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.
Even Professor Ceiling Cat must take a break sometimes, and so I’m celebrating the first day of Coynezaa by taking most of the day off. I’ll put up a few stats on the website as I may not be posting on December 31 or January 1, the traditional time to review the data. I will note that January 14 will be the tenth anniversary of the site; it was on that day in 2009 that I made a lame post saying something like “Buy my book.”
Below: posts and comments (average: about 5.2 posts per day and 50.11 comments per post). I once resolved to shut down the site if the comments ever dropped below 50 per post, but I don’t think I’ll stick to that. I calculate that, if traffic stays about the same, we should hit one million comments in about five months, and maybe there will be a big contest for that millionth comment.
There are over 1300 draft posts, most of which will never see the light although I intended to put them up. Road to hell and all. . .
More subscribers than I ever dreamed of! (BTW, it’s not a “blog”!)
Other matters: I’ll be gone for three weeks starting on the fourth day of Coynezaa, and will be celebrating its culmination, my birthday, in Hawaii. If you have wildlife pictures to send, please hold onto them until January 20. There’s lots to see in Hawaii (I’ll be on Oahu), and tons of good food, so expect some travel + nom posts.
Trips in the offing for 2019: Belgium, perhaps England, and ANTARCTICA! There will be other destinations not yet decided.
Merry Christmas! Here are a few felids to brighten your day, though you should be ignoring this site and celebrating, eating, giving presents, and the like.
Alright guys let’s play a game: every morning we find my cat in a different place in our Christmas tree and take a picture. Screenshot when you find him😂😂 pic.twitter.com/usWoCmyYTS
Here’s a heartwarming story from LoveMeow. It’s about a 4½ year old boy named Tyson, whose family home burned down during the recent wildfires around Paradise, California. Their two beloved cats, Optimus (a black cat) and Bumblebee (a tabby), went missing after the fire.
Tyson wrote a letter to Santa asking for a leash and collar in case his beloved cats were found, so that they could stray no longer.
A feline rescue center picked up the slack, and, after more than a month, trapped both of the cats near the burned home. They were returned to their staff, and once again Tyson can cuddle his beloved moggies.
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Finally, here’s the story of Jólakötturinn, The Icelandic Yule Cat. I didn’t know about this monstrous felid, but Wikipedia and National Geographic give details. From Wikipedia:
The Yule Cat (Icelandic: Jólakötturinn) is a monster from Icelandic folklore, a huge and vicious cat said to lurk about the snowy countryside during Christmas time and eat people who have not received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve. The Yule Cat has become associated with other figures from Icelandic folklore as the house pet of the giantess Grýla and her sons, the Yule Lads.
The threat of being eaten by the Yule Cat was used by farmers as an incentive for their workers to finish processing the autumn wool before Christmas. The ones who took part in the work would be rewarded with new clothes, but those who did not would get nothing and thus would be preyed upon by the monstrous cat. The cat has alternatively been interpreted as merely eating away the food of ones without new clothes during Christmas feasts. The perception of the Yule Cat as a man-eating beast was partly popularized by the poet Jóhannes úr Kötlum in his poem Jólakötturinn.
There is a short cartoon about the Yule Cat, created by Justin East with music by Danny Elfman
And here’s that cartoon:
You can see a bunch of pictures of Jólakötturinn here.
Yes, even though I’m an apostate Jew, I still like a few Christmas songs, and I’ve put them below to celebrate the beginning of my personal holiday. All three songs were written fairly recently—since 1962.
Drawing courtesy of reader Laurie
This is a lovely one by Sarah McLachlan and a children’s chorus; it even includes an antiwar message, included in the original song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. That was recorded in 1971 by the John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir. I like this version because it shows the song being recorded.
Who could forget Karen Carpenter, to my mind the possessor of the world’s best female pop voice? And this is her most famous holiday song, written by her brother Richard and Frank Pooler and recorded in 1970. She’s already anorexic in this video, but the voice (prerecorded) is strong—and gorgeous. Richard called her low notes “the money notes”: the word “Christmas” is one.
And the owner of the world’s best male singing voice, with one of my favorite Christmas songs (yes, it refers to baby Jesus). The song was written only in 1962—as peace song during the tensions of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (The Carpenters’ version is here, with Karen coming in at 0:55).
We’ll have just one photo today. Since stars play a role in the mythology of Christmas, here’s a star picture from reader Tim Anderson in Australia. His notes:
One of the most beautiful sights of the summer skies is the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters.
Imaged 24/12/18 in Cowra, NSW
The image comprises ten 240-second frames stacked and aligned in Nebulosity 4 and post-processed in Photoshop. 127mm refractor telescope; ASI071MCPro camera cooled to -20° C and fitted with an Astronomik L2 UV/IR cut filter; Skywatcher EQ8 mount
The cluster is known in Japan as “Subaru”, hence the grill badge on cars of the eponymous manufacturer.
So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Yes, it’s Tuesday, December 25, 2018, the very first day of the six-day holiday of Coynezaa. It’s also National Pumpkin Pie Day, which is meet and proper since everyone in the U.S. will eat it today, while in England they’re having mince pies, also meat and proper. Throughout the world, Christians are commemorating what they take to be the birth of Jesus, but we discussed that claim yesterday.
