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.
From WXPI in Idaho, we hear of a Hero Squirrel named Joey who drove a burglar, apparently attacking and biting the intruder. Adam Pearl, Joey’s owner, came home and found scratches on his gun case, with a few items missing. Apparently the police found the intruder, who confessed to the crime after the cops noticed he bore marks of sciurid wrath:
Pearl called police and Officer Ashley Turner came out to take a report. She was startled by Pearl’s pet squirrel and asked Pearl if Joey would bite, according to the KIVI report. Pearl said the squirrel normally didn’t bite, but he couldn’t rule it out.
Turner left to investigate the crime, only to return to Pearl’s residence a few hours later with some of Pearl’s stolen merchandise. When questioning the suspect, Turner noticed he had scratches on his hand and asked if he got them from a squirrel. The man said the squirrel wouldn’t stop attacking him until he left the house.
Pearl said Joey is basking in his heroic actions by enjoying his favorite treat – Whoppers candy.
Click on the screenshot to see the short video that appeared on television.
I don’t know if they sell Whoppers outside the US, but if you don’t know the candy, it’s the archetypal movie treat: malted milk balls covered with a chocolate-like substance:
Other candies I ate as a kid at the movies were Raisinettes, Nonpareils, and Sugar Daddy caramel suckers.
When a tactic proves politically successful for one group, others often adopt it. Students all over the US and UK, for instance, have taken a page from the extremist Muslim playbook, equating “I’m offended” with “I have been injured”—a justification for censoring others. And in Berkeley, the anarchists go further, threatening violence when they’re offended, like those Muslims who went on a rampage after the Danish cartoons were published.
What happened is that UCSD invited the Dalai Lama, a much beloved figure but to some, including the late Christopher Hitchens, a flawed one. All in all, though, I see him as fairly innocuous—one of those religious leaders who doesn’t do much damage. I do take issue with those who claim he’s pro-science—even though he wrote a book saying Buddhism was compatible with science—as he also accepts reincarnation and karma: numinous and unscientific beliefs.
But the mainland Chinese see things differently. What happened to Tibet, of course, was that the People’s Republic of China annexed that land in 1951, and, after an unsuccessful revolt, the Dalai Lama fled to India, where he resides with his followers. Since then, the Chinese have waged a relentless campaign to de-Tibetanize the country, pouring Han Chinese settlers into it, and engaging in human rights violations, including, according to an Amnesty International report, executions, tortures, extrajudicial killings. sterilization, and forced abortions, as well as the closing of monasteries. When I visited Tibet about 14 years ago, the monks all beseeched me on the sly for pictures of the Dalai Lama, which are illegal. (One English woman was even assaulted by Chinese soldiers for wearing a Sergeant Bilko tee shirt, since Phil Silvers, who played the sergeant, supposedly resembled the Dalai Lama.) The old Tibet and its people are rapidly disappearing.
This anti-Tibetan animus was further driven home to me when a young professor who came from mainland China, but had a job in the U.S., went on a rant to me about the Dalai Lama, asking me if I realized that he “drank human blood from a skull.” Of course young Chinese are taught that the Dalai Lama is a figure of divisiveness and rebellion. and he’s called a “terrorist”, so I eventually understood.
Now pre-Chinese Tibet wasn’t perfect by a long shot: it had the remnants of a feudal system, only a step from slavery, and many people were mistreated. But one can’t say that it’s palpably better now, especially for the Tibetans, who are slowly being driven to extinction by the Chinese, and are forcibly denied many of their traditional religious perquisities.
Anyway, UCSD’s invitation to the Dalai Lama angered the university’s Chinese students, who said he was an inappropriate speaker because he was an oppressor, because he was divisive, and because his invitation showed a “lack of respect” to Chinese students. Notably, his choice was said to show an “ethnic secessionism” equivalent to Trump’s xenophobia, an anti-egalitarianism, and a lack of cultural sensitivity to Chinese students. (The students’ objections are detailed in the article.) What was surprising was the students’ and alumni’s use of social justice rhetoric:
In a letter addressed to the university’s chancellor, the UCSD Shanghai Alumni Group used similar rhetoric, invoking “diversity” to justify its opposition.
