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.
It’s September 12, 2016, and National Chocolate Milkshake Day. Do they have real milkshakes (with ice cream) in the UK—except at American nostalgia joints? And while I’m on the subject, I always thought that someone could make a pile of money in Great Britain if they opened a shop selling real hoagie sandwiches (not the Subway brand) instead of what passes for a sandwich (a “butty”) in Old Blighty: 1 mm of meat and cheese, barely discernible to the taste, on two pieces of dry bread, often dressed with some enigmatic substance called “sweetcorn.” Here’s what I mean by a sandwich:
To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee: “Now THIS is a sandwich!”
To be fair, I’ll list the foods I miss in the UK: real ale at proper temperature (like a well-kept pint of Landlord), aged farmhouse cheddar cheese, Melton Mowbray pork pies, real fish and chips with mushy peas, trifles, and all kinds of biscuits (esp. cow biscuits, Boasters, squashed fly biscuits, and McVitie’s dark chocolate digestives).
On this day in 1846, Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning. Wikipedia says this about an event on September 12, 1933: “Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.” In 1940, the Lascaux cave paintings were discovered on this day, and, in 1953, John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (♥) in Rhode Island.
Notables born on this day include Jesse Owens (1913), Barry White (1944; who likes his music?), and Nan Goldin (1953, subject of a recent and fascinating New Yorker article). Those who died on this day include Steve Biko (1977, succumbed while in custody of the South African police after torture and beatings; the perpetrators were never tried) and Johnny Cash. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is petulant and had an urge to bat a rock:
Hili: Homeopaths say that water remembers. Do stones remember as well?
A: Why are you asking?
Hili: I would like to whack it.
In Polish:
Hili: Homeopaci mówią, że woda pamięta. Czy kamienie też pamiętają?
Ja: Dlaczego pytasz?
Hili: Bo mam mu ochotę przyłożyć.
We have no photos of Gus or Leon today, but here’s a swell eye-fooler pointed out by Matthew Cobb. The caption is right about the twelve dots, but I don’t understand why we can’t see them.
There are twelve black dots at the intersections in this image. Your brain won’t let you see them all at once. pic.twitter.com/ig6P980LOT
Reader Saul, aware of my extreme “admiration” for Diane Morgan (aka Philomena Cunk), sent me the link to Morgan’s appearance on the British show “Would I Lie to You?”. On that show, each member of a panel makes a startling statement, and the others, after questioning the panelist, guess whether the statement is true or false. Saul characterizes the show like this:
As to the show in question: it’s a panel show, which is common in Britain but as far as I can see not so much in America, it’s completely lacking in cynicism, the two regulars share an excellent chemistry, the guests are often a good mix of celebs and comics, and the premise is simple brilliance (I can’t understand why it hasn’t been franchised and flogged across the world given how easily the format would work elsewhere.). It has a certain cheesy, light-entertainment air to it but it’s so often a joy to watch. It’s a slightly guilty pleasure of mine, and Diane Morgan was good on it. You might want to try it.
And YouTube’s description:
Rob Brydon hosts the award-winning comedy panel show with David Mitchell and Lee Mack as the lightning-quick team captains. Over the course of the show, celebrity guests reveal amazing stories about themselves, some of which are true and some of which are not. The aim of the game is to fool the opposition into mistaking fact for fiction and fiction for fact.
This episode’s guests are Nadiya Hussain, Diane Morgan, Bob Mortimer and Michael Smiley.
Philomena appears between 4:48 to 7:23 with a statement about an ex-boyfriend. But the whole show is funny, as the contestants are quite quick-witted. I doubt that anything this unscripted is on American television, where even the “reality shows” often follow a script. (I do remember older shows that were similar, like “What’s My Line,” but since I watch almost no TV, I can’t really judge what’s happening now.)
Since it’s important to the article I’m going to mention, I note that its author, Yasmin Abdel-Magied, is a black Australian Muslim woman. Her piece in yesterday’s Guardian, “As Lionel Shriver made light of identity, I had no choice but to walk out on her,” is a long whine about how authors of one gender or ethnicity have no right to write fiction that take the viewpoint of someone of another gender or ethnicity—at least when those other people are minorities. By so doing, Abdel-Magied says, they not only appropriate viewpoints about which they have no expertise, but prevent other marginalized writers from getting their voices heard.
