Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ humanism

February 22, 2017 • 9:00 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo, called “best,” came with this accompanying note in the email:

This one is in response to a story this week about the British Humanist Association sending out books to schools in the UK, and the ironic clerical reaction to it.

There’s a religious curriculum in these schools, and the humanists are trying to add humanism to it.  The story, in The Freethinker, is about this book being sent to schools by the Northern Ireland Humanists (click on screenshot to go to book). It’s being challenged by a Presbyterian minister because of its contents:

The books are being delivered to upper primary and lower secondary pupils following a crowdfunding campaign.

Northern Ireland Humanists, part of the British Humanist Association (BHA) charity, represent non-religious people in Northern Ireland.

The book also features content provided by broadcaster Stephen Fry, writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes, and best-selling author Philip Pullman, who are all patrons of the BHA.

McIlveen, who has retired from Sandown Free Presbyterian Church in east Belfast, said that while it’s important not to censor literature, there is also a right to challenge the contents of the book.

I feel that for a child of primary school age, humanism is not something that should be put into their mind.

I think that they are far too young to even make that decision as to the rights and wrongs of humanism and I think this is an exploitation of young people to try and indoctrinate them into a view that many people in Northern Ireland would reject.

He added that he feels strongly that:

There should be a clear barrier between the message of humanism and impressionable minds.

517lce8l6yl

No comment is necessary as Jesus and Mo undermine their own faiths:

2017-02-22

Matthew on the BBC

February 22, 2017 • 8:20 am

Matthew Cobb was too modest to tell me that he was on Radio 4’s episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage (a science/comedy show) yesterday, but reader Kevin called it to my attention. You can download the broadcast by clicking on the screenshot below, and here’s the BBC’s summary:

Making the Invisible, Visible
Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian Katy Brand, Cosmologist Prof Carlos Frenk, and biologist Prof Matthew Cobb to discover how to make the seemingly invisible, visible. They look at how the history and development of the telescope and the microscope have allowed us to look at the impossibly big to the seemingly impossibly small, to gain insight into the history of our universe and the inner workings of the human body. They look at how radio and space telescopes have allowed us to look back in time and “see” the big bang, and understand the age and content of the early universe, and how space telescopes have thrown light on the mysterious substance known as dark matter. They also look at the way microscopes and new biological techniques have allowed us to understand the seemingly invisible processes going on inside our cells. They also ask what, if anything, will always remain invisible to us – are there some processes or concepts that are impossible for us to “see”.

I’ve listened to about 25 minutes of the 46-minute show, and Matthew and Frenk impart some good biology and physics. The show is a great combination of humor and science.

screen-shot-2017-02-22-at-6-54-00-am

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 22, 2017 • 7:30 am

Please send in your photos; there’s always a need.

Today’s batch comes from reader Tony Eales from Queensland, who sends us pictures from the western part of his country. His notes and IDs are indented:

I recently went to Western Australia for a very short visit. It is my first time there and it’s like another country, the Central Desert of Australia is a very effective barrier for many species’ dispersal. Unfortunately on this short trip I wasn’t able to hunt for Western Australian endemics and the mix of birds around the capital was basically the same as any east coast city.

Nevertheless I got out and about to photograph some locals.

I went to some nearby small rocky islands on the coast. There they had a group of male Australian Sea Lions (Neophoca cinerea).

1australian-sea-lion

There was also a breeding colony of Australian Pelicans (Pelecanus conspicillatus), one of only 6 such places where they are known to breed annually. Despite being distributed continent-wide and commonly encountered, most Australian Pelicans only breed when there is a rare filling of inland desert lakes. The conditions on this small island in Western Australia are such that they can access fresh water close enough to an isolated and protected breeding spot. Hence here they can breed every year. See this link for more information.

2australian-pelican

On the main Island called Penguin Island there is, apart from the penguins a large colony of Bridled Terns (Onychoprion anaethetus) which were just lovely. I couldn’t stop photographing them.

4bridled-tern4

5bridled-tern1

6bridled-tern2

7bridled-tern3

The colony also has its resident large skink species, the King’s Skink (Egernia kingii), which, among other things, eats the tern eggs.

3king-skink

We also saw a couple of young Eastern Osprey (Pandion cristatus).

8osprey

Back on the mainland I had a look around the excellent King’s Park Botanic Gardens in Perth and managed to photograph a White Cheeked Honeyeater (Phylidonyris niger), the classic West Australian Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia) and some large Bulldog Ants (Myrmecia sp.), my favourite ants.

