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.
A few days ago I expressed some doubt about the effectiveness of the March for Science, now scheduled for April 22 (Earth Day) in Washington D.C. I was worried mostly about dividing both scientists and the public by over-politicization of the march based on identity politics. This was expressed on the march organizers’ social media emissions, including Twitter and a now-removed and misguided statement of aims that indicted science for racism and sexism.
I wasn’t the only person to worry about this; as a new piece in The Scientist reports, others were concerned about the ideological problems as well; these included Steve Pinker and Jonathan Haidt. Others weren’t concerned despite the political overtones, and the article gives a good summary of the pros and cons, with quotes by several scientists—including me.
The March for Science website now has a new statement of aims (below; click screenshot to enlarge or go to site), and one that Pinker now endorses. I do, too. The diversity is still there, but in a good way, for one strength of science can be said to be its diversity insofar as the tools of science are employed the same way by people of all genders, ethnicities, and religions. But I think the real strength of science is its toolkit: the reliance on evidence that’s now a prominent part of this statement:
According to the New York Times and SFGate, Milo Yiannopoulos’s scheduled appearance at the University of California at Berkeley last night, sponsored by the College Republicans, was canceled after initially peaceful protests turned violent. The situation isn’t completely clear, but it looks as if “outside agitators” (i.e., non-students) attacked police barricades, threw paint, and then went on a rampage. As I reported earlier, the Berkeley Chancellor had refused to cancel the event, calling for freedom of speech at the same time that he deplored Milo’s views.
SFGate reports:
A protest at UC Berkeley over a scheduled appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos turned fiery and violent Wednesday night, prompting police to cancel the event and hustle the Breitbart News editor off campus.
But even after the event’s cancellation, hundreds of protesters spilled off campus into the city streets, where the violence continued as they confronted drivers, engaged in fights, smashed storefront windows and set fires.
The trouble began around 6 p.m., two hours before Yiannopoulos was to begin his speech inside the student union building on Sproul Plaza. Protesters outside the building began throwing fireworks and pulling down the metal barricades police set up to keep protesters from rushing inside. Windows were smashed and fires were set outside the building as masked protesters stormed it. Police quickly evacuated Yiannopoulos for his own safety.
Berkeley police said five people were injured and some people, including a man who said he had hoped to see Yiannopoulos speak, were seen with their faces bloodied. There were no arrests.
Police said protesters threw bricks and fireworks at police officers. University police locked down all buildings and told people inside them to shelter in place, and later fired pepper balls and paint balls into the crowd of protesters who defied orders to leave the area. Police called in support from nine of the 10 UC campuses and the Oakland Police Department and Alameda County sheriffs department.
The violence then spread:
On Berkeley’s city streets, protesters took their rage against construction sites and businesses, smashing windows at banks and stores. They also confronted motorists, and at one point a driver sped off with a protester on the car hood.
What the hell? Here’s a video of some of the protests, which, ironically, took place in Sproul Plaza, where the Free Speech Movement was born in the mid-Sixties.
And here’s a report I got last night from a reader who lived close by:
I live about a mile from the UC Berkeley campus, and beginning several hours ago, I’ve heard the sound of helicopters circling down that way. Had no idea why, could be anything. But just a few minutes ago, there was a radio report stating that Milo Yiannopoulos’s speech was canceled and there has been some violence, throwing smoke bombs and fireworks, a fire, a few people with blood on their faces. The report stated that at first the protest was peaceful, but some ‘black clad’ folks wearing masks arrived, crashed the party so to speak, and of a suddenly things got violent. (Surely these are the floating group of anarchist agitators who call themselves “Black Bloc” and violently co-op peaceful demonstrations here in the Bay Area and elsewhere). I’m not certain just what is happening but I now hear sirens. I don’t have a TV, so just found a live feed on the Internet. Reports that there are thousands of people and the entire campus is on lockdown. However, I’m also hearing on the radio that some of the protestors are trying to de-escalate the situation by playing music. The situation is fluid and lots of things going on.
