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.
Look at this beautiful tool chest! It was designed and created by Henry O. Studley (1838-1925), a carpenter and an organ- and piano-maker. This is a work of art in itself.
According to Wikipedia, there are 220 tools in here, though Twisted Sifter says 300. I’ll let you count them and tell me who’s right.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about it, which, aside from the disparity in tool number, accords with the Twisted Sifter account:
Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man’s grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian in the late 1980s as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, until it was purchased by a private collector for an undisclosed amount of money. The current owner continues to lend the chest to the Smithsonian on occasion. It has been featured on an episode of The New Yankee Workshop and is the subject of a May 1993 article in Taunton’s Fine Woodworking and a popular wall poster.
When closed and hanging on a wall it takes up an area of approximately 39 inches by 20 inches with a 9 inch depth. It opens to become a 40-inch by 40-inch tool chest. It is made out of mahogany, rosewood, walnut, ebony, ivory and mother of pearl, materials that were probably taken from the Poole Piano Company’s scrap material. The fine craftsmanship is exhibited by the way each tool fits snugly into its space, often with an audible click as the tool snaps into its close-fit cavity. Sections of the chest swing out to allow access to a second or third layer of tools. The tool chest features Masonic symbolism, including the Square and Compasses emblem and Royal Arch symbols.
And here’s a video of the chest (you can find everything on the Internet). It’s from the television show The New Yankee Workshop, but I can’t remember the name of the guy narrating it. (Is it “Norm”?)
As I wrote last week, I think the only thing that the Trump administration has done that has improved our country is to issue, through the much-despised Betsy DeVos, new guidelines for adjudicating accusations of sexual assault and misconduct in American universities. (Do I really need to add here that I think DeVos’s appointment was abysmal?) The new guidelines, which allow for cross-examination of accusers and the accused, put in place objective “judges” of misconduct in colleges, and make all the evidence available to the accused, are things that are normal in criminal courts as part of due process, but were removed by the Obama administration in their reform of Title IX regulations.
Many people have objected to these changes, considering them to be rules put in place deliberately to favor the accused and weaken the rights of accusers. Those holding this view include, astoundingly, the American Civil Liberties Union, which for all other crimes fights for due process for the accused. (See here, here and here for other arguments that the new regulations are biased against “survivors”—which of course presumes that accusers are correct from the outset and thus no hearing need be held.)
Why, among all crimes adjudicated on campus, are sexual assault and harassment exceptions when it comes to due process? I think it’s for two reasons: these crimes affect mostly women, and tightening regulations about how to judge them could be seen—mistakenly, I think—as anti-women or even misogynistic. Further, unlike many crimes, sexual assault often leaves no tangible evidence that could lead to a “beyond a reasonable doubt” conclusion, frustrating many real victims who realize that their assailants can never be brought to account.
While I sympathize with these views, I think the standards of due process that are part of our justice system, and should be part of college tribunals, should be upheld, even if it leads to some people getting off because there’s not convincing evidence. That is, I think the established standards of law lead to a system that, although it allows some guilty people to walk free, is the fairest to all. (Note that the new regulations, though, don’t mandate a “beyond reasonable doubt” standard for college conviction, but simply “clear and convincing evidence” for guilt—usually taken to mean a 75% instead of a 51% likelihood of assault.)
I was heartened to see at least one experienced criminal-defense attorney agree with me: Scott Greenfield, <a style="color: inherit;text-decoration: none !important;font-weight: inherit" href="https://www.the<a style="color: inherit;text-decoration: none !important;font-weight: inherit" href="https://www.thelawyer,com/pogust-goodhead-accounts-overdue-by-two-months/”>lawyer,/a>,com/pogust-goodhead-accounts-overdue-by-two-months/”><a style="color: inherit;text-decoration: none !important;font-weight: inherit" href="https://www.thelawyer,com/pogust-goodhead-accounts-overdue-by-two-months/”>lawyer,/a>,/a>, writer, and frequently used legal expert in the media. I don’t know anything about his politics, but only what he says in this edifying (and longish) interview with Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic.
I’ll give just two excerpts from a piece worth reading in its entirety. The first is about the unhealthy and hypocritical gutting of due process in cases that involve sexual assault, and only sexual assault:
Friedersdorf: What’s an example of a principle that you find yourself advocating for even as you perceive that American society is undervaluing it?
Greenfield: Let’s start with a big one, due process. Advocates for accusers in Title IX campus sexual-assault adjudications have vilified due process as allowing rapists to “get away with it.” This has been amplified as a result of the “Dear Colleague” letter by the Obama administration’s Department of Education Office of Civil Rights bureaucrats and Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s rescission of that letter. It is further complicated by the #MeToo movement.