9white-cheeked-he

corymbia-ficifolia

myrmecia

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

February 22, 2017 • 6:30 am

It’s Wednesday, February 22, 2017: remember that there  are but 28 days in this month. The temperatures remain high in Chicago, and today we may hit another record: a high of 71° F (22° C) is predicted. It’s another triple-header food holiday: National Cook a Sweet Potato Day, National Margarita Day, and National Cherry Pie Day. I doubt I’ll partake of any of these, though I do have a homemade cherry pie in my freezer. For Episcopalians in the U.S., it’s the Feast Day of Eric Liddell, the “muscular Christian” portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire. 

News of the day: once again the judiciary has blocked regressive Republican policy: a federal judge in Texas ruled that the state could not withhold funding from Planned Parenthood.

On February 22, 1943, three members of the White Rose resistance group, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst, were executed in Nazi Germany for treason: they had been caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. They died bravely on the guillotine. Here is the unspeakably sad last scene from the German movie “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” when the 21 year old Sophie says goodbye to her brother and Christoph, is given a one-minute trial, and then immediately taken to the guillotine. Note: while there’s no blood, there is a scene at the very end when she’s put into the apparatus. Her reported last words were these:

“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

Here’s the real Sophie; imagine the bravery it took to stand up to the Nazis at that time:

f72439e50e24b9cef3c1ffa471ed2662

And do you remember this day in 1980, when the U.S. hockey team defeated the Soviet Union hockey team at the winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York by a score of  4–3? I and millions of Americans were watching that game (even though I’m not a hockey fan); it was a political as well as sporting event, and the Soviet’s defeat was called “the miracle on ice.” The USA were huge underdogs in that game, but won, and went on to secure the gold medal by defeating Finland.  Here are the last two minutes, with the famous “Do you believe in miracles?” comment by Al Michaels. I remember this well:

Notables born on this day include George Washington (1732), Frédéric Chopin (1810), Robert Baden-Powell (1857), Olave Baden-Powell (1889, these two founded the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, respectively), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892), Edward Gorey (1925), and Ted Kennedy (1932). Those who died on this day include geologist Charles Lyell (1875, Darwin’s pal), Kasturba Gandhi (1944), Oskar Kokoschka (1980), Andy Warhol (1987), Chuck Jones (2002), and Charlotte Dawson (2014).  Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Cyrus are nosing about:

Cyrus: Come on! What have you found there?
Hili: I’m checking to see what you were sniffing here.
dsc00004g
In Polish:
Cyrus: Chodź już, co tam znalazłaś?
Hili: Sprawdzam coś tu obwąchiwał.

Milo falls on his sword

February 21, 2017 • 4:00 pm

Here’s a video from today showing a cowed Milo Yiannopoulos falling on his sword—resigning as an editor at Breitbart. Within just 24 hours, his life has fallen apart: his book deal with Simon and Schuster was canceled, as was his keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and he’s lost his job at Breitbart. He’s also going to be branded as a pedophile for the rest of his life.

Whether or not you think Milo had this coming to him, I still find it sad, especially when I found he was a victim of sexual child abuse. There’s no evidence that he himself was a pedophile, and I’m not sure whether canceling his book was the right thing to do. What I’m pretty sure of is that his notoriety has cost him his image; as one columnist said, the Right finally found it expedient to eject him. I was no fan of Milo, but I don’t think this is a time to gloat. Whatever you think of him, he’s smart and charismatic, and I hope he can leverage that into a new life.

I haven’t followed this complicated tale closely, and have listened only briefly to the tapes that led to his downfall. With luck, Grania, who has been following this more closely, will write a reasoned post on this soon.

Which scientists saved the most lives?

February 21, 2017 • 1:45 pm

Scientists are the unrecognized benefactors of humanity. How many laypeople will recognize the name of Fritz Haber or Karl Bosch? Togetether they’re estimated to have saved over a billion lives. What about Norman Borlaug? He saved over 259 million lives. Ann Holloway, Samuel Katz, Kevin McCarthy, Milan Milovanovic, Anna Mitus, and Thomas Peebles? Together—over 100 million lives. Andreas Gruetzig? 15,400,000 lives. These people invented synthetic fertilizers, new breeds of wheat, measles vaccines, angioplasty, and so on.

The average person might recognize the name of Edward Jenner, who popularized (but perhaps didn’t invent) smallpox vaccination, thereby saving an estimated 530,000,000 lives; and they’d probably recognize Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, whose polio vaccines saved the lives of over a million people, but I bet you could stop a college student, give them those three names, and none would be recognized.

You can see their stories, and read about (or question) the numbers of lives they saved, at the Science Heroes site. Click on Nils Bohlin, for instance, and learn how his improved three-point seatbelt, produced while he was working for Volvo, is estimated to have saved over 1,300,000 lives:

volvo_safetybelt_02-1

Now you can question the figures, but there’s no doubt that many lives were saved by antibiotics, smallpox vaccinations, and so on. Sometimes the innovations were sought deliberately, like polio vaccine, and others came accidentally, like penicillin, but it doesn’t matter. What these data do show is that, in the only way that matters to many people—human lives saved or improve—science has made a difference.