Well, it’s all over now; move along folks, nothing to see here. Need I add that this violence by either anarchists or the Left, but certainly by opponents of Milo and Trump, is unconscionable? We’re supposed to be better than that, and yet here we are acting like thugs and goons. As one reader emailed me, “This is what happens when people start to believe that they are so morally superior that they can literally do anything and still be right. Ironically, they’re not a million miles away from fascism themselves anymore.” That’s exactly what Nick Cohen warned about in his book What’s Left? And, predictably, Trump has threatened to cut UC Berkeley’s funding.
What pains me as much as this violence is the excuse that the protestors had: they were exercising free speech, not suppressing it! Such is the Doublespeak of the Regressive Left. Here are two excerpts from the report above (my emphases):
Protesters argued that what Yiannopoulos specializes in is hate speech, and that it didn’t deserve to be protected.
“It’s not a question of free speech,” a protester said via megaphone, riling up the hundreds of protesters. “It’s about real human beings.”
Seriously? If speech is about real human beings, it’s not free speech? That’s something new to me.
Those who attend his appearances, [Yiannopoulos] said, include people who “don’t necessarily agree with me but just want to hear the other side. They were prevented from doing so this evening by violence from the left — the left that is terrified of anyone who they think might be persuasive or might be interesting or might take people with them.”
But UC Berkeley sophomore Jonathan Gow, 19, rejected Yiannopoulos’ insistence that free speech took a hit.
“The whole reason we’re here is for free speech,” Gow said. “Milo’s hate speech is not allowed here. When it’s hate speech, our free speech is to shut him down.”
Black is white! Clearly, whatever speech you don’t like isn’t free speech, but hate speech, which deserves to be censored. The problem, as always, is “who gets to define ‘hate speech'”? Some of what Milo says deserves discussion, and none of what Milo says contravenes “free speech” as interpreted by the courts.
What these protestors is doing is cutting the very heart out of the First Amendment. Hate speech is now seen as violence, although the only thing hurt are some people’s feelings. But that’s enough, for many, to justify censorship. It’s sad that even some Berkeley students are on board with this.
I’ll close with an excerpt from the report, quoting yet another UCB student:
UC Berkeley junior Fatima Ibrahim, 20, who clutched a “resist fear” sign with a red fist, said the timing of Yiannopoulos’ scheduled appearance stung.
“As a black Muslim woman, all three of those identities have been targeted throughout (Trump’s) campaign,” Ibrahim said. “To have someone like (Yiannopoulos) come into my campus and affirm those people’s beliefs, it’s very, very hurtful.”
Hours after the event was canceled, the College Republicans issued a statement declaring the Free Speech Movement dead. “It is tragic that the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is also its final resting place,” the statement said.
I hate to agree with the College Republicans on this, but I do.
_________
UPDATE: A PuffHo article that reports the riots (and, predictably, has a distinctly anti-Milo slant) is followed by a number of comments, many of which show that people just don’t understand what freedom of speech entails. Here’s a screenshot of some of the discussion:
Well, today was the National Prayer Breakfast, a sure violation of the First Amendment, but it keeps going on, year after year. Trump spoke, embarrassing himself with the usual spontaneous mind dump, and I’m just going to reproduce the email I get with my CNN alerts. The reportage, and video below, need little commentary.
“Ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster,” he said. [JAC: Start listening to this bit at 12:45]
The keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast was Barry Black, the chaplain of the United States Senate. Moved by Black’s remarks, Trump lauded him. “I don’t know if you’re Democrat or Republican, but I’m appointing you for another year. The hell with it.”
Here’s Trump’s speech in full, although there was much osculation of faith by other people. The President (oy!) starts speaking at 9:45. Like his speech on Martin Luther King Day, this is absolutely unbelievable:
TESTY EXCHANGES
Trump also told the audience that when they hear of the tough phone calls he’s having with foreign leaders, not to worry about it. [JAC: This is at 21:07 in the video above.]
Trump abruptly ended the call because he was unhappy, a source said.
All this a day after a call with Mexico’s President, where a transcript showed Trump complaining about Mexico’s “handling” of “tough hombres.”
