Svante Pääbo gives a good public lecture on Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other relatives of modern humans

October 26, 2018 • 12:30 pm

I think most readers know about Svante Pääbo and his work on “paleoanthropology”: the study of the evolution and ancient movements of H. sapiens through analysis of “fossil DNA”.  His most famous work is on the genetics of Neanderthals, a subject in which I’ve recently become interested.

Pääbo’s work been extended to Denisovans and other previously unknown human groups, and what we’re learning is that even in H. sapiens the evolutionary tree is convoluted and interconnected. This does not, by the way, vindicate the thesis that evolutionary trees are wrong, or can’t be accurately determined. Despite that, there are some fossil individuals so genetically heterogeneous that they can’t be slotted into one group or another (see below). Our relatives were “mixing” quite promiscuously when they met.

In this remarkably clear lecture (h/t: Matthew Cobb), which proceeds chronologically through the scientific findings, Pääbo lays out the genetic data produced by his lab. (This is the award lecture accompanying Pääbo’s 2018 Nierenberg Award for Science in the Public Interest, given on October 3 of this year.)  There’s some freaky stuff in here, including an individual that appears to be an F1 (first-generation) hybrid between a Neanderthal and a Denisovan (about 32 minutes in).

36 minutes into the lecture, Pääbo summaries the contribution of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes to modern humans, including the possibility that a gene we carry from Neanderthals that now gives us a higher propensity for type 2 diabetes could have been an allele that helped Neanderthals deal with starvation. Similarly, Denisovans have bequeathed to modern Tibetan populations a gene that helps deal with high altitude.

In fact, there are at least a dozen “archaic” genes from Neanderthals and Denisovans that remain in our genomes and are associated with disease, perhaps because they don’t function well in the genetic backgrounds of modern humans. (There’s evidence that some of these have been selected against.) At the end, Pääbo discusses the genes in modern humans not present in Denisovans or Neanderthals; the idea here are that these human-specific genes (there are 87) that makes us “important” and “special”. I’ll let you watch those last 12 minutes on your own. There are four minutes of questions at the end.

All in all, this is a superb introduction to the complex and always-changing picture of our relationship to recent hominin relatives. If you watch it, and you should, you’ll be absolutely up to speed on human paleogenetics. But, as Steve Gould used to say, when he lectured on human evolution at Harvard each year, his first act was to throw out all his notes from the previous year’s lecture.

More about the Austrian “pedophile prophet” case

October 26, 2018 • 10:15 am

Yesterday I reported that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that an Austrian woman, by teaching that the prophet Muhammad had married a six-year-old wife (Aisha), and then consummated the marriage three years later, had engaged in defamation of religion in a way that hurt religious sentiments. The ECHR was upholding two Austrian lower-court rulings, and fined the woman €480 and court costs. I gave these quotes from the Turkish Andelou Agency, one of the few sites to report the decision.

On today’s ruling, the ECHR said it “found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.”

The court held “that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

I’ve looked for other media sites reporting this decision, and, predictably, it’s been ignored by Left-wing sites and major media, but reported by sites like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the latter reporting this:

In one of her seminars, Mrs S is reported to have said: “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?”

She also said Mohammed “liked to do it with children”.

She was convicted for insulting the religion in February 2011 by the Vienna Regional Criminal Court and yesterday the ECHR upheld their decision.

You can find the judgement in English here and the summary here.  The crime from the summary:

Facts – The applicant held seminars with the title “Basic information on Islam” at the right-wing Freedom Party Education Institute. At one such seminar, referring to a marriage which Muhammad had concluded with Aisha, a six-year old, and consummated when she had been nine, she stated inter alia “[Muhammad] liked to do it with children”, “the thing with Aisha and child sex” and “a 56-year-old and a six-year-old? What do you call that? Give me an example? What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?”

And the rationale for punishment from the judgment (my emphasis):

14.  The Regional Court found that the above statements essentially conveyed the message that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies. It stated that the applicant was referring to a marriage which Muhammad had concluded with Aisha, a six-year old, and consummated when she had been nine. The court found that by making the statements the applicant had suggested that Muhammad was not a worthy subject of worship. However, it also found that it could not be established that the applicant had intended to decry all Muslims. She was not suggesting that all Muslims were paedophiles, but was criticising the unreflecting imitation of a role model. According to the court, the common definition of paedophilia was a primary sexual interest in children who had not yet reached puberty. Because paedophilia was behaviour which was ostracised by society and outlawed, it was evident that the applicant’s statements were capable of causing indignation. The court concluded that the applicant had intended to wrongfully accuse Muhammad of having paedophilic tendencies. Even though criticising child marriages was justifiable, she had accused a subject of religious worship of having a primary sexual interest in children’s bodies, which she had deduced from his marriage with a child, disregarding the notion that the marriage had continued until the Prophet’s death, when Aisha had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty. In addition, the court found that because of the public nature of the seminars, which had not been limited to members of the Freedom Party, it was conceivable that at least some of the participants might have been disturbed by the statements.