This is all bogus, I think, but let’s see what Abdel-Magied has to say. She begins by mentioning that she went to a lecture by Lionel Shriver, who, despite the name, is a woman—a journalist and writer most famous for writing We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Apparently (there’s no record of the lecture, so all we have is Abdel-Magied’s invidious characterization), Shriver began by making light of those who were offended by students at Bowdoin College in Maine who wore sombreros at a tequila party (something similar happened at the University of Chicago about two years ago). The Bowdoin sombrero-wearers were criticized for cultural appropriation, and other students tried to impeach two of them who were members of student government. Shriver’s failure to criticize the sombrero-wearers further exacerbated Abdel-Magied when she, Shriver, began talking about writing from the viewpoints of different people. Finally, deeply and terminally upset, Abdel-Magied stalked out of Shriver’s talk:
We were 20 minutes into the speech when I turned to my mother, sitting next to me in the front row.
“Mama, I can’t sit here,” I said, the corners of my mouth dragging downwards. “I cannot legitimise this …”
As my heels thudded against they grey plastic of the flooring, harmonising with the beat of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, my mind was blank save for one question.
“How is this happening?”
Right there is Abdel-Magied’s first mistake: assuming that listening to something that offends her “legitimises” it. Where on earth did she get that notion? But of course we’ve heard it before. Inviting a speaker with controversial views to a university somehow “legimitizes” that speaker—somehow giving credence to their views. Of course that’s nonsense.
She goes on:
So what did happen? What did Shriver say in her keynote that could drive a woman who has heard every slur under the sun to discard social convention and make such an obviously political exit?
Her question was — or could have been — an interesting question: What are fiction writers “allowed” to write, given they will never truly know another person’s experience?
. . . Shriver’s real targets were cultural appropriation, identity politics and political correctness. It was a monologue about the right to exploit the stories of “others”, simply because it is useful for one’s story.
Shriver began by making light of a recent incident in the US, where students faced prosecution for what was argued by some as “casual racial and ethnic stereotyping and cultural insensitivity” at a Mexican-themed party.
“Can you believe,” Shriver asked at the beginning of her speech, “that these students were so sensitive about the wearing of sombreros?”
The audience, compliant, chuckled. I started looking forward to the point in the speech where she was to subvert the argument.
It never came.
On and on it went. Rather than focus on the ultimate question around how we can know an experience we have not had, the argument became a tirade. It became about the fact that a white man should be able to write the experience of a young Nigerian woman and if he sells millions and does a “decent” job — in the eyes of a white woman — he should not be questioned or pilloried in any way. It became about mocking those who ask people to seek permission to use their stories. It became a celebration of the unfettered exploitation of the experiences of others, under the guise of fiction. (For more, Yen-Rong, a volunteer at the festival, wrote a summary on her personal blog about it.)
It was a poisoned package wrapped up in arrogance and delivered with condescension. . . The stench of privilege hung heavy in the air, and I was reminded of my “place” in the world.
Well, I suspect that, given Abdel-Magied’s hypersensivitity, some of that characterization is exaggerated . You can read Yen-Rong’s description of the talk, which is pretty similar except sees herself “othered” as an Asian. One quote from Yen-Rong’s piece:
Identity is important, and yes, making sure that we don’t pigeon hole ourselves into one thing, or into what others want us to be is also important. But it’s easy to say that ‘Asian isn’t an identity’ when you haven’t experienced what it’s like to have to confront racism (both casual and overt) in your everyday life. I’m not saying that you should go out and seek such experiences, because it’s pretty awful and no one should be subject to racism – I’m just saying that there’s a big difference between empathising with an experience and undergoing it yourself. You cannot trick or convince yourself into having no identity if other people continue to see you as *that* particular identity.
. . . As a semi-aspiring writer myself, and one who has sunk a significant amount of time and brain power to discussing subversive women and Othered characters in non-Western societies, Shriver’s address was alarming, to say the least. The publishing industry is chock full of white men, and advocating for their ‘right’ to write from the perspective of someone in a marginalised position takes opportunities away from those with authentic experiences to share. In other words, the subaltern continue to be silenced, and still cannot speak.