And I’ll add this from The Independent, reporting Trump’s vehement vow at the Prayer Breakfast to get rid of the “Johnson Amendment.” That law, passed in 1954 and named after its sponsor Lyndon Johnson, helps keep church and government separate in America:
President Donald Trump has announced he will “get rid of and totally destroy” a 60-year-old rule that blocks tax-exempt religious groups from endorsing or opposing political candidates. [JAC: This is at 20:05 in the video above.]
The so-called Johnson amendment was introduced by then-Senator Lyndon B Johnson in 1954. It threatens churches and other religious institutions with the loss of their tax-exempt status should they overstep the mark.
At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on Thursday Mr Trump said: “Jefferson asked, ‘Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?’ Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution—I will do that.”
The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act. The White House did not respond to requests for comment, but when asked Monday about whether a religious freedom executive order was in the works, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, “I’m not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue. There is a lot of executive orders, a lot of things that the president has talked about and will continue to fulfill, but we have nothing on that front now.”
Don’t forget to keep those photos coming in, folks! I’ll be here all year.
We have more greenery today, as reader/naturalist/photographer Lou Jost sent some photos from Ecuador. His notes:
In honor of your recent post on lichen symbioses, here are some photos of lichens and bryophytes, groups that don’t get much attention otherwise.These are all from cloud forest at 2100m elevation in the Banos area in Ecuador, except for the last one which is from 1200m. They remind me of coral reefs…
I can’t tell you anything about their biology, but readers may like to know how they were photographed. These are taken with an Olympus 60mm macro lens and PEN-F body (small micro-4/3 sensor). The interesting thing about this camera and lens is that it solves the macro photographer’s constant dilemma: at higher magnifications there is very little depth of field, but if he or she uses a smaller aperture to increase the depth of field, diffraction (unavoidable due to the wave nature of light) makes everything slightly unsharp. This camera does “focus bracketing”: when I press the shutter button the camera automatically takes a stack of up to 999 photos, each focused a bit farther away than the previous one. So I can use the lens’ best aperture, f/4.5. The depth of field for any one picture at this aperture is grossly inadequate, but there is software (I use Zerene) which takes the sharp parts of all the photos in the stack and combines them into one completely sharp picture. That’s what I’ve done here. Each image is merged from between twenty and eighty individual photos. Though this is best done with a tripod, several of the ones I am sharing here were taken hand-held.
Most of these pictures are dominated by lichens, with some liverworts. The last picture is of a new species of liverwort —see this post. It is special to me since the discoverer is going to name it after me!
Yesterday was World Hijab Day, a slick piece of public relations that manages to push a religious agenda, including the second-class status of females under Islam, by appealing to liberal sentiments of Westerners. By donning this repressive garment, liberal Western women are said to empower not only themselves, but their Muslim sisters.
Of course I support a woman’s right to wear a hijab, and understand that the intent of this day is to dispel bigotry against Muslims; but I don’t support the coercion of some Muslim countries in which women don’t have a choice to cover, nor do I support social pressure in other places (including the US) for Muslim girls to start wearing the headscarf. After all, this is a garment worn as a nod to the supposedly uncontrollable lust of men, which Islam sees as a women’s duty to repress by covering their hair. (As we all know well, a few wisps of hair can lead to horrible things!) Celebrating Hijab Day is like celebrating a woman’s wearing of a ball and chain.
When I asked a friend their opinion of Hijab Day, I got this response:
I think the same as I would always think. It is a well-intentioned but pig-ignorant mush-brained gesture fetishizing a symbol of female oppression.
The site’s slideshow has these pictures. The first is the site’s header, and note that it speaks of “rights to cover” but doesn’t say something far more important: “Stand for a woman’s right NOT to cover.”
What about those countries that require the wearing of a hijab, and in which you can be beaten for not wearing one? What “rights” do those women have? But that’s ignored in the slides below:
“Modesty is a part of faith”. Well, modesty is the part of faith that’s been inserted by men.
The conflation of modesty and liberation is demonstrated by the woman below.
But look at Kabul, Cairo, or Tehran 40 years ago. Women didn’t veil nearly as much then, for it wasn’t required. THEN they had a choice, and their choice was, by and large, not to cover (see my posts with photos here and here). That, of course, is ignored on World Hijab Day. And, as I’ve heard repeatedly, even women in Western countries are often forced to veil by social pressure—pressure imposed by their mosques, their family, and their peers. I seriously doubt that even a majority of hijabis in Europe or the Americans can be said to have “chosen” a veil in the sense of having worn it in the absence of any social pressure.
