dragonflies, this species is not above actually landing for a spell so someone might get a picture.

In the next picture I show another meeting with one of these dragonflies in a different field. This one must have recently emerged as an adult because it had little inclination to fly, and I could get very close for pictures without a problem.

But sometimes I just do not make good choices with the camera settings, and I was not that happy with any of the pictures that I took of this dragonfly. So I returned over several days to its territory for another attempt. We saw each other often, but now it was fully developed and I could never get quite close enough for a picture. On one of these outings, feeling rather frustrated about not being able to get this picture, I chanced to look straight up. It took several seconds for my frontal lobes to comprehend what I was seeing, but once they did I completely… forgot… about… dragonflies. The next picture shows why.

This, people, is of course an enormous Chinese mantis, Tenodera sinensis, that was hanging about 8 feet over my head. I fortunately always go out with a butterfly net and insect cage just in case, and so I was able to retrieve her and bring her home.

The next picture shows this awesome insect. These mantises vary in size, and she was as big as any I had seen. I called her Miss Mantis, and she and I had a lovely fling late in the summer for about a week before I released her in the same field that she was found. During our time together I fed her well and took many pictures. But those will have to wait for another day.

The last two pictures are ones that I had taken in October when the season was quickly winding down and there were far fewer chances for buggy adventures. I had snuck out after work to a lake nearby, and on that trip I finally noticed that the numerous, low-growing and small flowers called purple asters were worth attention. These flowers, which are eye-popping in their own right, are also very attractive to bees. Beside the lake I found a big patch of them, and it was swarming with equally colorful halictid bees (Agapostemon sp.). The combination of flower and bee colors was simply crazy, but I could not stay long because it was getting late and I needed to chase a big dragonfly. That delay stretched out for two weeks, and by the time I returned the flowers were spent and the bees were gone and it was getting colder. My season was ending, but that is okay because I have many new plans for next season.

My Handicat!

March 10, 2017 • 7:00 am

Last Caturday I highlighted the “Handicat” finger puppet, and told you where to order it.  Well, a kind reader named Michael (THANK YOU!) sent me a Handicat in the mail, and it’s quite funny. This morning I entertained my office cleaner with a little puppet performance; she was pretty amused.  Here’s my new toy:

Look at those toes! The cat has a very realistic face, too.  Highly recommended as a stocking-stuff for your cat-loving friends.

Friday: Hili dialogue

March 10, 2017 • 6:30 am

We’ve reached another Friday: March 10, 2017, and it’s National Ranch Dressing Day (these food holidays are getting increasingly arcane!). It’s also National Mario Day in the US, honoring the video game; the name is chosen because MAR10 looks like “MARIO.” Oy!

On March 10, 1804, the immense territory of the Louisiana Purchase was ceded to the U.S. by France. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell first successfully tested his telephone: imagine what he’d think if he could see smartphones! On this day in 1959, when I was only ten, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa, afraid that the Chinese would abduct him and determined to prevent it.  Later that year, Gyatso fled to India to create a government in exile. And on this day in 1977, astronomers discovered the rings of Uranus. While someone will undoubtedly make a joke here, Uranus’s rings are real;  here’s a photo of the inner ones:

Notables born on this day include Clare Booth Luce (1903), James Earl Ray (1928), Chuck Norris (1940), Sharon Stone (1958), and Robin Thicke (1977). Those who died on this day include Harriet Tubman (1913), Mikhail Bulgakov, author of The Master and Margarita (1940), Zelda Fitzgerald (1948, burnt to death in a fire at her sanitarium), Andy Gibb (1988), and Keith Emerson (last year). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej engages in a completely enigmatic dialogue with Hili. When I asked Malgorzata to explain it to me, she said this:

I don’t understand either. The working title (not repeated on Andrzej’s Facebook page), is “Logic”. Give it to your readers to work it out.

Okay, readers: what does it mean:

A: Do you have a problem?
Hili: Yes, if A = B where did C disappear?
In Polish:
Ja: Masz jakiś problem?
Hili: Tak, jeśli A = B, to gdzie podziało się C?

Finally, a wan sun has risen over the frigid wastes of Winnipeg. Gus is soaking up every sliver of it he can:

And here’s an adorable tweet. Is there anything cuter than a kitten?:

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/840171883433713666

Lemurs use toxic millipedes as insecticides, get high as a byproduct

March 9, 2017 • 3:15 pm

From BBC One program, “Spy in the Wild”, we learn that lemurs not only rub millipedes on their skin to deter insects (mostly mosquitoes who are repelled by the millipedes’ benzoquinones), but also seem to get high from chemicals in the ‘pedes. This isn’t just speculation: there’s research to support at least the insecticide part (see here). I’m not sure the lemurs really enjoy this “intoxication”: it may just be a psychological state that is a necessary byproduct of biting the millipedes.