So this was not, said the court, a general slur on Muslims (“Islamophobia”), but a criticism of Muhammad’s behavior. The “crime” appears to have been in wrongly accusing the Prophet of being a pedophile, which is someone who has a sexual interest in children. This seems manifestly true in this case, but the court got around that by saying that Muhammad, even though engaged in a child marriage that could justifiably be criticized, did not have “a primary sexual interest in children’s bodies” because the marriage continued after Aisha was 18!

This is a distinction without a difference. You may disagree with the idea that Muhammad was a pedophile because he raped a nine-year old, but it’s certainly worth consideration, especially because that tradition of child marriages, justified by Muhammad’s own, has continued in many strains of Islam. To fine someone for “offending” those who disagree with this as pedophilia is simply ridiculous. I wonder what charges would be brought against an Austrian citizen who married a six-year-old girl and then had sex with her three years later? Could pedophilia, or sex with underage girls, be one of them?

Considering that this was enforcement of a blasphemy law by a Western nation, and an abrogation of freedom of speech, I would have expected more widespread reporting. This is the Austrian blasphemy law that was violated:

Herabwürdigung religiöser Lehren

§ 188. Wer öffentlich eine Person oder eine Sache, die den Gegenstand der Verehrung einer im Inland bestehenden Kirche oder Religionsgesellschaft bildet, oder eine Glaubenslehre, einen gesetzlich zulässigen Brauch oder eine gesetzlich zulässige Einrichtung einer solchen Kirche oder Religionsgesellschaft unter Umständen herabwürdigt oder verspottet, unter denen sein Verhalten geeignet ist, berechtigtes Ärgernis zu erregen, ist mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu sechs Monaten oder mit Geldstrafe bis zu 360 Tagessätzen zu bestrafen.

My translation with Google’s help:

Vilification of religious teachings

§ 188.  Whoever publicly disparages or ridicules a person or thing that is the object of worship of a domestic church or religious society, or a doctrine, a lawful practice, or a lawful institution of such a church or religious society, and which behavior is likely to cause legitimate offense shall be punished with imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of up to 360 “day units” [units of fine based on the personal income of the offender]

This clearly applies not just to Islam, but to Christianity, and one site gives some prosecutions in Austria:

This de facto ‘blasphemy’ law has been used in practice to prosecute and fine individuals.

On Dec. 11, 2009, Catholic clerics in Vienna sued the cartoonist Manfred Deix for two drawings on the website NEWS.at which depict God and the EU prohibition against crucifixes in schools, respectively.

On Jan. 22, 2009, the Austrian politician Susanne Winter was sentenced at a court in Graz to pay a $24,000 fine for “humiliating a religion” by saying, among other things, that Mohammed was a paedophile.

On Dec. 11, 2010, 63-year-old Helmut G. was convicted for offending his Muslim neighbor by yodeling while lawn mowing. The neighbor claimed Helmet was trying to mock and imitate the Muezzin, the Muslim call to prayer.

On Jan. 15, 2011, Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolf was convicted of offending religion because she exclaimed, about the Prophet Mohammed’s nine-year-old wife, “If that is not paedophilia, what is it?” [This appears to be the case at hand.]

Blasphemy laws are a violation of free speech, even if they hurt someone’s feelings, and the enforcement of such laws by a European court should be reported by media like the New York Times. I wonder why it wasn’t? And Austria, among the other European countries with these laws, should ditch this. Why should religion be uniquely protected against hurting the feelings of its adherents? Why not politics, or sports?

Jesus and Mo revived a special cartoon today to honor the occasion:

Sinéad O’Connor finds Allah

October 26, 2018 • 8:45 am

Given the vagaries of her behavior, I suppose it’s not surprising that erstwhile singer Sinéad O’Connor has become a Muslim, taking the new name Shuhada’ Davitt. (The name on her Wikipedia entry has already been changed.)

https://twitter.com/MagdaDavitt77/status/1053340513871384576

https://twitter.com/MagdaDavitt77/status/1054765174706585600

As the Guardian reports:

She has since documented her new faith, writing that she was “very, very, very happy” after being given her first hijab, and expressing thanks to “all my Muslim brothers and sisters who have been so kind as to welcome me to Ummah”, meaning the Islamic community. She also posted a YouTube video of her making the Islamic call to prayer

Her full new name is Shuhada’ Davitt, using the surname she gave herself when she changed her name to Magda Davitt in 2017. She said at the time that she wanted to be “free of the patriarchal slave names. Free of the parental curses.”