Good morning on a chilly (in Chicago) February 2, 2017; it’s 17° F (-8° C) here, with wind on top of that. It’s National Tater Tot Day in America, and in case you don’t know what these reconstitution nuggets of potato mush are, they look like this:
Actually, they’re not THAT bad. . .
It’s also Groundhog Day in the US: if Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t see his shadow (i.e., if it’s cloudy), we’ll have an early spring.
On this day in 1653, New Amsterdam, now known as New York, was incorporated as a town, and in 1874 the first Groundhog Day was celebrated in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. In 1901, this was the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, and in 1922 James Joyce’s Ulysses was published. Can anyone remember what noise the cat made in the fourth chapter? Finally, on this day in 1990, significant steps were taken toward ending apartheid and restoring democracy to South Africa, as President F. W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress and promised to release Nelson Mandela from prison.
Notables born on this day include James Joyce (1882, so his great work was published on his 40th birthday), Jascha Heifetz (1901), Ayn Rand (1905), Stan Getz (1927), Graham Nash (1942) and Christie Brinkley, the Uptown Girl (1954). Those who died on this day include Dmitri Mendeleev (1907), Boris Karloff(1969), Bertrand Russell (1970), Sid Vicious (1979) and Gene Kelly (1996). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus the Kind once again makes a great sacrifice at the behest of the Princess.
Hili: Admit that you are not especially comfortable with me here.
Cyrus: I admit it.
In Polish:
Hili: Przyznaj, że nie jest ci tu ze mną specjalnie wygodnie.
Cyrus: Przyznaję.
Leon is still hiking in Southern Poland, but apparently became alarmed when he heard a cat meowing plaintively (you can see it in the second and third photos):
I was going to do an anti-Trump post about how Republicans are trying to sell 3.3 million acres of public land, but screw it: let’s have some music. There’s plenty of malfeasance to come, and I don’t want to devote too many posts to what you can read in the newspapers.
“Oh Shenandoah”, an old American folk song, is said to have come from the fur traders on the Missouri River; as Wikipedia notes:
The canoe-going fur-trading voyageurs were great singers, and songs were an important part of their culture. Also in the early 19th century, flatboatmen who plied the Missouri River were known for their shanties, including “Oh Shenandoah”. Sailors heading down the Mississippi River picked up the song and made it a capstan shanty that they sang while hauling in the anchor. This boatmen’s song found its way down the Mississippi River to American clipper ships, and thus around the world.
I find it ineffably beautiful in almost all versions, but here are three great ones. The oldest version is first, by the wonderful Paul Robeson, one of the greatest bass singers I’ve ever heard, and of course a political activist and polymath. He recorded “Oh Shenandoah” several times.
This version, by Van Morrison accompanied by The Chieftains, is very different but sends a chill up my spine. This version was recorded in 1998, and I have a hard time saying it’s not my favorite.
Let’s not forget Tennessee Ernie Ford, often seen as a cornpone singer, but that’s unfair. Here’s his version from 1959:
Matthew Cobb sent me this lovely video showing a camera pulling out from a view of a person at the Google complex to the limits of the Universe, and then reversing that. But it goes even farther in, going into the person on ever-smaller scales winding up with a quark. This should be a cause for awe, or, if you’re an accommodationist, “spirituality.” The YouTubes notes are below:
App for “Cosmic Eye”
This movie was generated using the iOS App “Cosmic Eye”, written by Danail Obreschkow at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research at the University of Western Australia. Cosmic Eye drew inspiration from a progression of increasingly accurate graphical representations of the scales of our Universe, including the classical essay “Cosmic View” (1957), the short movie “Cosmic Zoom” (1968), directed by Eva Szasz, and “Powers of Ten” (1977), directed by Charles and Ray Eames. Where possible, it displays real photographs obtained with modern objectives, telescopes, and microscopes. Other views are phenomenal renderings of state-of-the-art computer models. All scientists and sources have given permission and are fully credited in the app.
