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.
In lieu of “readers’ wildlife” today, and in view of my impending trip, we’ll have a modified reader’s wildlife:a “spot the X” quiz.
This qualifies as pretty hard, I think; it comes from reader Mark Sturtevant, who says this:
Katydids are really good at hiding. After I see one fly and settle into the weeds, I often have a hard time seeing them up close even when I know exactly where they should be. Most are much harder than this one. Can you spot the katydid?
I’ll put the answer below the line (click on “read more”, but I’ve learned that sometimes the reveal is on Twi**er, and there’s not much I can do about that.
Today’s date I won’t screw up, as I’m taking the noon train to Warsaw and spending the night at the airport hotel before a morning departure. I’ll be back in Chicago tomorrow afternoon. Posting will be light today and tomorrow.
And so it is August 15, 2016: Independence Day in both North and South Korea, though it’s meaningless in the North, and also Independence Day in the Republic of the Congo and in India. (In the case of India, the date and time for declaring independence from Britain—midnight at the end of August 14—was decided by Lord Mountbatten’s “lucky date” and by Indian astrologers). Finally, it’s Constitution Day in Equatorial Guinea and National Day in Liechtenstein (do we have any readers from either place?)
On this day in 1939, The Wizard of Oz opened at Grauman’s Chinese theater in Los Angeles, and exactly thirty years later the Woodstock Music and Art Fair began in upstate New York.
Notables born on this day include Napoleon Bonaparte (1769), Julia Child (1912), and Princess Anne (1950♥). Those who died on this day include Will Rogers (1939). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, my solipsistic cat friend says farewell:
Jerry: It’s time to say goodbye.
Hili: That’s sad. I wonder what are you going to bring me next time.
In Polish:
Jerry: Pora się żegnać.
Hili: To smutne, zastanawiam się, co mi przywieziesz następnym razem.
And in Winnipeg, Gus is being cute (i.e., being himself):
Close your eyes and I’ll close mine;
Good night, sleep tight.
Now the moon begins to shine;
Good night, sleep tight—
Dream sweet dreams for me,
Dream sweet dreams for you
About a year ago the Daily Beast wrote a piece called “The University of Californa’s Insane Speech Police,” which described UC President Janet Napolitano’s “invitation” for deans and department heads in the UC system to attend a seminar on suppressing free speech “fostering inclusive excellence”. These seminars were held at 9 of the 10 University of California campuses, and included a list of “microaggressions”: phrases that should be avoided because they constitute “verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”
Some of these are indeed offensive (“You are a credit to your race” or “I am not a racist; I have several Black friends.”) Others, however, can be construed offensive only if you’re a Pecksniff, including these phrases whose use shows that “a White person does not want to or need to acknowledge race”:
“When I look at you, I don’t see color.”
“There is only one race, the human race.”
“America is a melting pot.”
“I don’t believe in race.”
These are more problematic, for at least two of them would have been endorsed by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, and another—”America is a melting pot”—is intended to be a phrase of comity, where diverse people can share rights and liberties, and exchange bits of each other’s culture, leader to a rich national “culture.”
But the “melting pot” phrase has now become a “microaggression”, and the only reason I can see is because we’re supposed to not only remain balkanized by ethnicity, religion, or ideology, but admit constantly that we are balkanized. The phrase is inoffensive.
Well, not to everyone. One professor in Florida has not only banned the “melting pot” phrase from her classroom, but threatens to penalize students who use it.
You’re only going to see reports on this from sites like the conservative Washington Times or the even more conservative Campus Reform, but if you think they’re lying because they’re right-wing sites, provide me documentation to the contrary. Please to not discredit a story just because your ideology disagrees with that of a source. I’ll assume what the sources say is true because they provide documentation.
To be brief, I’ll excerpt Campus Reform:
Students enrolled in Art Appreciation at the University of Florida risk losing credit on assignments if they use the phrase “melting pot” in class.
Professor Pamela Brekka told Campus Reform that she has reprimanded students for using the term in the past, and even withheld credit from those who used the phrase on assignments, because in her opinion, “melting pot” is a term that “signals a Euro-White Colonial standard, point blank, period.”
