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.
Today, lest any reader be overlooked because their photos were posted on a holiday, I’ll put some of my own up: photos of both wild mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) from France as well as French art depicting mallards.
Here are the fat ducks of Chartres. The river runs fast, and the mallards position themselves in the middle of the stream and just face upstream with their beaks open. The food comes to them! Here they are in their lovely medieval setting:
and a video:
Mallards in a medieval tapestry, the Museum of the Middle Ages at the Hotel Cluny:
Duck in a painting, store in the Palais Royal arcade:
In the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace is a pond, and in that pond there are ducks, and those ducks have a fancy metal duck house to repair to for sleep or when they’re bothered.
Note the care with which this house was constructed. It’s sturdy metal, has low platform for easy access, and has spikes on the top to prevent ravens and other predators (or pigeons, who could befoul the house) from landing:
Some of the mallards of the Luxembourg lake.
Shhhhhh. . . . . the drake is sleeping
Ducks in the Musée d’Orsay:
Part of a painting in the “Orientalism” section:
A brass duck for sale on the Quai Voltaire:
And a reminder of why the French really love ducks:
First of all, if you’re in America, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Enjoy this photo of mimicry for the holiday; and don’t forget to eat! (Today would have been a fasting day for me, but I’m postponing it until tomorrow.)
h/t: Merilee
This is today’s Google Doodle for Thanksgiving: a celebration of family and feasting shown with mice:
Thanksgiving was celebrated in Canada October 8 (this is new to me), and here was Google’s celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving, which I’ll add here:
It’s going to be a cold Thanksgiving for much of America, but, thanks to the First Moron, we can put the weather into a soothing and larger picture (h/t: Nilou). Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, here’s the Tweet of the Week:
Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS – Whatever happened to Global Warming?
Yes, Thanksgiving is upon us, and because I’m abjuring turkey today in favor of Chinese food, posting will be light so you (or at least youse Americans) can enjoy the yearly feed. It’s Thursday, November 22, 2018, and National Cashew Day. It’s also the earliest possible day on which Thanksgiving can fall, since it’s the third Thursday in November.
On this day in 1718, British pirate Edward Teach, aka “Blackbeard” was killed in a battle with the British Navy. And, in 1869, the clipper Cutty Sark was launched in Dumbarton, Scotland. It’s the only one of these fast ships that survives in its entirety: here it is, reposing in Greenwich, England:
On this day in 1928, Ravel’s Boléro premiered in Paris. In 1954, the U.S. Humane Society was founded.
And, of course, you’ll remember November 22, 1963, as the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald. All of us who were alive and sentient then remember where we were when we heard the news: I was in junior high school, and the news was announced over the public address system by the school principal. (You may not know that both Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis died on that same day.)
On this day in 1968, the Beatles’ White Album was released (formally known as “The Beatles”). On November 22, 1990, Margaret Thatcher withdrew from the Conservative leadership election, confirming the end of her tenure as Prime Minister. Finally, on this day 13 years ago, Angela Merkel became the first female Chancellor of Germany.
Notables born on this day include Abigail Adams (1744), George Eliot (1819), André Gide (1869), Charles de Gaulle (1890), Hoagy Carmichael (1899), Andrew Huxley (1917, Nobel Laureate), Terry Gilliam (1940), Billie Jean King (1943), Jamie Lee Curtis (1958), and Scarlett Johansson (1984).
Those who crossed the Rainbow Bridge on November 22 include Blackbeard (1718; see above), Jack London (1916), Arthur Eddington (1944), Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis (both 1963; see above), Mae West (1980), Hans Adolf Krebs (1981; Nobel Laureate), and Lynn Margulis (2011).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili demands attention (nothing new there):
Andrzej: I don’t know what to do with this mail.
Hili: Ignore it. Take care of me.
In Polish:
Ja: Sam nie wiem co robić z tym mailem.
Hili: Zignoruj go, zajmij się mną.
This is a freaky tweet sent by reader Mark Sturtevant. Who knew baby owls could look like aliens?
