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.
. . . . or rather, a Kiwi. And as an honorary Kiwi, I’m delighted to announce that New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave birth to a baby girl yesterday. The father is her parter Clarke Gayford.
Ardern posted the news to her Facebook page, saying her daughter was born at 4.45pm.
“Welcome to our village wee one,” she wrote, next to a picture of her and partner Clarke Gayford cuddling the newborn.
“Feeling very lucky to have a healthy baby girl that arrived at 4.45pm weighing 3.31kg (7.3lb). Thank you so much for your best wishes and your kindness. We’re all doing really well thanks to the wonderful team at Auckland City hospital.”
. . . The former prime minister Helen Clark told Radio NZ that the birth was a fine example to young people in New Zealand.
“Jacinda’s done it her way, what a remarkable story.
“She’s taken it in her stride, New Zealanders have taken it in their stride … all round I think we’re showing huge maturity as a country with this.”
Ardern is taking only six weeks of maternity leave although she’s entitled to 26 weeks of paid leave. She has a country to run!
I add my congratulations to that of the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, though I don’t understand the Maori words (readers can help):
Wonderful news! Huge congrats to 🇳🇿 Prime Minister @jacindaardern and @NZClarke on the birth of their baby girl! A warm welcome to the world! Wishing the family health, happiness, and all joy in the world. Tēnā koe i tō tamāhine. Ngā mihi mahana.
Good morning to all; it’s a rainy Thursday, June 21, 2018, the June solstice, and the official beginning of summer, which starts in exactly two minutes (5:07 a.m.). That makes it the longest day of the year, and it’s celebrated by Google with an animated Doodle:
Posting will be light today as I must do errands downtown. As always, I do my best.
On June 21, 1749, the town (now city) of, Halifax, Nova Scotia was founded. On this day in 1940, according to Wikipedia, “The first successful west-to-east navigation of Northwest Passage begins at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.” Curiously, though, the relevant Wikipedia article on the Northwest Passage gives the starting date as June 23. Another error! On this day in 1964—and I remember this well—the three civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner (two whites and a black) were murdered by the Klan in Neshoba Country, Mississippi. Ultimately four people were convicted of violating the murdered men’s civil rights (the trial of one man was in 2005), but none convicted in the first trial served more than six years.
This is a picture of Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey (right, a Klan member) and deputy sheriff Cecil Price on trial for the murders. It typifies their cockiness; Rainey is dipping into some Red Man chewing tobacco, and both are smiling. Rainey was acquitted; Price served 4.5 years for civil rights violations.
On this day in 1989, the U.S. Supreme court ruled in the case of Texas v. Johnsonthat burning the American flag was a form of political protest and was protected free speech. On June 21, 2005, the case of the Chaney, Goodman and Scherner murders continued: Edgar Ray Killen, previously acquitted, was convicted of manslaughter 41 years later. He died in prison in 2018. Finally, on June 21, 2009, Greenland assumed self-rule, making it largely but not completely independent of Denmark.
Notables born on this day include Increase Mather (1639), Reinhold Niebuhr (1892), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905), Mary McCarthy (1912), Michael Ruse (1940), Nils Lofgren (1951), Benazir Bhutto (1953), Edward Snowden (1983), and Rebecca Black (1997). Remember Black’s self-financed song “Friday”—the worst song of our era? Here it is again, now with over 122 million views on YouTube. She’s still trying to forge a music career, but it is not going well:
Notables who died on June 21 include Inigo Jones (1652), Nikolai Rimsky-Kirsakov (1908), Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman (1964; see above), Preisdent Sukarno of Indonesia (1970; he ruled from 1945-1967), and Carol “Archie Bunker” O’Connor (2001).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is once again being a narcissist. I asked for an explanation of Hili’s behavior, and Malgorzata responded:
“Hili thinks she is the navel of the world. If she decides to hide under the magnolia the world should be worried and look for her. But the world didn’t oblige and after getting bored sitting there alone she came out and complained.”
The dialogue:
Hili: I’ve been under the magnolia.
A: What for?
Hili: I was hoping somebody would come to me.
In Polish:
Hili: Byłam pod magnolią.
Ja: Po co?
Hili: Miałam nadzieję, że ktoś do mnie przyjdzie.
Some tweets from Dr. Cobb. I love this first one, or rather the response below the photo:
1) No they don’t. 2) No they don’t. 3) Yes they can. 4) No, they reduce SIDS by 50%. 5) No they don’t. 6) No they fucking don’t. 7) No they don’t except for fleetingly rare anaphylaxis. 8) No they don’t. 9) No they don’t.
An amazing partly cryptic butterfly. When it wants to hide, it folds its wings (watch the video).