The course syllabus, obtained by Campus Reform, describes the class as “an introduction to the visual arts from a global perspective with an emphasis on diversity in the United States,” adding that “to facilitate this process we will assimilate and use discipline[-]appropriate terms.”
According to Brekka, you MUSt to recognize that America is neither a soup nor a stew, but a SALAD. No soup for you!
Brekka told Campus Reform that she doesn’t want students to use the phrase “melting pot” because it is not an accurate description of diversity in the United States, asserting that “the reason we put less emphasis on the way cultural groups are alike is because of the historical disadvantages minorities have had compared to the white majority.”
She believes diversity in America can more accurately be described with a salad metaphor.
“It’s the difference between a soup and a salad…in the salad, the flavors remain distinct,” she explained. “Your romaine lettuce retains its flavor, the tomatoes retain their flavor, and so on. They are all living happily in one bowl.”
Brekka admitted that in past courses she would deduct a partial point if a student used “melting pot” in an assignment, although she also said it was not a “strict policy.”
Yet Campus Reform’s documents, apparently obtained from a student, shows that it does seem to be a strict policy. Have a gander at the policy and the Authoritarian Leftist ideology these students must obey—or get a lower grade.
On several online course modules, through which students submit assignments, a statement reads, “DO NOT EVER USE THE PHRASE ‘MELTING POT’ IN THIS CLASS. IN THIS CLASS WE CELEBRATE DIVERSITY, NOT SAMENESS.”
I remember the wonderful phrase that Martin Luther King used in his “I have a dream” speech:
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Whatever happened to that? Is that no longer the day we want?
Now when we say Dr. King’s phrase, we’re committing a microaggression! As noted above, you’re a bigot every time you say, “When I look at you, I don’t see color.”
But what’s the alternative? To say, “When I look at you, I always see color”? I suspect the alternative is something like this: “When I look at you, I see a black person, and acknowledge that therefore you have traits X, Y, and Z because you have been oppressed. And with that I recognize my privilege.”
Now I can appreciate the need to recognize bigotry and inequities based on “race”—although saying you don’t believe in race, which used to be a sign of ideological Leftism, has now become a microaggression! So yes, in that sense you can “see color” and recognize how it plays out in American life. We can’t eliminate these inequities without recognizing their existence. But they don’t have to be recognized every single time we interact with someone of a different ethnicity!
I’m not going to play by Professor Brekka’s odious rules. I will continue to try to judge people by their character and not their pigmentation, and, above all, I still believe in an America that can welcome people of diverse backgrounds, because—and maybe this sentiment is outdated and sappy—I think that’s been a major factor in whatever greatness America can claim.
Pamela Brekka, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Florida.
UPDATE: Reader Pliny the in Between has a cartoon take on this fracas:
The Regressive Leftist antics of colleges never cease to amaze me, and we have two today. (“Why do I post these?”, you ask. “To show you what students experience at institutions of higher education,” is my reponse.)
Today there are two follies, which I’ll recount briefly in two posts. The first, described by Michigan Capitol Confidential (MCC) and verified by the Lansing State Journal, describes a new no-tolerance smoking policy on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU). Smoking is banned everywhere on campus, including outdoors, and “smoking” includes “vaping,” or using e-cigarettes. (I’m not quite sure if there are any dangers to others of using these, but of course they’re considered “gateway drugs”.)
Fine. Although smoking outdoors is unlikely to hurt anyone but the smoker, one can argue that it produces undesirable litter: cigarette butts. But(t) there’s one provision I consider ridiculous. As the MCC describes:
Beginning on Aug. 15, a new tobacco-free policy at Michigan State University will make drivers subject to a $150 fine for choosing to smoke or chew tobacco while traveling on public roads that cross the school’s East Lansing campus.
What? On public roads? And even if the roads weren’t public, what possible justification for this can there be? In fact, given that it’s legal to smoke in your vehicle on public roads elsewhere in Michigan, this “policy” is probably illegal.