The laundry list of basic procedural due-process rights—notice, opportunity to defend, cross-examination—have been ripped to shreds as unfair, traumatic weapons to victimize accusers. Of course, these are the same processes that are desperately at risk in non-sex-related criminal cases, where a similar cohort demands they be provided and honored. Why are they good for some accusers and horrible for others?
If cross-examination is an evil because it might “re-traumatize” the victim, is that not the same when the victim is in court for a robbery? If we’re to “believe the victim,” to functionally undermine the presumption of innocence and shift the onus onto the accused to prove they’re not guilty, how do we explain not believing the victim in any other criminal proceeding? And before anyone replies, “But we do,” no, criminal-defense lawyers don’t. No accusation is above challenge.
Either the concept of due process is an inherent virtue in our system or it isn’t. It doesn’t morph from wonderful to horrible based upon the nature of the accusation, or which side is preferred at any moment. As the concept is vilified, procedural fairness is increasingly seen as some technical trick to favor the accused rather than giving the accused a fair opportunity to defend himself. And lest there be any doubt, not only is it an inherent virtue in all proceedings, but without it we’re left with an inquisition. Then again, when it comes to proceedings like Title IX sex policing, that’s pretty much what’s desired by the accusers, even though it’s in fundamental conflict with core premises of our jurisprudence.
(He adds later) . . . the college-educated left is a mess of contradictions. A coalition that only recently counted redemption for violent felons as a top priority, and favored laws forbidding employers from asking about bygone crimes on job applications, now advocates for zero-tolerance policies to punish behavior from years in the past and—for example—isn’t necessarily willing to grant that Louis C.K. should ever work again.
But, you might object, the weakened due process is in colleges, not in courts, and why shouldn’t colleges use different standards of guilt than do courts of law? Greenfield explains:
Friedersdorf: The most common retort seeks to distinguish criminal proceedings, where the accused faces incarceration, from ostensibly lower-stakes situations, like campus disciplinary hearings where expulsion from one institution is the maximum penalty; workplace complaints, where the stakes end at termination; and name-and-shame efforts, like that story about a bad date with Aziz Ansari, where social stigma and public embarrassment are the main consequences. What’s your counterargument for applying due-process norms beyond criminal proceedings? And how far does the logic extend? Whenever there is official punishment meted out by any institution? What about public allegations of sexual misconduct with no institution or formal penalty attached?
Greenfield: First, let’s separate “official punishment” from social stigmatization. To say Title IX is limited to expulsion, in itself, trivializes the impact. Expulsion from college is a huge punishment to a kid. But that’s not the extent of it by a long shot. He loses years of studying, preparing to get into a decent college. He loses tuition paid for the years preceding expulsion, or carries the debt load into an empty future, plus the opportunity cost of going to three and a half years of college and leaving without a degree.
And he’s tainted for life, as he’s constrained to explain his expulsion, like any sex offender. Except his “guilt” and punishment were derived without the basic safeguards for a valid verdict. This is by no means trivial.
In certain ways, social condemnation has become something even worse, the mere accusation being all that’s required for a mob of unduly passionate people to crush a career. There’s no opportunity to defend and no means to challenge an accusation. While the “punishment” isn’t levied by government, and is therefore beyond any required involvement of such niceties as due process, the net result can be as destructive given the current tide of blind acceptance and capitulation.
While due process is properly thought of as technical legal rules, it didn’t come out of nowhere; it came from the values society decided were worthy and necessary to craft a system of decision making before anyone would be condemned and punished. So although due process doesn’t technically apply, the values underlying due process are still as worthy and necessary as ever. It’s not because the rules require it, but because we, as a society, should value such things as fundamental fairness, opportunity to defend, the presumption of innocence, a neutral fact finder, and the burden of proof, at whatever level it should be, on the accuser.
I sense that by favoring the new and fairer standards, I might be accused of weakening the rights of “survivors” or even buttressing what they call “rape culture” in America. I reject that charge while still recognizing that sexual assault is a horrible crime that can traumatize people for their entire lives. My point here, and Greenfield’s, is that there’s no good reason to use different standards when judging, say, murder or assault on the one hand (crimes often difficult to “prove”) versus sexual assault on the other. And, like Greenfield, I think the same rights that obtain in court—namely the right to be confronted with your accuser, to have everyone cross-examined (note: the new rules do not decree that an accuser be examined by the accused, only by a representative or <a style="color: inherit;text-decoration: none !important;font-weight: inherit" href="https://www.the<a style="color: inherit;text-decoration: none !important;font-weight: inherit" href="https://www.thelawyer,com/pogust-goodhead-accounts-overdue-by-two-months/”>lawyer,/a>,com/pogust-goodhead-accounts-overdue-by-two-months/”><a style="color: inherit;text-decoration: none !important;font-weight: inherit" href="https://www.thelawyer,com/pogust-goodhead-accounts-overdue-by-two-months/”>lawyer,/a>,/a>,, and to have all evidence, exculpatory or not, available to everyone—should hold in college hearings.