Is there a whiff of sour grapes there?
But back to Abdel-Magied, who echoes this same idea: that whites (especially males) shouldn’t be writing about, or in the voices of, marginalized people, for by so doing they’re preventing those people from speaking:
It’s not always OK if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman because the actual Nigerian woman can’t get published or reviewed to begin with. It’s not always OK if a straight white woman writes the story of a queer Indigenous man, because when was the last time you heard a queer Indigenous man tell his own story? How is it that said straight white woman will profit from an experience that is not hers, and those with the actual experience never be provided the opportunity? It’s not always OK for a person with the privilege of education and wealth to write the story of a young Indigenous man, filtering the experience of the latter through their own skewed and biased lens, telling a story that likely reinforces an existing narrative which only serves to entrench a disadvantage they need never experience. [JAC: Whose lens isn’t “skewed and biased”, for crying out loud?]
. . . The reality is that those from marginalised groups, even today, do not get the luxury of defining their own place in a norm that is profoundly white, straight and, often, patriarchal. And in demanding that the right to identity should be given up, Shriver epitomised the kind of attitude that led to the normalisation of imperialist, colonial rule: “I want this, and therefore I shall take it.”
The attitude drips of racial supremacy, and the implication is clear: “I don’t care what you deem is important or sacred. I want to do with it what I will. Your experience is simply a tool for me to use, because you are less human than me. You are less than human…”
Whoa, Nelly! Stop right there. How did we get from white people writing tales about other groups to overt accusations of racism, imperialism and dehumanization? I seriously doubt that Shriver conveyed anything of the sort; rather, what we have here is the Regressive Two-Step: someone claiming racism because only those from their group can write about their group. Further, as Yen-Rong notes above, if you don’t enforce that rule, the minorities get “silenced.”
Well, I don’t know whether a “queer Indigenous man” has told his own story (I assume she’s referring here to the Aboriginal people of Australia), but that’s not because white people have silenced them by coopting their stories. It’s more likely that Aboriginals, who were indeed the victims of persecution and racism, haven’t had the chance to become writers. But seriously, are minority writers really silenced by white colonialists coopting their narration in a literary form of “cultural appropriation”? I doubt it. Think of all the popular black writers we have, from Toni Morrison to Maya Angelou to Ta-Nehesi Coates to Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes. . . the list is long. They may have been victims of racism, but were not prevented from publishing because white people told their stories first, and better. Do I need to name famous Indian and Asian writers, too? I don’t think I need to; you can Google as well as I.
I decry any racism that takes away people’s opportunities, but I can’t get on board with Abdel-Magied’s view that only black people can write about black people, only Asians can write about Asians, and so on. The truth is that Asians and blacks all differ from each other, even within their ethnic group. In fact, it’s a form of bigotry to assume that all black people speak with one authentic and unified voice about their experiences. It’s true that the authenticity of some “black experience” or “the Asian experience” may be best conveyed by those who have lived that life, but why should others be prevented from having a try? Remember that imaginative fiction requires that you step into the shoes of someone else and imagine life from their viewpoint. John Steinbeck did that with “Okies” in The Grapes of Wrath, Harper Lee and Carson McCullers took the viewpoint of children in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Member of the Wedding. Paul Scott did it for Indians in The Raj Quartet, andRobert Graves for Romans in I, Claudius (was the work worthless because he wasn’t an ancient Roman?). Did Steinbeck engage in “unfettered exploitation” of the oppressed farmers? I don’t think so. Was Anna Karenina “invalid” because Tolstoy had only one X chromosome? No again.
And, to use an example of a white writing “black fiction,” what about the The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron? Granted, it was criticized by some African Americans, but it was also defended by Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, not exactly Uncle Toms! That itself shows you the diversity of opinion about “authentic” fiction among members of a single ethnic group.
I see no bar to someone writing imaginative fiction from the viewpoint of somebody else, but of course the quality of that fiction will be proportional to the amount of research going into the effort. Steinbeck, for instance, researched and lived among the poverty-stricken Dust Bowl farmers for a long time before writing about them. Melville knew whaling well, and Conrad, as a captain, also knew the sea; both wrote fiction involving seagoing.