To be sure, MSU adds that, well, they’re really not going to enforce it. To wit:
“There’s no directive to our police that this needs to be strictly enforced,” MSU spokesman Jason Cody said. “We are looking at it through an educational lens.”
Cody said he didn’t envision a police officer pulling over a motorist for smoking and giving a ticket. He did say he could see an officer on a bike telling a motorist who was smoking about the no-smoking ordinance.
The ordinance was passed by the board of trustees on June 17, 2015. Its effective date was set for more than a year later on Aug. 15, 2016.
“A new policy is an effective, cost-efficient way to protect the health of the campus community and encourage tobacco users to reduce or eliminate consumption, thus increasing life, longevity and vitality,” the MSU tobacco-free website states. “Most tobacco users want to quit, and tobacco-free environments encourage users to quit and help them maintain a tobacco and nicotine free status.”
Maybe they should stop people eating hamburgers or sugary sodas in their cars, too? After all, that policy would also “increase life, longevity, and vitality”. (It goes without saying that smoking in cars doesn’t endanger “the health of the campus community.”) In fact, why shouldn’t these Nanny Schools ban fatty food and non-diet sodas everywhere on campus, as they have smoking?
As for the “educational lens,” well, I doubt that there’s an American alive who isn’t already aware of the health dangers of smoking. Every pack of cigarettes has a warning label. The no-smoking-in-your-car policy isn’t going to spread that news any further.
Terry Townshend is a birder who lives and works in Beijing and, on his site Birding Beijing, documents the avifauna around China’s capital. But alert reader Ben W. told me that Terry had also come across a very rare felid, Pallas’s Cat (Ocotolobus manul, also known as the “manul”), on a trip to China’s Qinghai Province near the Tibetan Plateau.
Manuls are threatened despite their wide range (below), and rarely seen in the wild. But if you’ve ever seen one, as I did in the Sacramento Zoo, you’ll never forget it. They are a strong contender for the World’s Cutest Animal (see here), and are certainly the world’s most adorable wild felid.
Terry documents the encounter in a post called Pallas’s Cat, which you mustn’t miss. He and his partner, Marie Ng, came across two Pallas’s Cat kittens cavorting outside their den, and watched them for 40 minutes. Eventually the mother showed up with dinner (a pika), and they all repaired to the den to dine.
Terry documented his encounter, distilling the video into five minutes of highlights that show the kittens and Mom returning with noms (a kitten grabs the pika). It’s absolutely spectacular footage, and you can see it the video here. It’s a must for all ailurophiles. Be sure to put it on full screen, don’t miss the close-ups near the end, and maybe leave a note of appreciation on Terry’s site.
Here’s a photo of a manul kitten taken by Marie Ng, reproduced with permission:
Their range (from Wikipedia). They are cold-climate animals, accounting for their long fur, huge paws, and short ears.
Reader Luke Hunter is an Australia biologist, author of Wild Cats of the World (a great book for the ailurophile), and president of Panthera, described as “a New York-based conservation nonprofit [Hunter] helped to create in 2006, which is dedicated to the range-wide conservation of the world’s wild cat species.” Luke and others (including Matthew Cobb) alerted me to a new project in which anybody having a familiarity with wild cats can help scientists identify the animals seen in camera-trap photos.
I’m recruiting volunteer citizen scientists to help us ID thousands of camera-trap photos from our leopard survey work across southern Africa- your audience might enjoy it, as it’s great fun and hugely popular (we had around 100,000 responses in the first 12 hours of it being launched). If you think it’s something you could pass on, the link is here.
I asked for more information, including what would happen if we misidentified animals, and Luke responded:
Yes please take a look at CamCat if you can: you don’t need to be a specialist, there are various aids to help and the system works by assigning an ID once a certain number of the same choice is made in succession. Depending on that consistency, a photo gets kicked back into the system with the bar raised for accepting the ID and/or flagged for a human to view. It’s pretty cool.
Be sure to register, though you don’t have to, to get access to discussion boards, or even credit for your work.