We featured this caterpillar before, but not in a video. And this is an amazing example of mimicry: a larva pretending to be parasitized by a wasp (those cylinders are fake wasp egg cases) to fend off attacks by other parasitic wasps. I know of no similar examples.
Check out this crazy and as of yet, unidentified moth caterpillar from Thailand!🐛
Possibly mimicking a parasitised caterpillar, with each nodule resembling the larvae or cocoon of a parasitic wasp, to avoid actual predation – pretty amazing right?!
Goodnight, sweet ‘scope. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest:
Farewell, planet hunter. Last night, the @NASAKepler space telescope received its final set of commands to disconnect communications with Earth. The “goodnight” commands were sent on the anniversary of the death of the mission’s namesake, Johannes Kepler: https://t.co/dhUCmKmvqWpic.twitter.com/TKkSk0EQ7C
In my view, the only good thing that the Trump administration has done is to revise the standards American colleges should use to judge sexual misconduct of students. These changes are, I think, fairer to both accused and accuser than were the previous standards proposed by the Obama administration under its Title IX “Dear colleague” letter, which denied reasonable rights to those accused of misconduct. In view of many court challenges to college punishments resulting from the Obama standards, and their palpable unfairness, the changes proposed by Betsy DeVos seem, on balance, good. (Note: this is NOT an endorsement of Betsy DeVos!) I’ve written previously about the mess that Obama’s Title IX guidelines have created in colleges.
The changes proposed by DeVos, which will become final after a two-month period of comment, were reported a week ago in the New York Times. Here’s how they change the picture.
1.) Schools would now be required to hold live hearings and not closed-door adjudications.
2.) The “single-investigator model,” in which one person adjudicates all the evidence and passes judgment, would go out the window. All collected evidence would now have to be presented to a (presumably) objective third party or parties.
3.) Both accusers and accused will be allowed to cross-examine each other through an advisor or a lawyer. However, those who accuse someone of sexual assault or misconduct cannot be directly questioned by the defendant, which seems fair and protective of people’s psyches. They can, however, be questioned by a third party like a lawyer or adviser. This was something that was missing in the Obama regulation, but was recently mandated by a federal court ruling in Michigan.
4.) A “rape shield” protection will remain in place, so that a complainant’s sexual history will remain strictly off limits.
5.) Hearing, like court cases, will be conducted with the presumption of innocence of the accused.
6.) Instead of relying on the “preponderance of evidence” standard mandated by the Obama “suggestions,” schools can use either that standard or the “clear and convincing evidence” standard, which is stricter but still not as strict as the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in courts.
Conviction requires guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”, which of course means that the bar is very high for conviction.
Conviction requires “clear and convincing evidence”, that is, it must be “highly probable or reasonably certain” that harassment or assault occurred. This is conventionally interpreted to mean a likelihood of 75% or higher that the assault took place.
Conviction requires a “preponderance of the evidence” for assault or harassment. This means that it is more likely that not (likelihood > 50 %) that the offense occurred.
7.) The legal responsibility of colleges and universities would change: previously schools would be legally responsible for investigating complaints if they had “actual knowledge” that an assault had happened. Now they have legal responsibility only if a victim files a formal complaint. (If the victim doesn’t, schools are still encouraged to provide “supportive measures.”)
8.) Exculpatory evidence cannot be withheld from the accused. It could previously, which was one of the most unfair parts of the Obama-era guidelines. Further, those accused will be able to review all the evidence against them, which wasn’t previously mandated.
9.) Finally, colleges and universities can investigate conduct only if it occurs in the school’s own premises, programs, or activities, or in a location over which the college or university exercises oversight.
These all seem reasonable to me: they strengthen protections for the accused, which have been notoriously lacking, yet still don’t take them to the level of a legal proceeding in court. Note that when I took a poll of readers about which standard of evidence should be used in adjudicating accusations of sexual misconduct in college, I got this result. Readers wanted the accusations to be first adjudicated in court before the colleges took action, presumably if the person was convicted. (I am not sure I agree with that completely, as some sanctions, like keeping accused and accuser apart, can be imposed only by universities, and should be done before the case goes to court.)