It’s my experience that publishers are actively seeking out literature from “othered” groups, not only because it can offer some unusual and moving narratives, and because those viewpoints haven’t been the subject of much popular fiction, but also but because colleges are increasingly incorporating such books into their curricula as a way of increasing diversity. And among those books are some very great works.
In the end, I see Abdel-Magied’s plaints as largely without merit, a cry of “pay attention to ME” from the Perpetually Offended. Let everyone write as they will, for the good stuff will indeed rise to the top, but let us also ensure that those who have unique viewpoints do not have their ambition and talent smothered by bigotry.
The giraffe, Giraffa cameleopardalis, was first described by Linnaeus, and gets its species name from its fancied resemblance to a hybrid beast (as Wikipedia notes, the name comes from the Greek καμηλοπάρδαλις” meaning “giraffe”, from “κάμηλος” (kamēlos), “camel” + “πάρδαλις” (pardalis), “leopard”, due to its having a long neck like a camel and spots like a leopard). It’s always been considered a single species, but divided into about a half dozen subspecies that live in different areas and are distinguishable by different patterns of reticulation in their coats. Here’s an old subspecies designation and map; note that the populations included in each of the six subspecies live in different areas:
Here’s a classification of nine subspecies based on pattern (the number of named subspecies has been between four and about nine (I haven’t searched extensively).
Note that this classification is more or less arbitrary because the populations are geographically isolated and so one can’t use the classical “biological species definition” (BSC), in which members of the same species are able to interbreed in nature and produce fertile hybrids, while members of different species, when present in the same area, either do not mate with each other, or, if they do mate, do not produce hybrids that are fertile. Note that to use the BSC, putatively different (or identical) species have to be “tested” when living in the same area (“sympatric”).If they do not encounter each other in nature, there’s little you can do to apply the BSC.
One way around this is to hybridize them in zoos. If different “subspecies” do not mate with each other, or can’t produce fertile hybrids when they do mate in captivity, they’re almost certainly unlikely to do so in nature, and can be considered members of different species. However, if two different types do hybridize and produce fertile offspring in captivity, that doesn’t mean they’re members of the same species, for in nature other “isolating barriers”, like different breeding times or a genetically-based aversion for mating with other types, could keep them genetically separated even though barriers could break down in the artificial environment of zoos.
“Ligers“, for instance, are hybrids between male lions and female tigers, made famous in the movie Napoleon Bonaparte. Lions and tigers will mate in captivity, and some liger hybrids are fertile. But we don’t consider lions and tigers to be members of the same biological species because, when they were living in the same place in nature—in India, though they no longer are “sympatric” there—no hybrids were produced.
Allen Orr and I discuss the rationale for using the BSC for investigating how species originate in Chapter 1 of our book Speciation (2004), and conclude that if you want to understand “the species problem”—why animals and plants in a given area divide into clumps and are not simply a schmear)—the BSC is the concept to use. But if you merely want to name species, rather than understand how discrete cluster originate, then you’ll have to engage in a subjective classification if those groups don’t live in the same area.
This is the problem with a new paper in Current Biology by Julian Fennessy and coauthors (reference and free link below). This paper tries to determine the number of giraffe species that really do exist, but since the subpopulations live in different places and don’t encounter each other (see below), they’re forced to use another criterion to determine the number of giraffe “species”. They use genetic divergence, as measured by the amount of sequence difference in the DNA.
Fennessy et al. sequenced eight genes: 7 nuclear genes and the mitochondrial DNA (effectively a single gene) in nine previously-described subspecies of the giraffe. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences, shown below, showed that populations fell into four distinct clusters, which they decided to call “four species”. Here are the new species they distinguish and name:
southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa),
Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi),
reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata)
northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis), which includes the Nubian giraffe (G. c. camelopardalis) as a distinct but related subspecies.
Here’s the phylogenetic analysis (turn sideways); the colors of the populations correspond to colors on the map below (note again that the subspecies do not inhabit the same areas, though they may have in the past; we just don’t know!) Note too that each species is “monophyletic”, containing all the individuals that descend from a single common ancestral population.
Here are some of the populations they sampled; the colors correspond to the dots in the phylogeny above.