Just a tip: when you see the pictures (there are 52 today), you click on the list to the right to identify the animal you think it is, like this:
Here are the animals you’ll be asked to identify (notice that they include “vehicles” and “nothing”.
When you click on one, several photos come up (click on the dots to see various views) to help you make sure you’re right (or close):
After you look at a photo of the animal you think it is, you get asked two questions:
After answering them and pressing “identify”, you press the green “DONE” button that comes up, and the next photo appears.
Here’s the reason they’re doing this, and that page also shows what the cameras look like:
Camera CATalogue is part of an effort to monitor big cats at a large enough scale to assist wildlife management and conservation. At multiple sites across the globe, Panthera’s scientists set up a suite of motion-activated camera-trap stations. Each station comprises two cameras, enabling us to photograph both flanks of an animal as it walks past the cameras. We can then distinguish individually identifiable species (e.g., leopard, cheetah, jaguar) by the unique spot patterns on their coats, and use statistical models (known as capture-recapture models) to assess how often an individual is photographed.
Combined with information on where individuals were photographed, these data generate a robust estimate of wild cat populations for each study site. By conducting camera-trapping surveys every year, we can track trends to gauge whether populations have increased, decreased, or remained stable.
Camera traps cannot differentiate between wild cats and other animals, so as you can imagine, this means our camera-traps generate a huge amount of photographs. This is why we need the assistance of citizen scientists like you to help identify and classify all the images we collect so we can better understand—and protect—wild cats across the globe.
Today’s a day to display singleton photos and others that are sent in a few at a time. The indented bits are the readers’ commentaries:
Reader Cliff Moser sends a picture of a fearsome caterpillar. But it’s really quite a common one:
I’ve attached a single photo of one of 4 large tomato hornworms [Manduca quinquemaculata] found and dispatched from my Berkeley, California garden. I’m hoping to find one with parasitic braconid wasp cocoons and will send if and when I spot one.the photo has a little forced perspective, making it appear more mothra-like than it actually was.
These giants eventually undergo metamorphosis, turning into the beautiful five-spotted hawkmoth (picture from What’s That Bug?):
Reader Tim Anderson in Oz sends us a bird famous for its camouflage:
This is a mature tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides) resting in a backyard tree in suburban Brisbane, Queensland. This individual regularly spends the entire day more or less stationary until dusk, when it flies off to begin its night’s hunting. It is completely oblivious to the humans beetling about nearby, only occasionally swivelling its head to peer at us. It is about 40cm from beak to tail tip. Frogmouths are fairly common, even in urban areas, and are closely related to nightjars, but in this case was rather easy to spot.
From Stephen Barnard in Idaho:
Western Toad (Anaxyrus boreas). I think this is the only amphibian photo I’ve sent you.
Doris Fromage sent an email headed “Vulture sinuses this time!”
My dear husband just got a new camera! We live on a hill, and our avocado orchard spreads out down the hillside below us. Various large carnivorous birds/raptors tend to soar around our property, often virtually at eye level or even below. Here is a turkey vulture! Cathartes aura is its interesting name, which means “cleansing breeze” in Latin, which I find hilarious given that they are carrion scavengers. What I like best about this picture is that we can see straight through the nares to blue sky on the other side, thus clearing up any lingering questions about the structure of a turkey buzzard’s nostrils!
JAC: I’ve added a close-up of the head lest you have any doubts:
And a “spot the ___” from reader Michelle Pearce:
Too easy? Fork-tailed drongo, banana beak (hornbill), and mongoose in Kruger National Park.
And reader Randy Schenck in Iowa is nice to his animals. These photos were sent in May:
We are into the nesting time for birds so they need more feeding now. Many might think they only need to feed in winter but not so. To determine if you have Baltimore Orioles (Icterus galbula) around the area just cut an orange in half and hang it on a feeder. It is like magic to the Oriole. I will look for nests later as the female Oriole builds a very interesting nest.
We have many rose-breasted grosbeaks (Pheucticus ludovicianus) around and again, if you feed the birds you will soon find out how many are in your area.