I still see a place for a college tribunal separate from a legal one, but would always urge (but not mandate) that people who have been assaulted in violation of the law go to the police. If you don’t do that, then, despite the potential trauma of reporting and going to court, or of not having anyone charged by the prosecutor, it’s guaranteed that a perpetrator will go free to commit further crimes.
As for the 75% instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt” likelihood now recommended for colleges, I don’t have strong feelings about it, and can see some cases in which those standards might be better in colleges than in court. My thinking on that is still evolving.
While I’m downtown this morning, I proffer two photos for your delectation. The first comes from reader Andrés Aranda, who sent a photo of a corbel with ducks. He writes:
On my recent visit to the cathedral at Chartres, it was gloomy outside, and the light was too low inside to get sharp photos of the famous stained-glass windows. So I deliberately moved the camera to see what effect it would produce. It made a sort of Impressionistic (or Futuristic) portrait of a window:
Of all the 19 foreign translations of WEIT, this is the one about which I’m most excited. That’s for two reasons. First, in many Middle Eastern countries evolution simply isn’t taught, as it contravenes a literal interpretation of the Qur’an. Second, as far as I know there is no book in Arabic that comprehensively summarizes the evidence for evolution. In other words, there’s a big need for material on evolution in the Arab-speaking world.
Over the years, I’ve worked hard to find someone or someplace willing to translate WEIT into Arabic, but didn’t find much enthusiasm. Then, with the efforts of a friendly Egyptian colleague, the National Center for Translation and Publishing of Egypt agreed to translate my book into Arabic. Sadly, the process was stopped during the Arab Spring, and then only recently got back on track. It was further delayed by the bureaucracy (the government had to assign an official number to the book and so on), and sometimes I thought it wouldn’t see the light.
Now I’m very pleased to announce that Why Evolution is True has been printed in Arabic and will be moving to the bookstores next week. I’m not sure how many copies they’re printing, and I don’t even have a link to the Arabic version, but I’m doing my best to get this information. If you are in a Arabic-speaking country, do be aware that the book now exists, and stay tuned for more information.
Today we have some photos from reader Don McCrady, whose work hasn’t appeared here for a while. These are some of 5,000 photos he took on a recent trip to Namibia, and we’re promised more. Don’s captions are indented.
Here are a few shots of some of the wildlife we could see at the Erindi Private Game Reserve in Namibia. For the wildlife shots I used a Canon EOS 7D Mark II with a 150-600mm lens. For my landscapes and astrophotos, I used a Canon EOS 6D and a 14mm lens.
A Nile Crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) was sunning itself near the water edge at the Camp Elephant waterhole, and very thoughtfully smiled for my camera.
The waterhole also had some lovely bird species. Here are a Lilac-Breasted Roller (Coracias caudatus) and a Purple Roller(Coracias naevius):
Out on a self-drive tour of the park we spotted many interesting herbivores, here are just two of them, a warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) and an Angolan giraffe(Giraffa giraffa angolensis):
This last animal shot is not super-impressive, but it is—by far—one of the most dangerous shot I’ve ever taken. (I’ll send another dangerous shot in another post.) Our goal was to shoot the Milky Way over a waterhole and capture some of the wildlife in the shot. As you can see from this shot, I was only partially successful.
To get the shot, we drove out into the middle of the Erindi Private Game Reserve, accompanied by a guide wielding a shotgun. When we got there, we did a spotlight sweep for any dangerous animals, and finding nothing there, we proceeded to set up our cameras, compose our shots, and wait to see what happened.
We stood there in total silence and in absolute darkness. Every ten minutes, the guide would sweep the area with a spotlight to see if anything was creeping up on us. When the coast was clear we would wait again, sweep, and repeat. We did this for over an hour, with no wildlife to fill up our shot.
Then, the guide announced he would start another sweep. The spotlight roamed around and then behind me it froze. There in the spotlight was a black rhinoceros, not 20 meters away from me (!!!), and nothing in between him and me. Nobody heard him approach. If he’d decided to charge me it would have been my end, but the rhino, spooked from the light, veered around our vehicle, and eventually wandered into the waterhole area.
This is the best I could get from that night. Someone from our group illuminated the rhino for a brief period of time during my 18 second exposure, and you can see him in this shot. He is very noisy and blurry because he was moving nervously.
Very soon after taking this shot, our guide very calmly told us to all get back on the bus, leaving our cameras and stuff outside. He had detected a herd of elephants incoming and genuinely feared for our safety. Once on the bus, our cameras were one-by-one passed back into the vehicle and we prepared to depart. As our vehicle’s lights went on, we saw a giant herd of elephants approaching the waterhole, and another group from the other direction. Once again, we never heard them coming.