(From the paper): Figure 1 Distribution and Sampling Locations of Different Giraffe Subspecies in Africa (A) Distribution ranges (colored shading) provided by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation [7], plotted on a map of Africa (http://www.naturalearthdata.com/). Circles represent sampling locations; for coding, see Figure 2. (B) Enlarged view of the South Sudan region. Note that the samples of the putative Nubian giraffe were taken west and east of the Nile River.Finally, the authors do a genetic “STRUCTURE” analysis, which assumes the presence of different groups (varying how many groups they preconceive) and tries to see, using genetic differences, how distinct those groups. The assumption of both three and four groups (the latter corresponding to the four species they name) were the most useful for giraffes. At the top of the figure below you can see how well the clusters are demarcated with a K (group number) of four, and how the demarcation becomes marginally worse when you assume five clusters.
Also, below the cluster diagram is a DNA-based estimate of giraffe “species” divergence times calibrated from the fossil record of other mammals. You can see that the four groups diverged from each other between 1 and 2 million years ago.
So everybody seems to be happy with the conclusion that we have four species instead of one.
Everybody, that is, but Matthew Cobb and I. But more on that in a second.
The breathless conclusion that we have four species was accepted not only by the journal Current Biology, which published the paper (note the title), but by major news outlets, including the New York Times, the BBC, Science magazine, and so on. I haven’t found a word of criticism of this conclusion. So here’s some.
Dividing up geographically isolated groups into species is an exercise in naming and classification rather than understanding the problem of why nature is discontinuous—and by “discontinuous”, I mean the answer to the fascinating question “Why, in one area, are animals and plants divided into discrete groups rather than forming a continuum?” Using a genetic-distance measure, as the authors did in this paper, simply tells you how long the groups have been separated rather than whether they’d remain discrete were they to meet in nature. It tells you about evolutionary history but not about speciation.
So yes, we know the four groups they call species have been separated for 1-2 million years, and have developed coat color differences. But human “races” have also developed coat-color differences (and other genetic differences) over a period of about 60,000-100,000 years, also largely among geographically isolated groups. Now human populations cannot be distinguished from their DNA sequences nearly as unambiguously as can these giraffe subspecies, but if you gave them another million years of geographic isolation (now impossible because of travel), they might well have separated genetically to the same extent as these giraffes. Would you then be happy to call human populations different “species”? What if a human population became marooned on an island for a million years, and changed its hair color and became genetically distinguishable using sequencing of largely neutral sites. Would you be happy to say, unambiguously, that here was have a new species: Homo islandensis?
Also note that genetic STRUCTURE analysis of human populations shows a pretty neat division into six groups (Rosenberg et al. 2002), corresponding well with 5 geographic regions. (Using other assumptions of group numbers, with K = 2, 3, and 4, doesn’t give as clean a resolution, as shown by areas with mixed colors). The groups are from Africa, East Africa, Europe + Middle East, Central/South Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.
Do we have five human species here, based on genetic clustering? How much genetic difference would be sufficient to call them different human species? (These problems are all discussed in the Appendix of Speciation).
The correlation of genetic differences with geographic isolation, of course, reflects the fact that populations that don’t get a chance to exchange genes become more and more different through time via natural selection and—probably the major force in this case—genetic drift. But how much difference do we need to diagnose species? It’s arbitrary, since populations can become “reciprocally” monophyletic for even a single gene. Okay, so how many genes do you need?
So the designation that there are four genetic clusters of giraffes is sound, but do they correspond to what evolutionary biologists call “species”? Who knows? We don’t know whether these groups are reproductively isolated. I can find no evidence that these groups ever lived in the same area of Africa at breeding time—or any time. Further, they can apparently hybridize in zoos (see reference 20 for THE GIRAFFE STUD BOOK; the fertility of hybrids isn’t mentioned). So while these are “genetic clusters”, we have no idea whether they’re biological species.
Matthew in fact was quoted in the BBC piece from an email he sent them, but they left out his caveat about reproductive isolation. Here’s what the article said:
Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester explained that the “four groups of giraffes had “been separated for 1-2 million years, with no evidence of genes being exchanged between them”.