To my surprise, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has come out strongly against these revisions. I’m surprised because the DeVos standards seem to afford reasonable protections to the accused, something that the ACLU has long fought for in criminal litigation. Now, however, the ACLU sees these changes as “inappropriately favoring the accused”. But not even as much “favoring” as the accused gets in court, so what’s the issue? The issue is that the ACLU is now going against its long-standing policies because social justice demands that the balance be tipped toward the accuser, usually female, in college sexual-assault cases. How else can you understand supporting a policy that doesn’t allow cross-examination of accusers or even the presentation of exculpatory evidence to the accused?
The ACLU first announced its opposition to the policy in some tweets:
We advocate for fair school disciplinary processes that uphold the rights of both parties in campus sexual assault and harassment cases.
Today Secretary DeVos proposed a rule that would tip the scales against those who raise their voices.
It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused and letting schools ignore their responsibility under Title IX to respond promptly and fairly to complaints of sexual violence.
In the new Atlantic, editor Conor Friedersdorf summarizes his and other’s take on the ACLU opposition to the new rules (click on screenshot below):
Here’s an excerpt from Friedersdorf’s article, and I agree with it:
. . . the ACLU does not merely argue that “a preponderance of the evidence” standard is superior to a “clear and convincing evidence” standard in campus proceedings in which a state school is punishing a student. In the ACLU’s telling, the more onerous standard is so wrongheaded that rules meant to protect against discrimination on the basis of sex ought to forbid even private colleges that take federal money to adopt such a standard. It even asserts that “there is no reason” for the more onerous standard, as if its adherents aren’t motivated by the same concern that presumably causes the ACLU to favor a still more onerous burden of proof in criminal cases: a desireto prevent the wrongful punishment of innocents.
When someone stands accused of sexual assault in criminal court, does the ACLU believe in the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard merely because that is what the Constitution requires, or because it is better to leave some guilty people unpunished than to punish many innocents? “The old-school ACLU knew there was no contradiction between defending due process and ‘supporting survivors,’” David French writes. “Indeed, it was through healthy processes that we not only determined whether a person had been victimized, but also prevented the accused from becoming a ‘survivor’ of a profound injustice.”
Says the criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield:
The ACLU cannot love constitutional rights only when it serves to further a cause on behalf of their favored marginalized group, then hate it when it doesn’t, and still be given credit as a voice for civil liberties … Remember, due process “inappropriately favors the accused.”
Those four words are the ACLU’s epitaph.
Once again we see long-standing and reasonable standards thrown out the window (the Southern Poverty Law Center did the same thing) when a supposedly marginalized group is at issue—in this case women. But women have been accused of sexual misconduct, too, and although most of the accused are men, we’re dealing not with a sex-specific issue but an issue of misconduct that is usually criminal.The ACLU took my case when I was illegally drafted as a conscientious objector, and won handily in court. I have worked for the ACLU and supported them much of my adult life. But right now I’m ashamed of them for kicking their own standards to the curb when it becomes ideologically inconvenient to hold onto them.
The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “born,” is a bit convoluted, and to my mind is not as funny or incisive as some previous strips. However, Jesus and Mo has been going for 13 years, so the artist is allowed to have an off day.
In honor of the strip’s 13th birthday on Friday, the artist is offering a signed print of any J&M strip of your choice if you donate at the $4/month level or above. You can do so at the Jesus and Mo Patreon site, and specify in an email or Patreon message which strip you want (there’s a contact form on the J&M website).
This new ruling by a Michigan judge is appalling, though it may hearten some Muslims, even in Western countries, who approve of and even practice female genital mutilation (FGM). As Heather Hastie has written, FGM is practiced widely by Muslims, and has been approved by several sects of Islam. It’s even practiced in the U.K. and U.S. The most notorious case here, and the first prosecution under federal law, was that of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, who was arrested with several others last year on charges that she practiced or conspired to practice FGM on several girls in a Detroit-area clinic. As CNN reports,
The procedures Nagarwala is accused of performing occurred from 2005 to April 21, 2017, according to the criminal complaint. Prosecutors say that Attar, an internal medicine physician, allowed Nagarwala, an emergency room physician, to perform the banned procedures at his medical clinic in Livonia, Michigan, after it closed for the day. Nagarwala was allegedly assisted by Attar’s wife, Farida, and additional adults named in the complaint.