When I give lectures about science, I often ask people raise their hands if they would be dead if it weren’t for antibiotics, and many hands go up, for simple infections killed many people before there were these drugs. If you asked people how many would be there if formal science didn’t exist, well, probably everyone could raise their hands, but many of the innovations that kept us here are unrecognized—like having obstetricians simply wash their hands.

Are these people heroes? Well, they didn’t risk their lives, and of course had they not lived, someone else would have produced their innovations. In those senses they differ from traditional heroes. But no matter; what’s important is that science works, and Science Heroes shows that it works to save lives. Can you think of any other area of intellectual or practical endeavor that has improved the lot of so many people? Theology? I don’t think so.

h/t: Nicole Reggia

Did women chess players’ wearing of the hijab help Iranian women? A reader weighs in

February 21, 2017 • 11:30 am

The Women’s World Chess Championship is underway in Iran, and, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, the country (and the World Chess Federation) is requiring that all women wear hijabs. This is not only an infringement on women’s freedom (both the foreign players and the Iranians themselves), but I can imagine that playing in a hijab could be an annoyance if you’ve never worn one before.

In response to World Chess Federation’s (FIDE’s) refusal to contest the hijab requirement, several important players have pulled out of the tournament, most notably U.S. champion Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, who simply refused to wear the covering because she saw it as a symbol of women’s oppression.

Reader Will G., whose words were previously posted in a piece on the Women’s World Champion, took the time to write me an email discussing whether forcing women players to wear hijabs actually advanced the cause of Iranian women, as some people maintained. It appears that it didn’t. I am publishing his email with permission, and note that Will is himself an accomplished amateur chess enthusiast, ranking in the upper 5% of players, so he knows something about the game. And now to his email:

***********

Sibling Teen Chess Masters Banned In Iran For Going Unveiled and Playing An Israeli

Yeah, so that change.org petition to FIDE about moving the Women’s championship from Tehran had the expected effect. It’s good that so many people made themselves known (17,000+ signed!), but the train went a-rolling along anyway. Right now, we’ve reached the quarterfinals in Tehran. (Just look at the pics. Is there anything more depressing outside of war zone photojournalism?)

Remember some of the arguments made for why the free women of the chess world should swallow their pride and play in Iran?:

“It’s not right to call for a boycott. These games are important for women in Iran; it’s an opportunity for us to show our strength.”

“I am firmly against the international community using the compulsory hijab as a means to put pressure and isolate Iran.”

“If Iran can host this event, it will be a big step for us; it will help our women chess players and it will boost women in other sporting fields. It will pave the way for them, too.”

“Calls for a boycott will only disappoint Iranian women and destroy their hopes.”

So, now that some of the strongest female players have shown up and shown they can fianchetto with the best of them, things are looking up for women in Iran right? At least, the ones who play chess?

Golnaz Esfandiari of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty writes:

The Iranian National Chess Team dismissed 18-year-old Dorsa Derakhshani for appearing at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2017, which ran from January 23 to February 2, without the Islamic head scarf that became compulsory in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Her 15-year-old brother, Borna Derakhshani, was banned for playing against an Israeli opponent at the same event. . . 

“Unfortunately, what shouldn’t have happened has happened. Our national interests have priority over everything,” [Iranian Chess Federation Head Mehrdad] Pahlevanzadeh said. He added that there would be no “leniency” for those who trample on Iran’s “ideals and principles.”

“Our national interests have priority over everything. . . ” In these days when a stubby-fingered Caligula occupies the White House, I take solace in the fact that a totalitarian statement like this still has the power to shock me.

Here’s a video of the offending temptress, doing her wicked post-match interview after holding International Grandmaster Damian Lemos to a draw, in a disgraceful attempt to undermine the Islamic State of Iran’s good reputation.

And here’s the offending game her little brother played against an Israeli Grandmaster. To an onlooker, it looks like a painfully dull French defense exchange variation with a significant blunder in a probably drawn endgame (85. g3??), but apparently the real blunder was showing up like some kind of competitor and not feigning illness.

So I ask the pious folk quoted in The Guardian, and everyone who thinks they may have a point: What the hell is wrong with you? How many women’s championships will have to be held in Iran before the misogyny and antisemitism ends? When would you say we are no longer reaching out in love and understanding, but enabling intolerance and hatred?

And finally, I think that the Derakhshani siblings should be made automatic American citizens, if they so wish.

***********

Happy Western chess players, advancing the cause of Iranian women (LOL):

r_20170218_teheran_wwc_r3g2_6789-anna-muzychuk-ukraine

screen-shot-2017-02-21-at-10-21-43-am