Here’s what the BBC chose not to quote from Matthew’s email (reproduced with permission):
Defining species is difficult, and neither number of genetic differences between two groups, nor the time they have been separated, are necessarily relevant. The key point is what is called the biological species concept – does mating between these groups produce fertile offspring? If not, they are species. If they can produce fertile offspring, then no matter how long they have not done so in the wild, they are still not true species. However, this technical aspect is probably the least interesting point about this study. Instead, we should be focusing on developing appropriate conservation strategies for the four groups identified in this study. Whatever we call them, these four groups have distinct genes and have had distinct histories for over a million years.
I agree almost completely with Matthew, though I have one quibble. Yes, Fennessy et al. have identified groups that we can use for conservation purposes—if we want to conserve the phenotypic and genetic diversity in what was once considered a single species. But do we want to do that? This question is never really discussed. ‘
If we’re trying to save the coat color genes, well, they’re probably segregating at low frequency in other “species” of giraffes, and we could reconstruct any extinct pattern through artificial selection. If we’re trying to save the DNA diversity, most of which probably involves nucleotide bases whose differences among the “species” is of no biological consequence, why are we trying to do that? My point here is that—and I may be missing some literature—is I have never seen a detailed and critical discussion of what exactly conservationists are trying to accomplish when they decide to preserve populations X, Y, and Z. As Dick Lewontin pointed out long ago, a single fertilized female within a species contains half of all the “additive genetic variation” (selectable genetic variation for various traits) of the entire species, and that kind of latent variation is probably present in several or all of the four “distinct” giraffe species. When we say “we have to save all four giraffe species”, we don’t consider what we’re trying to save? The populations themselves? The phenotypic differences that distinguish them? Or the genes that distinguish them? (My own view is that we should save everything just out of respect for animals and plants that were here before us.)
I’ve been hard on this study because I study species using the BSC, but I want to finish by saying out that the study of Fennessy et al. is indeed very good, except for its certainty that we have four “species”. They don’t discuss the difficult problem of what, exactly, a “species” is—something that Matthew summarized in one paragraph. That aside, Fennessy et al. have done great work. They have identified four distinct genetic clusters, which tells us about the evolutionary history of these groups and may ultimately give a key to their degree of reproductive isolation if the giraffes move around (perhaps due to climate change). It also gives us an idea of which groups were geographically isolated for long enough to allow such genetic differences to accumulate, and thus raises questions about biogeography of these populations.
But four species for sure? I can’t say. And I’m surprised that the major science journals and newspaper sections have accepted the authors’ conclusions uncritically.
Reader Michael called my attention to today’s BBC schedule, which apparently upset him. His note:
Hi Jerry. The below is my BBC radio guide for this morning. I’ve supplied exact quotes of the listing descriptions. Please note that item 8 is a different person each week and it’s very rarely an atheist.
06:00 – 07:00 [1] BBC Radio 2: “THE SUNDAY HOUR. Diane Louise Jordan plays uplifting spiritual music – hymns, gospel, choral, classics. Plus listeners’ dedications & prayers.”
06:00 – 07:00 [2] BBC Radio West Midlands: “SIOR COLEMAN. Sunday morning hymns and the religious music you love.”
06:05 – 06:35 [3] BBC Radio 4: “SOMETHING UNDERSTOOD. Ethical & religious discussion. Poetic Rituals: Dr Sarah Goldingay searches for moments of transcendence that can be encountered through the routine & ritual of the everyday”
07:00 – 09:05 [4] BBC Radio 2: “GOOD MORNING SUNDAY. Fern Britton presents the topical faith programme with poet Lemn Sissay & faith guest Reverend Zoe Hemming”
07:00 – 09:00 [5] BBC Radio West Midlands: “SUNDAY BREAKFAST. Llewela Bailey with the week’s news & topical conversation from a faith perspective”
07:10 – 07:54 [6] BBC Radio 4: “SUNDAY. How can churches’ make people with learning disabilities welcome? Measures to placate Icelandic elves. A LGBT chaplain for Wales. Are C of E Bishops too ‘safe’?”