Nagarwala and the Attars are accused of instructing others not to speak about the procedures. The nine underage girls are from Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois and are between the ages of 8 and 13, according to court documents.
Nagrawala originally defended the operations based on the fact that FGM was simply her religious custom.
The charges were based on a 1996 federal law—the Female Genital Mutilation Act—that uses the interstate commerce clause to ban the odious practice on women under 18, for that is a federal law that can be used in such cases (otherwise the states must make their own laws). But it was this reliance on interstate commerce that was the prosecution’s undoing. As the Detroit News reports;
During a hearing this month, Nagarwala lawyer Molly Sylvia Blythe said Congress lacked authority to enact a law criminalizing female genital mutilation in 1996. Congress lacked authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution because the procedure has nothing to do with interstate commerce, she said.
Prosecutors countered, arguing the crime does involve interstate commerce. Christian Levesque, a trial attorney with the Justice Department’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions section, noted the procedure involves parents using cellphones to arrange the procedure and transport children across state lines who undergo surgeries utilizing medical tools in state-licensed clinics.
And CNN reports:
The enactment of a law criminalizing female genital mutilation was not a permissible use of congressional power, Friedman wrote in his opinion, concluding that the law itself was unconstitutional.
“As laudable as the prohibition of a particular type of abuse of girls may be, it does not logically further the goal of protecting children on a nondiscriminatory basis,” Friedman wrote, later noting that the Supreme Court has said that individual states, not the federal government, have the authority to police local criminal activity.
Friedman also noted that although Congress may regulate a practice if it is “commercial or economic in nature and that substantially affects interstate commerce,” but “as despicable as [female genital mutilation] may be, it is essentially a criminal assault” and not a commercial or economic enterprise, Friedman wrote.
What this represents, then, is a judge’s determination that federal law against FGM is unconstitutional because it didn’t fall under the aegis of federal authority (interstate commerce), but rather is a matter for state legislation. Apparently at the time, Michigan had no state law against FGM, though it passed one in 2017—too late to prosecute these defendants. Nagarwala’s lawyer expects the government to appeal, and I hope they do if there are reasonable grounds for appealing; but the prosecutors haven’t yet said what they’ll do.
This doesn’t mean that Nagarwala and the other defendants are completely off the hook. Even with the dropping of the most serious charges, Nagarwala and three other defendants still face charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, all of which can carry stiff penalties.
I am of course torn by this decision. FGM is an odious practice with horrible effects on the girls who are forced to undergo it, and it’s also one of the poisonous effects of religion. But the judge’s ruling may be upheld if the case is appealed, for it’s not a slam-dunk to convict someone of FGM on the federal level if Congress didn’t have the authority to make the operation against federal law. And if there was no state law, well, then an evildoer walks free. Much as all of us hate FGM, without an applicable law this becomes equivalent to a criminal walking free because he wasn’t informed of his Miranda rights.
I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not sure if the government can make FGM against federal law using any rationale. If not, then every state needs to pass anti-FGM laws pronto. As of July of last year, only 26 of the 50 U.S. states had such laws!
It’s once again time for me to importune you for wildlife photos. Although I have a comfortable backlog of contributions, I’m getting a wee bit nervous. So if you’re sitting around tomorrow digesting your Thanksgiving meal (if you’re American, that is), or eating your sweetcorn sandwiches (if you’re a Brit), or otherwise have some free time, think about sending me ten or so of your good wildlife photos.
Today’s contribution includes some lovely arthropod photos from Aussie Tony Eales, whose notes are indented:
More pics from the Borneo expedition. Spiders!
I found my first Wandering Spider, in the family Ctenidae. At first I thought it was a Wolf Spider but the eyes are wrong.
There were many species of Huntsman family Sparassidae.
I’m pretty sure of the two Heteropoda sp. But the other two I’m not sure what genus they might be. The first one is an undescribed Heteropoda quite similar toH. davidbowie but that species has orange hairs and black lines on the face.