Google’s U.S. Christmas Doodle is animated, showing that the old rocking chair has got Mr. and Mrs. Santa:
And this is my Christmas Doodle (I didn’t draw it):
To put you in the mood, here’s a slightly dark Christmas ad contributed by Grania (Translation from Swedish: “This year we do everything to make Christmas less stressful. With us, you can solve all the Christmas adventures in one place. Visit http://www.clasohlson.se or welcome to our stores.”)
On this day in 336, according to Wikipedia, there was the “first documentary sign of Christmas celebration in Rome.” It was a big day for coronations of kings: to mention just two, Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on December 25, 800 (in Rome), while William the Conqueror was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey in 1066.
On this day in 1758, Halley’s Comet was seen by Johann Georg Palitzsch, confirming Edmund Halley‘s prediction of its reapparance. That was the first time the appearance of a comet was predicted and then observed. On Christmas Day, 1950, the Stone of Scone, on which British monarchs were crowned, was stolen from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It reappeared in Scotland in April of 1951.
On December 25, 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft—the first to orbit the moon with humans inside—left that orbit and headed back to Earth. Finally, on this day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, and that Union was dissolved the very next day. Also on Christmas, Ukraine officially left the Soviet Union.
It was a big day for births; perhaps moms were holding back until Christmas. Notables born on this day include Jesus Christ (year 0, unattested), Isaac Newton (1642; Julian calendar; today is sometimes called “Newtonmas”), Clara Barton (1821), Helena Rubenstein (1870), Kid Ory (1886), Conrad Hilton (1887), Robert Ripley (1890), Humphrey Bogart (1899; today should be called “Bogartmas”), Cab Calloway (1907), Rod Serling (1924), Jimmy Buffett (1946), Sissy Spacek (1949, born on the first day of Coynezaa in the year I was born, so she’s five days older than I), Annie Lennox (1954), and Justin “Cultural Appropriation” Trudeau (1971).
Those who expired on Christmas Day include W. C. Fields (1946), Charlie Chaplin (1977), Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu (1989; executed), Dean Martin (1995), Birgit Nilsson (2005), Eartha Kitt (2008), and George Michael (2016).
In honor of Deano’s passing, here he is singing my favorite Dean Martin song. The woman in yellow, who also sings, is Shirley MacLaine, the recipient of the song/massage is Dorothy Malone, the movie is “Artists and Models” (1955), and the song was misspelled as “Innamorata” by its writers Harry Warren and Jack Brooks (the recorded version is here). (“Inamorata” is the Italian word for a female lover; the male equivalent is “inamorato”.) They don’t make movies like this any more: for one thing, it lacks affirmative consent.
You’ll recognize Martin’s partner, Jerry Lewis, towards the end.
What a voice Deano had!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili uses body language and, according to Andrzej, her tail says, “I’m happy.”
A: What is your tail saying?
Hili: The same thing I say but in a different language.
In Polish:
Ja: Co mówi twój ogon?
Hili: To samo co ja, tylko innym językiem.
And in Wloclawek, Leon’s being a scrooge. After all, he has a Christmas mouse!
Leon: I don’t understand why there’s so much ado about Christmas.
In Polish: Nie rozumiem o co tyle hałasu z tymi świętami.
Doesn’t this seem unnecessarily complicated? It looks like one of those “dipping birds.” But I guess it’s a near-optimal design because it hasn’t changed in centuries.
Tweets from Matthew. He’s being a grumpy Scrooge at Christmas!
So in the annual watching of It’s A Wonderful Life we have come to the crucial point where (spoiler) UNCLE BILLY PROVES HIMSELF TO BE THE MOST IRRITATING CHARACTER IN THE WHOLE OF FICTION. Oh and everything is Mary’s fault with that damn wish.
We had Earthrise because of an orbiting spacecraft, not because the moon rotates.
How many times do I have to say this. If you are on the Moon, looking at Earth, it stays in the same place in the sky, never moving, going through phases. It neither rises not sets. I remember vividly ½ way thru lecture realising. They thought heart attack or Miss E back row.
Every year our aunt in Maine sends us little handmade chocolate lobsters. This year they are soap. Guess how I found out? 🦞 🧼 👄 pic.twitter.com/GOri5LmTEM
CLARIFICATION; By “dreaming” here, I was asking whether blind people have visual dreams.
The NBC News tonight broadcast a segment about a little girl who was born blind but has a really positive attitude: she has her own upbeat show on local radio, reading from a Braille script, and says that the only thing she can’t do is “see.”
That instantly got me wondering: Do blind people dream? And here’s a prediction—actually three predictions—before I’ve checked on the Internet. (I don’t think I’ll check until tomorrow, or I’ll wait until a reader tells me.)
The first prediction, which is mine, is based on the supposition that if someone is born blind, they’ve never been able to process visual input and therefore couldn’t experience it in their brain. Therefore, I predict that they would not be able to dream.
But people who go blind after they’re born would have developed the brain ability and experience of seeing and would have the neural ability to dream. BUT—the third prediction—the longer they’ve been blind, the less reinforcement of their brain-eye connection they’d have, and I predict that they’d gradually lose the ability to dream, or at least the frequency of dreaming would wane.
It’s strange that I’ve never thought about this before.