It was 26 years ago that O’Connor caused a huge fracas by ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in protest of the Catholic Church’s psychological and sexual abuse of children. It’s ironic, then, that’s she’s adopted this new faith, whose “theologians” and ayatollahs condone many of the same practices.  And talking about patriarchal slaves. . . .

Here’s her live act of defiance back in 1992, which was brave. Today, well. . . she’s been through a lot.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 26, 2018 • 7:45 am

Thank you to the many readers who, prompted by my plea, sent in wildlife photos yesterday. Remember, though: I can always use more. We’re putting up today some lovely U.S. moth photos by Paul Doerder. The notes and IDs, indented, are his. Note that “mothing” is now a verb.

You posted some of my moth photos some time ago, and I’ve been meaning to send some more, but it seems this year the mothing itself got in the way.  I started in the early spring, setting up a sheet and UV light sources (mercury vapor and LEDs), and  going out after dark to see what was attracted. Though I haven’t counted, I probably mothed over two dozen nights, took well over 10,000 photos, and spent many days with the Petersen field guide. It’s become a favorite hobby at our Holmes County cabin, and this season alone I’ve identified nearly 200 species, with many more photos to go.

I find the variety, even in the drab ones, fascinating, trying to imagine the background on which they hide. Typically, I’d visit the sheet 3-4 times a night, and to increase the probability of a photo decent enough for species identification, I’d take 10-15 photos of a single moth (digital is cheap).  While some species stayed at the sheet all night, others were transitory, present say at 10:00 pm and absent at 2:00 am and vice versa.  Moonless, windless nights were best, and successive nights often brought more than one new species. At sunrise, I’d turn off the lights and shake the sheet to release the moths, particularly as an Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) found them easy prey.

Here are 9 of many pictures taken between May 25 and June 1, 2018. Except for the two sphinx species, none are particularly large. I hope to send more, along with pics of some of the other insects that visited the lights.

Beautiful Eutelia — Eutelia pulcherrimus:

Eastern Panthea — Panthea furcilla:

Eyed Paectes — Paectes oculatrix:

Hollow-spotted Plagodis — Plagodis alcoolaria:

Small-eyed Sphinx — Paonias myops:

The Beggar — Eubaphe mendica:

Tufted bird-dropping — Cerma cerintha:

Walnut Sphinx — Amorpha juglandis:

White-dotted Prominent — Nadata gibbosa:

Friday: Hili dialogue

October 26, 2018 • 6:45 am

It’s Friday already: one week before I go to Paris. It’s October 26, 2018, and I hope my ducks are on their way to Louisiana.  It’s a double food holiday: National Pumpkin Day and National Mincemeat Pie Day. It’s also Intersex Awareness Day.

On this day in 1774, the first Continental Congress of the American “rebels” met in Philadelphia. Exactly one year later, George III of Great Britain declared before Parliament that the American colonies were in rebellion and authorized a military response. So began the Revolutionary War.  On October 26, 1863, the Football Association was founded at the Freemason’s Tavern in London. And on this day in 1881, the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurred in Tombstone, Arizona. Three people were killed in the thirty-second fusillade, but there were two deaths thereafter related to it.  The participants were Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday on one side versus Tom and Frank McLaury, Billy and Ike Clanton, and Billy Claiborne on the other.

On October 26, 1905, Sweden accepted the independence of Norway. In 1944, the largest naval skirmish in history, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, ended with a decisive victory of the U.S. over Japan, with a loss of 6 versus 26 warships, respectively. Exactly three years later, the Maharaja of Kashmir and Jammu, during Partition, allowed his kingdom to join India rather than Pakistan. There’s been trouble ever since.  And on October 26, 1977, says Wikipedia, “Ali Maow Maalin, the last natural case of smallpox, develop[ed]a rash in Merca district, Somalia. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.” And indeed it is. Maalin survived and became a vaccination activist, but died of malaria in 2013.

On this day in 1999, Britain’s House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in that chamber, and it sure took long enough! Finally, exactly one year ago today, Jacinda Arden, only 37 years old, was sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand. She’s the youngest prime minister in that country’s history. So far reviews of her performance are positive but mixed. Sadly, her “First Cat”, Paddles, was killed by a car shortly after she took office. It was ineffably heartbreaking as Paddles, a polydactylous atheist cat, had a hilarious Twitter feed.

Notables born on this day include Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874), Beryl Markham (1902), Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919), biologist Robert Hinde (1923; among other things, Hinde described blue tits in Britain learning to pry the caps off milk bottles and drinking the cream on top, one of the earliest examples of cultural evolution in animals, since the behavior spread rapidly. Sadly, there are few videos on the Internet showing this cool behavior, but you can see one on the BBC Archives page here).  Others born on this day are Pat Conroy (1945), Jaclyn Smith (1945), Hillary Clinton (1947) and Julian Schnabel (1951).