Looking back, if a rhino and a herd of elephants could sneak up on us without making a sound, we wouldn’t have stood a chance against a lion. Oh, and yes there were lions roaming freely around the park.
It’s Tuesday, November 27, 2018, and National Bavarian Cream Pie Day, but when was the last time any of us had that treat? In the UK, it’s Lancashire Day. Stand tall, Yonners!
As my driver’s license expires on my birthday this year—in about a month—I’m heading downtown today to renew it, which means taking only the eye test. I have spiffy new glasses. so it shouldn’t be a problem. But posting may be light today because, once downtown, I may have a bit of culinary fun.
Today’s Google Doodle (click on the screenshot below) celebrates the life of Fe del Mundo, a Filipino born on this day in 1911 (she died in 2011). The first woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, she was admitted because they didn’t know she was a woman! As Wikipedia notes:
[Del Mundo] humorously relates that when she arrived in Boston and went to the dormitory assigned her in a letter from the director of the hospital housing, much to her surprise she found herself in a men’s dorm. Unknowingly the Harvard officials had admitted a female to their all-male student body. But because her record was so strong the head of the pediatrics department saw no reason not to accept her. Thus, upsetting Harvard tradition, she became the first Philippine woman and the only female at the time to be enrolled at Harvard Medical School.
She returned to practice in the Philippines, established a pediatric hospital, and went on to a distinguished career as a doctor and as a scientist studying infectious diseases, garnering copious honors along the way.
It was not a particularly notable day in history. According to Wikipedia, and you should read the following link, it was on November 27, 1810 that “the Berners Street hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in the City of Westminster, London. On this day 25 years later, the last two men executed for sodomy in England, James Pratt and John Smith, were hanged in London. On this day in 1895, Alfred Nobel, signing his will at the Swedish-Norwedgian Club in Paris, gave his estate to create the Nobel Prizes. Exactly one year later, the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss was first performed in Frankfurt. On this day in 1924, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (first billed as a “Christmas Parade”) was held in New York City. Here’s a short documentary about the Parade’s origins:
On November 27, 1971, the first man-made object to reach Mars reached Mars. Sadly, it was a Soviet module whose descent system malfunctioned, and the module crashed on the surface. Finally, it was on this day in 1978 that Dan White assassinated San Francisco mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor. White served five years of his 7-year-sentence (his sentence was reduced because of his mental problems), and then killed himself two years after release.
Notables born on this day include Anders Celsius (1701), Chaim Weizmann (1874), Lars Onsager (1903), Buffalo Bob Smith (1917), Gail Sheehy (1937), Bruce Lee (1940), Jimi Hendri (1942), Kathryn Bigelow (1951), Steve Bannon (1953), Bill Nye (1955), and Caroline Kennedy (1957).
Those who died on November 27 include Ada Lovelace (1852), Baby Face Nelson (1934), Eugene O’Neill (1953), and Harvey Milk and George Moscone (1978; see above).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili overdid it by roaming about in the cold on frosty grass:
Hili: And we got what was coming!
A: What was that?
Hili: The fact that my paws are freezing again.
In Polish:
Hili: No i doczekaliśmy się!
Ja: Czego?
Hili: Tego, że mi znowu łapki marzną.
Tweets from Grania. First, Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal, who produced a lovely cartoon about the Mars Lander, tweeted out three possible cartoons he had ready about the mission’s outcome. Fortunately, the first one was appropriate:
A tweet from the Irish police, whose sense of humor here was evident to Grania, but escaped me until it was explained to me. And then I didn’t find it all that funny:
Bandon Gardai stopped this van at a fork in the road beacuse it had no tax/certificate of roadworthiness and a spoon for a ignition key. Van was seized and a court date for the driver. You could cut the tension with a knife. pic.twitter.com/YhtLU6jxuK
Buffleheads (Bucephala albeola) are cute diving sea ducks that have a pronounced sexual dimorphism, especially in the breeding season. Here are the males vs. females from the Cornell bird site. This will help you pick out the sexes in the video below.
The video shows a group of bufflehead males trying to impress a few females. Note that the male display includes a lot of elements that demonstrate vigor, like head-bobbing, wing-flapping, and racing (in one case a female appears to incite a male to race). It’s hard to avoid thinking that females are looking for the most vigorous males, because those males have fewer parasites to transfer during mating (males have no parental care in this species), because the males have “good genes” that can be passed onto offspring, or a combination of these “direct” and “indirect” benefits.
But if female choice is basically random, as Richard Prum suggests, and has nothing to do with the genetic composition of the male, why are the most vigorous males always the ones who win? I suppose you cold say that they’re simply more conspicuous, but I don’t think so. These males are showing off a lot of different aspects of vigor, and the females are watching them closely before making their choice.