JAC: In case you’re wondering about the name Heteropoda davidbowie, Wikipedia explains:
The species name honours David Bowie, with particular reference to songs such as “Glass Spider” (from the 1987 album Never Let Me Down), and the resemblance of the frontal view of the spider to the singer’s painted face in his early career.
I’ve put its photo (and Bowie’s) below:
I don’t see much of a resemblance. . .
Back to Tony’s photos:
In webs I found a strangely beautiful species of Cellar Spider family Pholcidae and what I think might be a Theridiid but that’s based more on the tangled web than the spider.
Pholcidae:
Theridiid:
There were many interesting Jumping Spiders, family Salticidae. Thiania bhamoensis is known as the Malaysian Fighting Jumping Spider. Apparently children keep them in matchboxes and fight them in contests. It appears the one I photographed has been in a fight as it was missing one of its front legs.
I was pleased to find a Parabathippus petrae even if it was a female. Others on the expedition managed to photograph the spectacular male but the females are odd and colourful.
No idea what the last Jumper is but he’s a handsome species.
It’s Wednesday, November 21: the day before Thanksgiving. Many Americans are already taking off work today for a long holiday weekend (our department’s employees will go home at noon). Appropriately, it’s National Cranberry Day. It’s also World Television Day, which I’ll celebrate by watching one of the only two shows I ever watch: the NBC Evening News with Lester Holt. (The other show is 60 Minutes.)
On this day in 1620 (Gregorian calendar), the settlers in Plymouth Massachusetts signed the Mayflower Compact, which could be considered the first written law for self-governance of a colony in America. The last bit reads:
Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.
On this day in 1676, according to Wikipedia, “The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.” Well, actually, he just gave the ratio of the speed of light to the speed at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and didn’t give any figures. However, Rømer wasn’t off badly—the ratio he got was about 75% of the true ratio (10,100). On November 21, 1877, Thomas Edison announced that he’d invented the phonograph. And on this day in 1905, Einstein’s paper with its famous formula equating mass and energy, E = mc², was published in the journal Annalen der Physik.
This day in 1920 marked “Bloody Sunday” in Ireland’s war of independence. 32 people were killed in what began as an IRA operation, headed by Michael Collins, against the British. On November 21, 1953, the Natural History Museum of London announced that the “Piltdown Man” skull was a hoax, a mixture of bones from an orangutan, a chimp, and a human. Note who exposed it: scientists, not creationists, who continue to claim it’s an example of how science can be wrong and ancient hominins a hoax.
On this day in 1977, the Minister of Internal Affairs of New Zealand, Allan Highet, announced that the national anthems of New Zealand would be the traditional anthem “God Save the Queen” and “God Defend New Zealand“. Note the obeisance to the Queen in an independent democratic country! I always tease Heather Hastie about New Zealand still being run in part by England (Queen Elizabeth is still New Zealand’s head of state, and her minister has power to break deadlocks in the Kiwi’s government).
Finally, and this was only three years ago, on this day in 2015 the Belgian government imposed a complete security lockdown in Brussels (schools and shops closed, no public transportation), due to the threat of terrorist attacks.
Notables born on this day include Voltaire (1694), René Magritte (1898), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902), Coleman Hawkins (1904), Stan Musial (1920), Marlo Thomas (1937), Dr. John (1940; real name Malcolm John Rebennack), Goldie Hawn (1945) and Björk (1965). In honor of Bean’s birthday, here’s one of his most famous songs, “Body and Soul,” recorded on October 11, 1939. Its free-form improvisation on the chords of the popular standard marked a new era in jazz.
Those who died on November 21 include Henry Purcell (1695), Robert Benchley (1945), and David Cassidy (last year).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has noted a correlation and wants to investigate it. She’s doing science!
Hili: First nuts appear at home and then winter comes.
A: Winter would come even without nuts.
Hili: This must be tested.
In Polish:
Hili: Najpierw pojawiają się w domu orzechy, a potem przychodzi zima.
Ja: Przyszłaby i bez orzechów.
Hili: To trzeba zbadać.
Tweets from Grania. This first beast is new to me:
