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.
For a bit of a digestif this Thanksgiving, have a look at a new interview of Steve Pinker in the New York Times. As it emphasizes the progressivism I’ve described on this site before, you might not learn much new, but you will find out whether he intends to run for office, how his work on the world’s improvement has changed him personally, why people still reject Pinker’s progressivism despite copious data in its favor, and, as the interviewer asks, “Does it matter that some things are improving if other things are getting worse?” (What a question!)
This is a sad story but also a story of stupidity, even if John Chau couldn’t have done other than what he did.
What Chau did, as recounted in the story in the Guardian (click on screenshot), was to hire locals to take him to North Sentinel Island, one of the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands that are territories of India.
And that island is home to the Senitelese, who firmly reject any contact with the outside world. They’ll fire arrows at anyone who comes near, including an Indian helicopter investigating possible damage to the island after the tsunami of 2004. Two years later, two Indian fishermen whose boat accidentally drifted ashore on North Sentinel were killed by the locals. It’s not a good idea to go there.
But Chau was on a mission from God: he wanted to introduce the Senitelese to Jesus. He approached the island the day before he was killed, and should have learned his lesson then:
Chau repeatedly tried to contact the tribespeople and managed to reach the island the day before he was killed. He tried to offer gifts of fish and a football, he wrote in his diary.
“I heard the whoops and shouts from the hunt,” Chau wrote in an entry that was given to several media outlets by his mother. “I made sure to stay out of arrow range, but unfortunately that meant I was also out of good hearing range.
“So I got a little closer as they (about six from what I could see) yelled at me, I tried to parrot their words back to them. They burst out laughing most of the time, so they probably were saying bad words or insulting me.
“I hollered: ‘My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you.’ I regret I began to panic slightly as I saw them string arrows in their bows. I picked up the fish and threw it towards them. They kept coming.
“I paddled like I never have in my life back to the boat. I felt some fear but mainly was disappointed. They didn’t accept me right away.”
One of the tribespeople – “a kid probably about 10 or so years old, maybe a teenager” – fired an arrow that struck his Bible, he wrote that night, onboard the boat of fishermen he paid 25,000 rupees (£275) to smuggle him close to the island. “Well, I’ve been shot by the Sentinelese.”
Nevertheless, he persisted, and last Friday made landfall. He was quickly cut down by a volley of Sentilese arrows, and his body buried by on the island by locals. It hasn’t yet been recovered.
This is a Darwin Award for sure, but it was done for God’s glory:
. . . as he prepared to make another approach, Chau wrote a letter to his parents. “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this, but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people,” he wrote.
“Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed. Rather, please live your lives in obedience to whatever he has called you to and I’ll see you again when you pass through the veil.
“This is not a pointless thing. The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand and I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language, as Revelations 7:9-10 states.”
Yes, it is a pointless thing, and a stupid one. Sadly, neither the islanders nor Chau get eternal life.
One wonders why, if Christianity be the “right” religion, God allowed a man to be killed who was trying to spread His word. But of course God’s ways are mysterious, or so the theologians tell us. There must have been a reason for Chau’s death, but for the life of me I can’t guess what it might be.
The BBC (and Quartz) report that there’s a new form of female protest against religiously-mandated clothing restrictions in Islamic countries. (Click on screenshot).
In March the murderous crown prince Mohammed bin Salman decreed that the traditional abaya, a full-length covering gown, was no longer required wear for women in public, and could be replaced by “modest” dress. As the Prince decreed:
“The laws are very clear and stipulated in the laws of Sharia [Islamic law]: that women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men,” he told CBS TV.
“This, however, does not particularly specify a black abaya or black head cover. The decision is entirely left for women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire she chooses to wear.”
Nevertheless, as Quartz reports, “In practice, however, wearing the abaya is all but compulsory—and Saudi women have had enough.” And so, like the “White Wednesdays” and “My Stealthy Freedom” Twitter sites from Iran, Saudi women are protesting the covering by creating their own hashtag cite (in Arabic):#العبايه_المقلوبه, which apparently means “inside-out abaya”. Yes, the women are wearing their abayas inside out as a protest. Here are a few Tweets from that site:
This is a clever protest, for wearing your abaya inside out violates no rules, but it a definite sign of protest. I hope for the day that Saudi women no longer need to do this.
Three days ago I put up a post reporting on (and showing videos of) the distress of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews whose El Al flights from New York to Tel Aviv was delayed by weather. The sources quoted, and the tapes I presented, appeared to show that the Haredi passengers, extremely worried about flying on the Sabbath (that’s not allowed), verbally and perhaps physically abused the airline staff, forcing one of the two flights to be diverted so the passengers could be on the ground during Sabbath (the other flight couldn’t divert because of a passenger’s medical problem).
Reader Orli, however, called my attention to an article in Tablet noting that the scenario above was misleading on four counts. I’ll excerpt the Tablet report:
So what really happened en route from New York to Tel Aviv? As we now know, three noteworthy things: First, the delay was caused because the crew arrived at the airport three hours late. Sure, it was snowing, and the roads were a slushy hellscape, but virtually all of the flight’s 400 passengers realized that and had the good sense to allow plenty of time for travel. The professionals of El Al weren’t quite as attentive or wise.
Even more maddening, once the passengers, still on the ground and growing irate, learned that the flight would not land in Israel in time for Shabbat, many asked to return to the gate so that they could leave the plane and spend the weekend stateside before making other travel arrangements. The flight’s captain asked everyone to sit down and buckle up, promising his passengers that he was merely taxiing back to the gate. Instead, without providing any further updates, without adhering to the requisite safety protocols, and in blatant violation of his promise, he simply took off for Israel.
Under the circumstances, you’d understand why the passengers, having been disrespected and lied to, might be upset. But the best was yet to come: When Yehuda Schlesinger, a passenger aboard Flight 002 and a reporter for Yisrael Hayom, returned home from Athens, he saw the viral video that allegedly documented those rascally Haredi men flexing their muscles and threatening violence. He recognized the clip, because he had shot it with his smartphone on Thursday night and shared it on social media. There was only one small problem: The video Schlesinger took was of Haredi men singing and dancing to cheer each other up under difficult circumstances; the video shown on Israeli TV was edited and given a radically different soundtrack, one featuring men shouting in a menacing fashion. When Schlesinger, incensed, pointed this out to Israel’s Channel 10, they apologized and claimed that the soundtrack was swapped due to technical trouble. The term for that in Yiddish is fake news.
And the objectors weren’t all Haredim:
Far from being uniformly Haredi, as early press reports insisted, the passengers who rushed against the clock in Greece were a wildly diverse bunch: black hatters and wearers of knitted kippot, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, men and women from all across Israel with nothing much in common save for the tradition that has bound us all for millennia.
While I’m not trying to make light of the excesses of Judaism, which is as ridden with superstition as other faiths, I feel I have to correct my earlier report (I’m assuming here the Tablet story is correct). I’ve made a note on the earlier report that it is likely to be erroneous.
John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has been serving for 13 years, and is a judicial conservative nominated to be Chief Justice by George W. Bush. This week Roberts pushed back against a comment that President Trump made; the story is reported in the New York Times article below (click on screenshot):
The story can be told briefly. Roberts is not prone to making public statements, but made one when Trump suggested that federal courts are politicized. From the Times:
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. defended the independence and integrity of the federal judiciary on Wednesday, rebuking President Trump for calling a judge who had ruled against his administration’s asylum policy “an Obama judge.” [JAC: this was not a Supreme Court judge.]
The chief justice said that was a profound misunderstanding of the judicial role.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” he said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
. . . Later in the day Mr. Trump responded to the chief justice’s statementon Twitter. “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’” Mr. Trump wrote, “and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”
Leaving aside the slur that Obama judges aren’t charged with the safety of America, which is bogus, Trump’s claim has some merit. Roberts’ assertion that the court is not politicized, and that the justices’ views have nothing to do with who appointed them, was meant to defend the courts’ integrity. But it’s wrong. Supreme Court judges vote pretty reliably in concordance with their ideological biases.
It’s a palpable fact that the Court is highly politicized, and generally votes predictably—along the lines of the Justices’ judicial ideologies and philosophies. And it is no coincidence that those philosophies align with those of the Presidents who appointed them. What President would appoint a justice who wasn’t on the Prez’s end of the political spectrum?
Here are the present nine justices with a indication of whether they are generally conservative or liberal in their rulings, as well as a note about who appointed them:
John Roberts. Votes conservative, appointed by George W. Bush
Brett Kavanaugh. No record yet but will, based on his record, certainly vote conservative, appointed by Donald Trump.
Yes, the court is surely politicized, and yes, there are “Obama judges” who vote liberal versus “Trump judges” and “George Bush” judges who vote conservative. This is the case and has nearly always been the case, and Roberts is wrong to pretend it isn’t true.
Nowhere is this politicization clearer than in the case of Bush v. Gore in 2000, when the very Presidency was decided strictly along Left-Right lines. Further, every lawyer I know who argues First-Amendment issues in federal circuit courts knows that those courts, one step below the Supreme Court, are also politicized. Many times progressive lawyers, for instance, try to bring cases before circuit courts known to have a more liberal bent.
We may be amused or even heartened by this contretemps between two conservatives, and even take Roberts’ side in the dispute, but Trump happens to be more correct than Roberts.
Look at it this way, flailing about randomly, Trump is occasionally going to be right. As the saying goes, “Even a blind pig can find an acorn.”
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