As Chinese alumni, we are proud to be part of the growing UC community because of its diversity and inclusiveness. When addressing such a diverse community, there is a greater responsibility to spread a message that brings people together, rather than split them apart. During the campus commencement, there will be over a thousand Chinese students, families, and friends celebrating this precious moment with their loved ones. If Tenzin Gyatso expresses his political views under the guise of “spirituality and compassion,” the Chinese segment of this community will feel extremely offended and disrespected during this special occasion.
and
At UCSD, the Chinese-student opposition to the invitation came instantly. Just hours after the announcement, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) issued a lengthy, Chinese-language note on WeChat saying it had communicated with the Chinese consulate about the matter.
UCSD is a place for students to cultivate their minds and enrich their knowledge. Currently, the various actions undertaken by the university have contravened the spirit of respect, tolerance, equality, and earnestness—the ethos upon which the university is built. These actions have also dampened the academic enthusiasm of Chinese students and scholars. If the university insists on acting unilaterally and inviting the Dalai Lama to give a speech at the graduation ceremony, our association vows to take further measures to firmly resist the university’s unreasonable behavior. Specific details of these measures will be outlined in our future statements.
We don’t know what these “further measures to firmly resist the university’s unreasonable behavior” will be; I hope they’ll consist of peaceful protests. In fact, I’m pretty sure they will be.
Of course nobody knows what the Dalai Lama would actually say in his address, but I strongly suspect he’d stay away from matters politic. What strikes me about this protest is that the Chinese students who object come from a country that’s dedicated to wiping out a cultural minority. How dare they protest the Dalai Lama on grounds of promoting “cultural diversity” and “respect”? And it’s also striking that they’ve adopted the language of social justice warriors. As the article reports:
“If there were an objection to the Dalai Lama speaking on campus 10 years ago, you would not have seen the objection from Chinese students being framed within the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion,” says professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who researches modern Chinese history at the University of California, Irvine. “There is a borrowing of rhetorical strategies.”
Dr. Tsering Topgyal, a Tibetan native who received his master’s degree at UCSD and now lectures at the UK’s University of Birmingham, called diversity “an expedient notion to latch onto given its importance in both rhetoric and substance in the US and academia.” But he questions its appropriateness as a framing device for this specific grievance:
“If the Chinese students wish to exploit diversity, they would come across as more convincing if they were more committed and supportive of this principle back home. If they are so committed to diversity, it behooves them to be more accepting of the Dalai Lama’s talk, especially since I am sure that many of the non-Chinese student community would wish to hear the Dalai Lama.”
Let’s face it: these Chinese students are neither oppressed nor victims. If anybody is, it’s the Tibetans. How ironic, then, that the Chinese use the language of victimhood in their protests. Of course they have every right to protest, but they really should absorb a bit more history.
In the past week this has happened almost every day to me: I’ll get a call at work, or on my cellphone, and when I say “hello,” nobody answers at first. I then say “hello” louder, and shortly a woman comes on saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was having trouble with my headset. Can you hear me now?” It sounds real, but if you say something, like “who are you?”, she doesn’t respond. It’s a trick call, clearly one meant to scam you or sell you something, but it’s nefarious. I’ve started shouting obscenities to the woman (who is actually a recording) before slamming down the phone, but I wonder if anybody else has experienced it. What are they selling?
It seems like a neat trick because it’s realistic, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to discover that it’s not a real person on the other end of the line, and so what’s the point?
Here’s the point. A bit of Googling turned up this, at Highya:
How the “Can you Hear Me” Scam Works:
“Your phone rings and the other person on the end of the line asks, ‘can you hear me?’” explained Lohman, a detective for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Thousand Oaks Division.
Typically, people will answer “yes.”
But that’s the exact answer these criminals are looking for. And with one little word, you can become a victim.
“The ‘yes’ response is referred to as a voice signature,” Lohman explained. “Companies will legitimately use this to show that you have agreed to a service, change or upgrade.”
However, the scammer will record your “yes” response, which allows them to authorize unwanted upgrades or services.
Scammers have become savvy with this crime, so be mindful of any question that prompts a “yes,” “sure,” or “okay” response. Some criminals might even go as far as editing your words to make it sound like you gave authorization.
“The ‘yes’ constitutes a verbal contract for additional services,” Lohman said. “It’s similar to clicking the ‘agree’ on a contract received via computer to accept additional services.”
But the scammer’s goal is to sell you products, upgrades or services you do not want, such as cruises, vacation packages, warranties or other big ticket items.
Here’s the scam I got:
However, there are ways to differentiate whether you’re receiving a call from a robot or an actual person.
Lohman learned first-hand.
“I got a call one time and it was silent for a second,” he recalled. “And then the person on the other line said, ‘oh, I’m sorry, I’m adjusting my headset’.”
The caller then went immediately into the sales pitch.
“As soon as it went into the sales pitch, I immediately hung up,” Lohman said. “I didn’t stay on the phone long enough to hear the pitch.”
If there’s a pause between you saying “hello” and the response from the caller, there’s a good chance it’s a scam. That’s because it takes a few brief moments for a computerized voice recognition system to know there’s someone on the other line.
“If you say hello and you just sit there and don’t interact and the other person continues to talk, it very well might be a scam,” Lohman said. “If I said hello, I would expect you to say hello back, like a typical conversation. I wouldn’t expect you to go into a sales pitch.”
This scam can also be detected by asking questions of the caller.
“If I start to talk and the caller on the other line is still talking over me, it’s a good chance it’s a robocall,” Lohman said.
This is becoming so common that it barely rates a mention, but what bothers me is the compliance of female passengers. Yes, it’s happened again: according to many venues, including Haaretz and the Jewish Chronicle (see also the Daily Mail if you want to go downscale), a group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men (“Haredis”), on an EasyJet flight from Tel Aviv to London refused to sit next to women after they boarded the plane. That caused considerable consternation, which was resolved when some compliant women offered to move:
Eventually, after a 15 minute stand-off, where the men were said to have blocked the aisles, some of the female passengers offered to move from their seats in order for the men to agree to sit down.
The passenger told the JC: “A group of around 10 ultra-Orthodox men caused absolute bedlam on the flight.
“It was infuriating to witness both for passengers and for the stewards, who tried but failed to control them.
“At one point there were about 10 men in black hats blocking the aisles and refusing to sit down.
“It was impossible for the stewards to get these people to listen to them.
“When some of the women got up and moved seats to ensure that the plane got to take off, some of these men never even thought about saying ‘thank you’.
That wasn’t the end of it:
Another Haredi — ultra-Orthodox — passenger plugged his cellphone into a USB port on the crew control panel in the stewards’ galley area in order to charge it, causing the plane’s exit lights to illuminate and panicking the staff until they realized the problem, according to the Chronicle.
What finally happened? The cops came onto the plane when it landed at Luton, and escorted the men off the plane. There were no charges brought, and that was the end of it. But David Israel at The Jewish Press has beefed about the police, saying that the escort “humiliated the men” and made them do the “perp walk.” That article also seems to exculpate the men:
Here’s what happened next: the women next to whom the Haredi men refused to sit were nice enough (or practical enough) to move to different seats and, miraculously, the men in the black hats ended their “disruptive behavior.”
There’s no grousing that the men were trying to enforce their religious dictates on others in a secular space.
Yeah, according to author Israel, all that needs to happen in such cases is that some nice people should accept the misogyny of these men and, poof, everything will be all right!
What should have happened is that the police should have been called to board the plane in Tel Aviv and remove the men who didn’t want to sit next to women. Nobody should have to be inconvenienced because of the ludicrous fear of Haredis that they might—shudder—actually touch a woman. That could cause cooties! They can certainly practice their sexism in their own communities, but have no right to do so on a plane. Every company, including EasyJet, should have this policy: anybody refusing to sit next to a woman should just be removed from the plane, period. No woman should even be asked to move.
The perp walk was simply at the wrong end of the journey. It should have been at the beginning.
Haredi men in flight Photo Credit: Yaakov Naumi/Flash90; from The Jewish Press piece
It’s no surprise that the New Yorker, a reliably liberal magazine that doesn’t want to offend its fanbase, has been leaning towards Regressive Leftism. While their criticism of Trump is generally good, their osculation of faith is irritating, but of course for the magazine to state outright that there’s no evidence for God would be, well, too strident, and they either shy away from faith or osculate it. (To be fair, they’ve published one online piece by Lawrence Krauss about militant atheism).
But when they tackled the issue of Milo Yiannopoulos and free speech in yesterday’s piece by Jelani Cobb: “The mistake the Berkeley protestors made about Milo Yaiannopoulos“, they wound up implying that Milo is inciting violence, with the implication being that he should just shut up, or at least shouldn’t be invited anywhere. (Cobb, by the way, is identified by the magazine as “a professor of journalism at Columbia University. He won the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism, for his columns on race, the police, and injustice.”)
What was the mistake that the protestors made? It was, said Cobb, to turn Yiannopoulos into a victim, therefore deserving of sympathy. And that was supposedly why Trump is so popular as well:
The further fact of Yiannopoulos’s fervent support for President Trump is not, then, surprising. Few figures in American history have better weaponized the imaginary grievances of entitled people who consider themselves oppressed than Trump has. This is precisely the reason the black-clad rioters among the protesters at Berkeley who prevented Yiannopoulos from speaking—the school cancelled the event, citing danger to the public—served his ultimate interests. It was a tactical error that ignored everything 2016 should have taught us. As with Trump, who treats every reasonable criticism of his Presidency as another nail in a crucifixion, and his electorate, which eagerly co-signs that sentiment, Yiannopoulos has emerged from Berkeley as both the putative victim and victor. In the wake of the debacle, his book rocketed to No. 1 on the pre-order list in Amazon’s political-humor section. Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” stated that he was ending his support for Berkeley, where he received a master’s degree, because he would not feel “safe” on the campus.
Well, one could make a good argument that Trump’s election had little to do with him seeming to be a victim, and his noises about being “crucified” by the press haven’t won him many supporters since he became President. Likewise, the mistake the Berkeley protestors made was not just to cast Milo as Jesus. True, it did enable some to paint him someone whose free speech was abrogated by irate Leftists—which happens to be true. But I don’t think that was nearly as important as the second reason:as Ryan Holiday argued, the fracas over Yiannopoulos brought him more attention, and hence more supporters. The first mistake isn’t as serious because it didn’t gain Milo many more supporters than he already had: it just gave conservatives another reason to defend him. The second, however, by casting a wider net of attention around Milo, invariably drew in some people who hadn’t heard of him, swelling his ranks. (As for Scott Adams’s claim, well, that’s ridiculous, because Berkeley did all it could to ensure a peaceful talk, and in fact supported Milo’s right to speak while denigrating what he usually says. I’m sure it’s very safe in Sproul Plaza right now.)
Cobb also seems to have bought into the view that everything Milo says is toxic: the political equivalent of alchemy. Well, that’s not true, for some of Milo’s comments, whether on immigration, feminism, or issues like Black Lives Matter, do bear discussion, despite the fact that he often goes off the rails. While it’s important to Cobb to claim that everything that comes out of Milo’s mouth can be rejected forthwith, without discussion, I don’t agree. Even if I disagree with most of Milo’s views, that kind of speech is protected precisely because it stimulates the kind of discussion that, in the end, will promote rationality. Do we really want to claim that Black Lives Matter is a movement without flaws, or that anyone who questions statistics on wage differentials between sexes must be a misogynist? For that is what Cobb is saying:
No chemistry department would extend an invitation to an alchemist; no reputable department of psychology would entertain a lecture espousing phrenology. But amid the student conservatives at Berkeley—and along the lecture circuit where he is a sought-after speaker—Yiannopoulos’s toxic brew of bigotries apparently meets their standard for credibility. And this recognition is as big a problem as anything he has said in his talks or in his erstwhile existence as a Twitter troll.
I’ve listened to a few of Milo’s talks, and I don’t agree that they consist solely of a “toxic brew of bigotries.” But since Cobb sees it this way, it’s easy for him to slide into the trope of “hate speech,” and even into implicitly blaming Milo himself on the violence that ensued before his talk—violence that prevented him from mounting the stage.
Read this excerpt from the last two paragraphs of Cobb’s piece and tell me if you don’t see an implicit exculpation of the protests on the grounds that Milo intended to incite the kind of violence that happened at Berkeley:
Whatever Scott Adams’s hypothetical fears for his safety on Berkeley’s campus, they pale in comparison to the realistic fears that many Muslims have about their places of worship being targeted for arson, as was a mosque in Texas, the day after Trump signed his executive order on immigration, last month, one near Seattle, two weeks earlier, and one in Florida, last September. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented eight hundred and sixty-seven incidents of harassment, many of which involved people specifically invoking Trump’s name, in the ten days following the Presidential election. The largest group of these incidents involved anti-immigrant sentiments, followed by instances of anti-black and anti-Semitic bigotry.
We know or ought to know that, in a hierarchical society, even civil liberties can be used in ways that reinforce those hierarchies. We are witnessing the rebirth of alchemy as a serious endeavor, an undertaking in which we transform abuse into victimhood, billionaires into besieged outsiders, and the vulnerable into vectors of mass danger. It is no more empirically sound than the old mutations of lead into gold—but it is far more marketable. And it is far more dangerous than the inept rogues who showed up on Berkeley’s campus that evening.
I’m sorry, but I haven’t heard Yiannopoulos call for the burning of mosques or illegal harassment. The conclusion that Milo’s talks lead to “mass danger” is ludicrous. It is that claim that’s not “empirically sound”, not Cobb’s view that allowing Milo to speak poses a clear and present danger to society. Banning Yiannopoulos from an invited talk, as the protestors succeeded in doing, is more dangerous than allowing him to talk, because that erodes the First Amendment, and that erosion endangers America as a whole. As for the violence, Cobb needs to be reminded that Milo is not responsible for it. Cobb’s aim, to call out prejudice, is admirable, but along the way he throws out the First Amendment along with the baby of bigotry.
We have a diversity of photos today, but remember to send your good ones in, as the tank is continually draining.
The first one comes from Garry VanGelderen, who lives in Ontario (all readers’ notes indented):
Male pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) on my suet feeder, in my backyard in the last few days [sent on Jan. 7]:
Another bird feeding in the winter: a male Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), contributed by Nicole Reggia:
I’m not sure whether Stephen Barnard is back from New Zealand yet, but he sent a photo of one of his activities there.
Here’s a brown trout (Salmo trutta) I caught yesterday [Feb. 12]:
And a fancy star picture from reader Tim Anderson in Australia:
Attached is an image of the globular cluster of stars known as 47 Tucanae in the southern night sky. It contains over a million stars and lies so far south in the sky that it never rises for people in the northern hemisphere north of 18 degrees. It is the second brightest object of its type in the sky and is clearly visible to the naked eye.
This image was constructed from 30 separate 10-second exposures each of filtered red, green and blue light, plus another 30 of “Hydrogen alpha” (the specific wavelength emitted by excited hydrogen atoms). The exposures were taken using a 110mm refracting telescope and a monochrome CCD camera fitted with the appropriate filters, then processed using the Nebulosity astrophotography application.
Wikipedia adds this information about the cluster:
47 Tucanae (or NGC 104) is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana. It is about 16,700 light years away from Earth, and 120 light years across. It can be seen with the naked eye, with a visual apparent magnitude of 4.9. Its number comes not from the Flamsteed catalogue, but the more obscure 1801 “Allgemeine Beschreibung und Nachweisung der Gestirne nebst Verzeichniss” compiled by Johann Elert Bode.
In February 2017, indirect evidence for an intermediate-mass black hole in 47 Tucanae was announced
Good morning; it’s Thursday, February 16, 2017—National Almond Day. And in North Korea it’s the Day of the Shining Star: the claimed but uncertain birthday of the late Kim Jong-il. And the latest from the Government Follies is that Andrew Puzder, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, has withdrawn from being considered. The New York Times reports:
The toppling of one of President Trump’s cabinet picks was a victory for Democrats, unions and liberal groups that had been attacking Mr. Puzder’s business record and his character since he was chosen in December. Conservative publications, including National Review and Breitbart, had also expressed resistance, zeroing in on Mr. Puzder’s employment of an undocumented immigrant as his housekeeper.
And records from his 1988 divorce, disseminated Tuesday night by opponents, resurfaced spousal abuse accusations that made some Republican senators uncomfortable. His ex-wife had recanted those accusations, but senators from both parties privately screened a videotape from “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that featured her laying out the charges while in disguise.
The opposition from Republicans was broad, and the reasons varied. Among the senators who expressed concerns were John Thune of South Dakota, Rob Portman of Ohio, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Tim Scott of South Carolina, more than enough to scuttle the nomination.
As one of my Japanese friends wrote me in endearing English, “It seems to never calm down after the President was replaced with a new one in the United States.”
On this day in 1923, archaeologist Howard Carter opened the burial chamber of King Tut. Famously, when he was asked by the expedition’s sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, “Can you see anything?”, Carter replied “Yes, wonderful things!” Among the items in the tomb, discovered only in 1925, were Tutankhamun’s gold death mask (top) and his mummy (bottom), which remains in the burial chamber:
Tutankhamun became Pharaoh at age 9, ruled for 9 years, and died at 18, perhaps from malaria (DNA tests show he was infected), an infection of the bone (he had a clubbed foot), or a combination of maladies.
On February 16, 1933, Prohibition officially ended in the U.S. In 1959, Fidel Castro became Premier of Cuba, and precisely 19 years later, the first computer bulletin board system was created here in Chicago.
Notables born on this day include two biologists, Francis Galton (1822) and Ernst Haeckel (1834), as well as Sonny Bono (1935) and science writer Natalie Angier (1958). Those who died on this day include sexologist William Masters (2001) and Lesley Gore (2105). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess is having a tussle with a rug. Like Hitler, she’s become a Teppichfresser.
Hili: One day I will win with this rug.
A: And that means?
Hili: I will bite it to death.
In Polish:
Hili: Kiedyś w końcu wygram z tym dywanem.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Zagryzę go.
The Sun would be much more appealing to me if it replaced its page 3 girls with stories like this one, which reads in its entirety
Alistair Forrest, 40, was out paddling when the grey seal began circling him in the water.
Then it climbed on board, partially submerging the vessel near the Forth Road Bridge.
Alistair, of Armadale, West Lothian, said: “I couldn’t believe it.
“I was apprehensive at first as it was so heavy.
“But after that I was elated to be up so close.”
Even better is the video:
There’s a special elation we feel—or at least I feel—when an animal like this overcomes its fear of humans and communes with us, even if for just a short time.