Those who expired on October 26 include Hattie McDaniel (1952), Igor Sikorsky (1972), and Park Chung-hee (1979).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is off hunting again:

A: Where are you going?
Hili: To a place I will be returning from.
In Polish:
Ja: Dokąd idziesz?
Hili: Do miejsca, z którego będę wracać.
Reader Al Lee sent this illusion, which is explained here. There are TWELVE black dots in this figure. Can you see them all at once? If not, why not?

A “meme” via reader Su:

A tweet sent by reader Dom. Be sure to watch till the end:

From reader Nilou; I wonder if these pictures are real. I suspect they are, but jebus, the hair!

Tweets from Matthew. The first shows is stunning: a huge aggregation of female octopuses brooding eggs near “fluid seeps” in the deep sea. Why are they doing this?

Click on the link to go to the word list:

I had to get a screenshot of this one; I guess the dude has blocked me:

A puzzled inquiry about Christianity:

What an ignominious interment!

Tweets from Grania:

A  3.5-minute spontaneous video from Jonathan Pie:

Finally, from one of Grania’s favorite sites, the fake “DPRK News Service”, which is hilarious and worth following—if you follow people on Twitter:

 

Harriet the Singing Donkey

October 25, 2018 • 3:00 pm

Most donkeys make noises that would rouse the demons of Hell, but this Irish specimen, Harriet the Singing Donkey, has a sonorous and mellifluous voice. As BoingBoing reports:

She became an internet sensation when Martin Stanton, who lives not far away and has visited Harriet the donkey regularly for more than a year, posted a video of her singing on Facebook last week.

“She lives about 20 minutes away from me in Toureen, Connemara,” he told ABC News. “I know the family who own her and I bring carrots, bread and ginger nut biscuits. She never hew-haws like other donkeys.”

“I try to visit whenever I can because she is adorable, so friendly and gentle,” he said. “I found the video funny so I just posted it. I didn’t think it would go viral.”

Listen to this lovely voice!

 

h/t: j.j.

European Court of Human Rights upholds blasphemy law: Defaming the Prophet Muhammad or his marriage to a six year old girl hurts people’s “religious feelings”

October 25, 2018 • 2:00 pm

I’m gobsmacked, as I hadn’t been aware of this case. This comes from the Andelou Agency, a Turkish website, so it’s not gonna be critical of this decision.

The text:

Strasbourg: Defaming the Prophet Muhammed “goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate” and “could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace” and thus exceeds the permissible limits of freedom of expression, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday, upholding a lower court decision.

The decision by a seven-judge panel came after an Austrian national identified as Mrs. S. held two seminars in 2009, entitled “Basic Information on Islam,” in which she defamed the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage.

According to a statement released by the court on Thursday, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court found that these statements implied that Muhammad had pedophilic tendencies, and in February 2011 convicted Mrs. S. for disparaging religious doctrines.

She was fined €480 (aprox. $547) and the costs of the proceedings.

“Mrs. S. appealed but the Vienna Court of Appeal upheld the decision in December 2011, confirming, in essence, the lower court’s findings. A request for the renewal of the proceedings was dismissed by the Supreme Court on 11 December 2013,” it said.

“Relying on Article 10 (freedom of expression), Mrs. S. complained that the domestic courts failed to address the substance of the impugned statements in the light of her right to freedom of expression.”

On today’s ruling, the ECHR said it “found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria.”

The court held “that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate and classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

The statement also added that there had been no violation of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, covering freedom of expression.

I suspect that Mrs. S. defamed Muhammed’s marriage to his wife Aisha, whom he married at six or seven and “deflowered” (i.e., raped) at nine. And why, exactly, shouldn’t that be defamed? It happens to be true, so the Austrian woman was simply fined for telling the truth. And that truth is construed as potentially offending Muslims.

But really, look at the bit I’ve put in bold. It’s a blasphemy law they’re enforcing! Muslims “need to have their religious feelings protected” in Austria. This is unconscionable. A democratic country protects a religious minority from having its feelings hurt? Does that go for Christians, too? You’re not allowed to defame Jesus, who might not have even existed? But of course we know that among all faiths these days, it’s Islam who are using the “hurt feelings” excuse to protect their religion from criticism.

This isn’t even Islamophobia: it’s criticism of religion, and most likely criticism of an Islamic practice of marrying and raping young girls. Shame on Austria, and on the European Court of Human Rights. There is no reason for the modern Western democracies to have blasphemy laws. Let’s face it, in Austraia there is no real “freedom of expression”—not if you can’t criticize religion.

Grüß Gott im Himmel!