08:10 – 08:48 [7] BBC Radio 4: SUNDAY WORSHIP. The Power of Peace: The Rev Steve Chalke argues that living a life of peace is the most radical response to violence & suffering. Live from Oasis Church, Waterloo, London”
08:48 – – 08:58 [8] BBC Radio 4: “A POINT OF VIEW. A reflection on a topical issue. Atheist John Gray muses on what his idea of heaven is – and why it shouldn’t be a perfect world”
I had no idea that there were three hours of religious proselytizing on the Sunday BBC. Even the last ten minutes, involving John Gray (whom I’ve often criticized on this site and called “an atheist-hating atheist”) is paying some homage to religion by discussing heaven. But really, a government-run radio station in a largely secular country—one far less religious than the U.S.—shouldn’t be purveying this kind of fictional palaver. NPR, the U.S. equivalent, though not run by the government, would never do anything like this. Any any U.S. government radio station wouldn’t be allowed to broadcast such stuff; it would violate the First Amendment. (Or, if they did, they’d have to allow all religions to do their thing, including the Pastafarians and Scientologists.)
The first two photos today come from reader John Harshman. Oxpeckers! He originally called the photos “Spot the oxpeckers,” but of course it’s not a challenge.
In Botswana, the oxpeckers are all over most of the large mammals. How many can you count? These are yellow-billed oxpeckers Buphagus africanus, specializing on animals with thick skin. The other species, red-billed oxpecker, Buphagus erythrorhynchus, is most often found on thinner-skinned animals. Both of them eat ticks and other arthropod parasites, and so we have a fine case of mutualism. You can probably identify the large mammal. If you look closely at the fellow at upper left, caught in mid-hop, you might be able to see the two-tone bill, reminiscent of candy corn, that gives the bird the first half of its name. You can also distinguish it from its congener by absence of a prominent yellow eye-ring and, even better at a distance, absence of a light brown rump.
OK, this isn’t a hard problem. There are 8 oxpeckers, and no nightjars.
This is a closer look at a couple:
OK, maybe not mutualism. The oxpeckers here may in fact have inflicted the wounds you can see on the giraffe’s rear leg in order to drink its blood and/or attract insects.
And, continuing our African theme, we have photos from reader Benjamin Taylor, who went on a camping trip around southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) in November of last year.
Today is September 11, 2016, which means that it’s the 15th anniversary since the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. In four coordinated actions, 19 members of al-Qaeda killed 2,996 people, injured more than 6,000 others, and of course brought down both buildings of the World Trade Center. I remember that day well: I was in the lab, sorting flies and listening, as always, to the radio. Shortly after 7:46 Chicago time, I began hearing news on the radio about a strike on one of the two Towers. I turned on the television (we had an old black-and-white model in the lab back then) to see the North Tower on fire. And then, only 17 minutes later, there was another strike, this time on the South Tower. I remember the sick feeling I had at the second strike, realizing it was not some kind of accident but almost certainly an attack by terrorists. Then we heard about the crash in Pennsylvania and the attack on the Pentagon, and everything went to hell. The only other two incidents where I remember where I was at the moment I learned about them were the O.J. Simpson verdict (we were also watching in the lab), and, of course, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which we heard as an announcement over the public address system of my junior high school. Readers are welcome to add their experiences in below.
Here’s footage of the burning North Tower and the plane crash into the South Tower, followed by a video of the collapse of both towers:
Notables born on this day include O. Henry (1862) and Virginia Madsen (1961; the attacks occurred on her 40th birthday). Those who died on this day include, besides the 2,996 killed in the 9/11 attacks (including Betty Ong, a flight attendant who made a famous cellphone call before her plane crashed into one of the tower), Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1948), Nikita Khrushchev (1971), and Peter Tosh (1987). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus is trying to sweep up, but faces an obstacle:
Cyrus: Tell her to go away.
A: Why?
Cyrus: I wanted to tidy up here.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Powiedz jej, żeby stąd poszła.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Cyrus: Chciałem tu posprzątać.
Out in Winnipeg, winter is coming and polar bears are beginning to move toward the city. Gus is enjoying the smells of fall and looking forward to his ursine doppelgangers:
And here is Jerry the Cat in Colorado Springs, Colorado:
Reader Pliny the in Between has produced a new one-panel episode of Angry Cat Man (my superhero alter ego). (For the history and earlier adventures of Angry Cat man, go here, here, here, and here.)