Reza Aslan gets it in the neck again

March 9, 2017 • 2:00 pm

Poor Reza Aslan—he can’t catch a break. Although he’s gotten what he wanted: lots of favorable press and, presumably, wealth—and a new 6-part series on CNN, “Believer“—he’s still getting criticized. First he gets it from the likes of me for whitewashing religion in general and Islam in particular, and then he decides to host a TV series whose theme is the underlying similarity (a good similarity) of all religions. When he tries to do that, he then gets accused of exactly what he’s accused others of vis-à-vis Islam: using extremist sects to represent the whole faith. In Aslan’s case it was, in the first episode of “Believer,” the Hindus, whom he represented using the Aghori sect in Varanasi (the new name for “Benares”). (See my post on this from Tuesday.)

I haven’t watched the first episode of “Believer,” but two reviews I mentioned in my last post criticized the show for being over the top and sensationalistic. The following 6-minute clip I watched on CNN’s website was pretty lame, for Aslan imparts a minimum of information while showing off his “empathy”. It’s like Krista Tippett on video. What makes it worse is that Aslan’s concentration on the Aghori sect, yet calling the piece “What Hindus really believe” has riled up many Hindus, who have criticized him for being “Hinduphobic”!

Click on the screenshot below to watch at the site.

Another episode features a doomsday cult in Hawaii headed by a man called “Jezus”, who beefs that “It’s hard being a prophet.” You can watch that by clicking on the screenshot below:

I’m not sure why he chose a group of fringe cults to characterize religion, but it’s not doing his reputation any good. I’m actually a bit sympathetic to the oleaginous Aslan, because he simply didn’t understand what he was getting into: the Offense Culture. He’s out of his depth, and it’s sort of sad.

It would have been interesting to hear about these fringe sects, but Aslan doesn’t realize what most of us atheists do: examined from the outside, nearly all faiths look similar—but similar in their lunacy, not in their wisdom. By choosing things like a brain-eating, urine-drinking Hindu sect, and the Jezus-worshiping death cult, Aslan is simply showing that all religions, at bottom, are delusional. And on top of that, advocates of the “mainstream” version of these faiths are taking out after him. Want to see the shit really hit the fan? Wait until his segment on Scientology! Nobody likes Scientology, and if Aslan tries to say it’s just like other faiths, every believer in the Universe will get pissed off.

A new article in Areo Magazine by V. R. Kahn gives Aslan more grief. It’s called “Reza Aslan’s cynical careerism and CNN’s ‘Believer’“, and analyzes just the first episode on the Aghori Hindus. Here’s one excerpt which gives you pretty much of the tone:

Encapsulated in this episode is the central conceit of Believer: it appears to be nothing more than a sensationalist vehicle for Aslan’s careerism. The fringe groups used in the series come across as Aslan’s version of a circus sideshow with platitudes added in for when he is accused of misrepresenting other religious groups — a criticism he has often used himself against anyone even trying to critically discuss Islam. But of course he has been roundly criticized by Hindu groups for, what they argue, is a misrepresentation of their faith. American Hindus were encouraged to live tweet the Hindu American Foundation of their concerns while watching the episode and if their retweets are any indication, their final assessment of the show was far from positive.

But creating controversy seems to be all part of the plan too; during the premiere of Believer Aslan tweeted a link to an interview on the Huffington Post entitled “Every Episode of Reza Aslan’s ‘Believer’ Will Piss Somebody Off (And It’s Awesome).” It is essentially click-bait for TV. It’s what makes his opportunistic cornering of the market on religious scholarship so blatant. When Islam has been criticized using examples from Saudi Arabia or Iran, he has argued that contextualization is key and it is misleading to characterize Islam based on two countries. Regardless of Aslan’s obvious obfuscation, it is a fair criticism of Believer to say that it sensationalizes a view of Hinduism that if done to Islam, would have Aslan on the next CNN panel stating it was nothing more than bigotry. His positions with regard to religion appear to change with how much screen time he can garner from them.

I have to say that I dislike Aslan’s attitude toward religion so much that I can’t feel that sorry for him, for his careerism has outstripped his judgment.  So be it.

In the last episode, Aslan ate some cooked human brains with a member of the Aghoris (who subsequently flung feces at the fleeing Aslan). That led to a pair of funny tweets, the first from Maajid Nawaz and then a response from Dave Rubin: