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.
Although over the years I’ve become largely inured to the invective I get from creationists as well as Woke Leftists, it takes an effort of (nonfree) will to not react to mushbrained emails like the one I got yesterday. I enclose the email address since it appears to be fake. (I’m not sure which post this miscreant is replying to, but perhaps an enterprising reader can find it.)
millerco@nycrowd.com
Hey Coyne,
Your response to “charles darwin was not a scientist” proves one thing: only a “professor” can come up with such total stupidity. You’re as ignorant as you are phony. You sing to your choir. Outside that choir you’re a complete moron when it comes to science. You don’t seem to know the mountain of evidence that proves conclusively evolution never happened. Wake up!
My temptation was first to reply to this guy, but what would be the point of that? His mind wouldn’t change, even if I told him about Why Evolution is True. Should I express my own feelings to him? I thought about sending the following email, but in the end just decided to ignore him (I’m assuming the correspondent is male, which has about a 97% probability of being correct).
AUTOREPLY FROM J. COYNE
Dr. Coyne is out of Chicago until January 18. However, he does not respond to the many emails he gets from ignorant morons so cowardly that they lack the guts to give their real names. You have been auto-identified as one of these morons, and there will be no further communication from this site as your email address has been blocked.
But that’s still a response, and what these people want is attention. Perhaps he’ll see his email here (I have no idea if he reads this site), which does constitute a kind of attention, but so be it.
Perhaps I should prepare some kind of checklist to explain why an email is being ignored. Francis Crick used a mailed reply card; I presume he circled the relevant request:
I’ve decided that, since I don’t have the stomach for Internet fights, either at this site or on Facebook and Twitter, my best tactic is simply to ignore people like this
Sadly, I have but a week and a day until I leave this lovely and warm island to return to frigid Chicago. Yes, it’s Thursday, January 10, 2019, and only four days until this site has been up for exactly a decade (I’ll do a short post about it). It’s National Bittersweet Chocolate Day; does anybody find that, as they age, they crave darker and darker chocolate? I used to want only milk chocolate, and now I find myself looking for chocolate with 85-90% cocoa. (Aldi, btw, carries good German bars of that nature, and they’re not expensive.)
It’s also Margaret Thatcher Day in the Falkland Islands, honoring the PM during the 1982 Falklands War. The Falklands are surely the only territory to have such a holiday.
It is lore that on this day in 49 BC, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river, thereby violating Roman law and precipitating the civil war that led to him becoming Emperor. On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published his revolution-promoting pamphlet Common Sense. On this day in 1870, John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil.
Speaking of oil, it was on this day in 1901 that the first gusher (spouting oil derrick) occurred at Spindletop in Beaumont, Texas. Wikipedia labels this photo “The Lucas gusher at Spindletop, January 10, 1901. This was the first major gusher of the Texas Oil Boom.”
The rest is history, all the way up to George W. Bush.
On this day in 1917, a group of suffragettes, the Silent Sentinels started a 2.5 year silent and legal protest outside the White House. Later some were arrested and horribly brutalized in prison, but this treatment only made Americans sympathetic to women’s right to vote, and in 1920 that right was guaranteed by the Nineteenth Amendment. Here are those brave women who, nevertheless, persisted:
Finally, it was on January 10, 1985, that Sandinista Daniel Ortega became president of Nicaragua, angering the U.S., who didn’t want a socialist in charge and funded the Contras to overthrow the government. We failed, thank Ceiling Cat. After a hiatus, Ortega was reelected in 2006 and remains President.
Notables born on January 10 include Robinson Jeffers (1887), Ray Bolger (1904), Sal Mineo (1939), Godfrey Hewitt (1940), Linda Lovelace (1949), Pat Benatar (1953), and Jared Kushner (1981).
Those who died on this day include Carl Linnaeus (1778), Samuel Colt (1862), Buffalo Bill (1917), Sinclair Lewis (1951), Dashiell Hammett (1961), Coco Chanel (1971), Howlin’ Wolf (1976), and David Bowie (2016).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a word has taken on new meaning.
A: What are you doing?
Hili: A crossword.
In Polish:
Ja: Co robisz?
Hili: Rozwiązuję krzyżówkę.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoting Linda Sarsour:
Our future is a shared responsibility.
This woman putting it all on the line for healthcare, women & LGBT+ rights is @lsarsour.
The far right constantly maligns her w/ false attacks + threats of violence.
Yet here she is, as always, fighting for everything our flag represents. https://t.co/QR4rYnclLt
Tweets from Grania: J. K. Rowling responds to a Labourite (Stephen Fry’s mother was Jewish):
Nothing says 'our movement has no problem with antisemitism' than suggesting a man of Jewish ancestry is secretly motivated by fear of losing money. But thanks for tagging me in, @stafford4jc. If you hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to tell you to go fuck yourself. pic.twitter.com/m6xBbGrIvG
Do you see it? Do you hike with your dogs off leash?This is why you should always stay on the trail and have complete control of your dogs … this Southwestern Speckled Rattlesnake is often sitting in ambush in this exact spot, year after year, only a few feet from a trail. pic.twitter.com/WlyV3kveeC
Our student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, had as its big headline the results of its diligent investigation: a trawl through public voting records. And what they found is revealed below (click on screenshot):
Make no mistake about it: this is meant to tar the President—who’s done a pretty damn good job—by implying that he’s a Trump supporter. But of course this was the primary, not the final election, so we don’t know exactly for whom Zimmer voted; here are the candidates:
Frankly, I’m surprised that Dr. Zimmer voted for any of these guys, but of course I don’t know his politics. I’m surprised simply because he doesn’t seem like a Republican and, mainly, because so few academics are Republicans.
But why is this big news? Because the Maroon wants to impugn Zimmer, connecting this primary voting with U of C policies, including our free-speech policy (enacted by a faculty committee) and the letter from the dean of students (not Zimmer) saying we don’t require safe spaces or trigger warnings. The Maroon is pretty much a reflexive social-justice organ: they’re becoming the HuffPost of campus. So here’s how the paper tries to impugn him:
Zimmer has long been coy about his politics, declining to answer a question on the subject in a 2016 interview with The Maroon. In recent years, however, he has become somewhat of a celebrity in conservative circles, earning praise from commentators for publications like the National Review and The Federalist for attacking “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” as the public face of the University of Chicago’s purportedly pro-free speech stance.
Under Zimmer’s leadership, the University has taken a strong anti-union position with respect to graduate student workers, refusing to negotiate following a decisive vote in favor of unionization in 2017, even as other universities like Harvard have done the opposite.
The anti-union stand is the one thing I find worthy of criticism. As for the rest, anybody who speaks out for free speech and against an offense culture that demands trigger warnings and the like is going to be lauded by conservatives. I have been, too. You’re not going to win friends on the Left by promoting free speech and criticizing the demands of many students that they not be offended.
Zimmer, however, is also a celebrity in liberal free-speech circles for his advocacy of our free-speech policy, which has now been adopted by over 35 universities.
As for the “purportedly pro-free speech stance” (note the missing hyphen between the second and third words”; Maroon, please get a copy editor!) it’s not a purported stance, it’s a real stance. It’s worth noting here that despite myself and others asking the Maroon—a college newspaper, for crying out loud—to endorse the university’s free-speech policy, they refuse to do so, probably because more than half of the editors aren’t in favor of that policy. That’s shameful.
But then the Maroon reluctantly owns up to something else (my emphasis):
Zimmer has also led the University as it sent several letters to the Donald Trump administration in opposition to its immigration policies, though at times UChicago has responded to the current administration more moderately than other colleges, opting not to declare itself a “sanctuary campus” and declining to join hundreds of universities in endorsing the Paris climate agreement.
Zimmer voted in a primary election in only one other year since 2000 according to public voting histories, voting in the Democratic primary in 2008.
Note that you don’t have to vote in the primary election to vote in the “real” election.
This is a hit piece, and there’s no doubt about it. The readers agree. Here are a few comments:
Here’s the comment I added after I posted this. I’d be surprised if it stays up, though it’s no different from many of the other comments.
And YES, they trashed it! What a crummy thing to do. However, I will nevertheless persist, and I posted it again, in exactly the same form. And YES, they removed it a second time.
I’m no fan of Republicans, as every reader here knows, and I find it curious and a bit depressing that President Zimmer voted for one in 2016 (though he went Democratic in 2008). But to impugn him because of this is simply an ad hominem tactic, unworthy of any decent paper. But then again, the Maroon has long ceased being a decent student newspaper.
Many universities, including public ones, have created “bias response teams,” in which speech considered hateful or offensive is reported to University authorities and dealt with promptly. The number of these teams is growing.
While universities are perfectly free to recommend standards of civil discourse, public schools must adhere to the First Amendment and thus have no right to police speech unless it falls into the Amendment’s exceptions: speech that’s a clear and present danger, that is libelous, that creates a climate of harassment that impedes education, and so on.
But those aren’t the standards that colleges use. The 2017 Bias Response Team report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) gives examples of the kinds of incidents that get reported (punishments are often not mentioned). Here are two at public schools:
Appalachian State University [North Carolina]: A student filed a report regarding the 2016 presidential election, claiming to be “offended by the politically biased slander that is chalked up everywhere reading ‘TRUMP IS A RACIST’” and describing the “slander” as “unlawful.” Another report stated that supporters of then-candidate Bernie Sanders were “destroying” messages chalked by Trump supporters by drawing penises next to them. Yet another report complained that a pro-Trump student organization was using chalk to write “hate speech” in support of Trump. Another series of reports was filed against a student activist on several grounds: tweeting that she “hate[s] white men”; “refus[ing] to support all students if a student fits the certain stereotype of a white male”; “display[ing] disturbing apathy [and] ignorance and bitterness”; and “express[ing] profound disregard for the lives of students based on race and gender and for [police] officers based on their careers.”
University of Texas at Austin: The Campus Climate Response Team (CCRT) fielded dozens of reports about a conservative student group’s protest of affirmative action in the form of an “affirmative action bake sale.” 94% of the reports sought disciplinary action. Administrators met with the student group following the reports and acknowledged in an open letter that it was the student group’s “right to” engage in the protest. The CCRT’s annual report also disclosed that “[f]aculty and student commentary in the classroom perceived as derogatory and insensitive” was an example of the “types of incidents” reported to the CCRT
Now, as we see in the UT incident, the reports aren’t always punished, but even having these teams encourages students to participate in the Offense Culture, as well as creating a chilling atmosphere in which students are fearful of contravening the acceptable ideologies on their campuses. And the teams swell the already bloated college administrations that are top-heavy with people whose job it is to enforce ideology. Indeed, even the very name “bias response team” shows that’s what being monitored and punished here is “bias” itself.
Bias response teams aren’t really needed, I think: present college disciplinary committees (every college has one) can take care of the truly harmful kinds of speech that are pretty rare.
But now the police force of the University of Illinois (UI) has gotten involved in the college’s bias response team—the first time I’ve know that college cops have been recruited to police speech.
Get that: call the University cops “if you feel unsafe”! (Of course, they mean “unsafe because of language”, not “unsafe because of potential physical harm.”) This is not only excessive coddling, and suffers from all the problems of bias response teams, but, by getting the police involved, creates an even more chilling atmosphere. Why should the university police get involved unless there’s a crime at issue? Police involvement would seem to be more of a deterrent to free speech than would the existence of “bias response teams.”
The U of I police also tweeted the same message on their webpage:
Acts of intolerance create an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for campus community members. Remember that you can always report acts of intolerance to the Bias Assessment and Response Team at https://t.co/sVSglE3ZOz. Please let us know if you feel unsafe. #ILLINOISsafetypic.twitter.com/DOjuMmWcGd
As if that weren’t enough, UI outlines what it considers “bias-motivated incidents”, all of which, when they involve speech, are perfectly legal under First Amendment. Of course it’s illegal to deny someone their rights based on age, gender, ethnicity, and so on, but it’s not illegal to issue “expressions” of them, odious though they may be. And “religion/spirituality” is also included in the list: no criticizing Judaism, Islam, or Methodism!
Click on the screenshot to see the whole page;
To put the icing on this unpalatable cake, the members of UI’s bias response team include Rachael Ahart, who happens to be a detective for the UI Police Department.
The University of Illinois should be ashamed of itself, and its police force should get out of the bias response business as soon as possible.
Today’s Jesus and Mo, called “fell”, is a bit puzzling to me, but then again it’s not yet 6 a.m. in Hawaii and I haven’t had coffee. Perhaps a reader or two could explain the strip. Why is “fell down” so important?
The author’s email with the link came with this note:
“Here’s that weird passage from Acts which prompted this week’s strip:
Acts 5 King James Version (KJV)
But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,
2 And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and
brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
3 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the
Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
4 Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not
in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou
hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
5 And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great
fear came on all them that heard these things.
6 And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.
7 And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing
what was done, came in.
8 And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much?
And she said, Yea, for so much.
9 Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt
the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband
are at the door, and shall carry thee out.
10 Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and
the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her
by her husband.
11 And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these
things.”
I continue to eat the local food, and it doesn’t look as if I’ll go to any fancy Hawaiian restaurants when I’m here, though I hear that the hula pie at Duke’s on Waikiki is awesome. (I walked through Duke’s restaurant, though, and the buffet looked very lame.) There are few things more satisfying than a good plate lunch with smoky kalua pig, poi, rice, macaroni salad, and the coconut dessert haupia. I don’t need fancier food.
Here are a few goodies I’ve had in the last few days.
First, the Japanese food court in the Ala Moana Center (a ritzy shopping mall) is an excellent place to dine. Despite the mall’s harboring of Fendi, Tiffany’s, Jimmy Choo’s, and many other upscale and overpriced purveyors of champagne wishes and caviar dreams, the Japanese food court is tasty and reasonable. And parking at Ala Moana is free, though sometimes it’s hard to get a spot.
There are three food courts at Ala Moana; the one you want is the Shirokiya Japan Village Walk, which has about 50 stores selling everything from soba, udon, gyoza and tempura to sushi and green tea ice cream (my favorite).
I didn’t take a picture, but here’s what it looks like (there are about six aisles like this):
My lunch: a big bowl of beef curry udon noodles with a side of vegetable tempura. It was just about ten bucks, and a big bonus: with every $10 purchase, you get a coupon for a free big glass of cold beer at a small bar in the middle of the court. Just the ticket with Japanese food!
A friend’s lunch, also excellent: takoyaki (octopus balls with ginger, scallion, and tempura scraps; left) and pork okonomiyaki (Hiroshima style), a Japanese pancake with noodles, described by Wikipedia:
In Hiroshima, the ingredients are layered rather than mixed. The layers are typically batter, cabbage, pork, and optional items such as squid, octopus, and cheese. Noodles (yakisoba, udon) are also used as a topping with fried egg and a generous amount of okonomiyaki sauce.
The amount of cabbage used is usually three to four times the amount used in the Osaka style. It starts out piled very high and is pushed down as the cabbage cooks. The order of the layers may vary slightly depending on the chef’s style and preference, and ingredients vary depending on the preference of the customer. This style is also called Hiroshima-yaki or Hiroshima-okonomi.
I was feeling pleasantly sated after my meal and a cold brewski, but craved a bit of dessert (as in Paris, I’m eating only one meal a day here). I learned from Mike “Strictly Dumpling” Chen’s video on the food court that there was a place that made both sweet and savory cones from crepes. I had the “Japanese special”, which was a belly-buster, filled with fresh strawberries, matcha ice cream, azuki beans, mochi, and whipped cream. Here it is:
I went into a food coma after I ate it. (I was unable to find the Japanese fried chicken and yakiniku beef places Chen recommended.)
A local speciality in Hawaii, which is surely cultural appropriation but nonetheless tasty, is Spam musubi, which is basically a big fat hunk of sushi rice with Spam on top, wrapped with nori (seaweed). It’s cheap and filling, and I found it the perfect hiking food, as it comes tightly wrapped in cellophane at every 7-11 store I’ve seen. The food court had several varieties, and it was quite popular with the Japanese tourists who throng the court. Mike Chen thinks the ratio of rice to Spam is too high, but I think it’s fine:
Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!
We were out of ground coffee this morning, so I did an early run to the 7-11 for java. While there, I picked up a couple of Spam musubi for breakfast. 7-11s in Hawaii are big on breakfast food, lots having Spam in it, and the place was full of people buying Spam musubi, Spam and eggs, Spam, eggs, sausage and Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, bacon and Spam, donuts on a stick, and so on.
The musubi deconstructed. Two of these (total $3) make a filling breakfast!
Yum!
Donuts on a stick! I didn’t buy these today, but confess that I did buy one when leaving early on a trip last week:
Helena’s Hawaiian Foods is perhaps the best-known plate-lunch style restaurant on Oahu. It’s highly rated by almost everyone, including Yelp and tripadvisor. It was closed for the holidays until yesterday, but we went on opening day. Even at 2 p.m. there was a line, but only a 15-minute wait.
Hungry eaters wait outside. Helena’s has been open since 1946.
The menu: it’s pricey for a plate-lunch place, but it’s Honolulu, and the place is known for quality. The most prized menu items are the kalua pig (cooked in an underground oven) and the pipikaula short ribs, which are dry-aged before cooking. I therefore ordered Menu B with a large poi instead of rice. (I do love my poi!)
Inside:
Dishes below, clockwise from 12 o’clock: lomi salmon, dipping salt, a large order of poi, pipikaula short ribs, kalua pig, and a plate containing both raw onions and the dessert: the coconut custard haupia.
My take: the food was very good, especially those remarkable short ribs, which were appealingly gamy and toothsome. But the portions were small, and, all things considered, the Waiahole Poi Factory had much larger portions, was cheaper, and the kalua pig was better, as was its factory-fresh poi. The WHP doesn’t have those remarkable short ribs, though.
In my view, Helena’s prices may reflect inflated real-estate tariffs in Honolulu, but probably also its reputation, which seems to me also a tad inflated. There’s a definite “crowd effect” here.
Here’s a video about Helena’s from “Eating on a Dime”:
It’s Wednesday, January 9, 2019 (I can finally get the year right), and it’s National Apricot Day. In India it’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, or “Non Resident Indian Day,” celebrating the contributions of those Indians outside the country who have contributed to its development. (It was on January 9, 1915, that Gandhi returned to India from South Africa.)
We missed yesterday’s Google Doodle, which was an interactive “dino doodle” done by second-grader Sarah Lane. (If you go to the Doodle and click on each item, it moves.) It was the winner in Google’s contest to produce a Doodle about “what inspires me”. Here’s what Google says, and they produced a video that I’ve put below.
[The winner was] 2nd grader Sarah Gomez-Lane, who drew delightful dinosaurs to highlight her dream of becoming a paleontologist! We fell in love with Sarah’s rendering of her dinos, and were blown away by her big (you might even say “dino-sized”!) ambitions for her future, especially at her young age.
For the first time in Doodle for Google’s 10-year history, Sarah got to collaborate with the Doodle team to transform her artwork into an animated, interactive experience. She also received $30,000 toward a college scholarship, and her elementary school in Falls Church, VA will receive $50,000 to spend on technology to help students like Sarah continue to pursue what inspires them.
It was on January 9, 1349 that nearly the entire Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland, accused of having caused the plague of Black Death, was rounded up and incinerated. 600 adults were burned and 140 Jewish children forced to become Catholics. On this day in 1806, Lord Nelson, killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, was given a state funeral and interred in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. On this day in 1909, according to Wikipedia, “Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nautical miles (180 km; 112 mi) from the South Pole, the farthest anyone had ever reached at that time. He didn’t make it, but Roald Amundsen and his men did on December 14, 1911.
On this day in 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected (succeeding Yasser Arafat) as President of the Palestinian National Authority. Meet the new boss—same as the old boss. Finally, four years ago today the killers in the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, the two brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, were killed in a standoff with French police. I can’t believe I forgot to post yesterday about the fourth anniversary of the massacre, in which 12 people were killed over cartoons.
Also on that day (January 9), an ISIS supporter killed four Jewish hostages in a kosher supermarket in Paris.
Notables born on this day include Joseph Strauss (1870; designed the Golden Gate Bridge), Richard Halliburton (1900), Richard Nixon (1913), Bob Denver (1935), Joan Baez (1941), Jimmy Page (1944), and Michiko Kakutani (1955).
Those who died on this day include Caroline Herschel (1848), and that’s about it for notables. Herschel was a pioneering German astronomer, unusual for a woman of that era. She discovered eight comets and her honors include these:
She was the first woman to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828), and to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, with Mary Somerville). She was also named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1838). The King of Prussia presented her with a Gold Medal for Science on the occasion of her 96th birthday (1846).
There are no photographs of her, but here’s a painting:
Physicist Brian Cox also named his calico cat, Herschel, after the astronomer. Here’s Herschel pretending to be soup:
The cat's called Herschel – named after Caroline Herschel – by the way ….
A lovely murmuration of starlings (I can never get enough of these). Sound up, too, to hear the wings:
Filmed this mesmerising #murmuration of starlings over Nobber in Co Meath last night. One of nature's greatest winter spectacles is worth a listen too… pic.twitter.com/pjDByJ4Lej