WOWSERS!!! The dead leaf butterfly (Kallima inachus), from Asia, is the most spectacular example of camouflage!! (Video Via imgr user Mocosoft) pic.twitter.com/KCNFZIMlAg
If you think bees are in trouble, then try reading this compelling and terrifying summary of the dire state of our world's freshwater life. Sad but hugely important:https://t.co/zqvqjETFHT@SteveOrmerod
The weather has cooled down (right now it’s a comfortable 70°F (21°C) in Chicago, and the ducks are happy and healthy. Now they’re up to four feedings a day—but only if, after the third, they still act hungry. When I walked by the pond on my way to the library this morning, they were all dabbling, including Honey, so I’m sure they’re getting food between meals. Whether a pond this small can support nine birds, however, is another question. That’s one reason why I supplement the pickings from the pond with good healthy duck food.
These photos are from yesterday, and the scene below is what I see when I go out early in the morning and emit one short whistle. Like a V-shaped formation of geese, the family heads rapidly for me, this time Honey in the lead this time (she’s usually in the rear to keep an eye on the brood). One duckling was a little slow to the gate, and I made sure he/she wasn’t weak or anything.
I can’t tell whether they’re male or female, and maybe won’t be able to even before they fledge (last year I suspected there were three drakes and a hen). This, and the inability to tell them apart, keeps me from giving them names.
Later on in the day (it was overcast) they were foraging on the grass, and I stood back and tossed them corn. They all ate but, as usual, Honey eschewed a normal ration to watch over her brood. She’s such a good mom!
The ducklings are almost palpably bigger from day to day, and they’re turning brown (and growing big-duck feathers). They have cute little feathered tails now.
After the third meal (they’re like hobbits, eating all the time), they had their inevitable postprandial bath with mom looking on. I’m not sure why feedings incite this behavior, although they may get small duck pellets on them when I toss them food.
My girl: Honey. Mallards, I’m told, can live 2-13 years in the wild, with a mean of 4 years. I’m hoping Honey was young when she showed up last year, so that I’ll have some more good years with her and her kids—if she returns.
When the sun came out, all the turtles took advantage of it, stretching out their limbs and necks to absorb as much sun as possible (remember, they’re poikilotherms—”cold blooded” animals—and can regulate their body temperature only by where they go).
There’s a new Pew survey out that asks a timely question, or rather several timely questions. How often can Americans distinguish between factual statements (that is, statements that can be empirically verified or disproven) and statements of opinion? And does that depend on whether the statements are congenial to their ideology? Does exposure to or trust in the news media help you distinguish between fact and opinion?
You can find a summary of the survey (5,035 adult Americans, 18 or older) by clicking on the screenshot below, and the full pdf is here.
Here are the five statements of fact, five statements of opinion, and there were two “borderline” statement that were mixed: part opinion and part fact. (This last group wasn’t subject to as much analysis as the first two groups.)
And here’s what the respondents were asked; remember, a “factual” statement simply makes a factual assertion—it doesn’t have to be true:
The results were that most Americans (71%) were able to pick out at least three of the five factual statements, but only half (50%) were able to correctly distinguish four or more of the factual statements as assertions of fact. People did a little better with the opinion statements: 78% were able to correctly classify three or more as opinion, but only 59% of Americans got four or more of the opinion statements correct as being opinions.
Overall, only 26% of all the respondents correctly classified all five factual statements, and 35% correctly classified all five opinion statements. This is a bit disheartening to me, as the distinction above seems pretty clear (I’m ignoring the “half factual/half opinion” statements). However, academics or scientists might be better trained to distinguish fact from opinion, as the former are the ones that are empirically testable.
As the chart below shows, people judged to have high political awareness, digital savviness, trust in the news media, and interest in the news, were (with exception of opinion for the news hounds) better able to classify a statement as fact or opinion.
Further, both Democrats and Republicans were more liable to classify BOTH factual and opinion statements as “factual” when those statements were congenial to their political ideology. This graph shows that as well. Look, for example (bottom half of figure), at how much more often Republicans classified the opinion statement “illegal immigrants are a very big problem for the U.S” as factual than did Democrats. Conversely, more Democrats than Republicans saw the “we need to increase the federal minimum wage for the health of our economy” opinion as a statement of fact.
There’s a lot more to this survey than the brief summary I’ve given here, but these are the main results. The upshot to me is that Americans are worse than I thought at distinguishing between fact and opinion, but they’re not hopeless. And when a statement is an opinion, both Democrats and Republicans are more likely to see it as factual if it’s ideologically appealing (there’s no real difference between the parties in their overall error rate here).
It would be interesting to ask other questions as well, like “Hate speech (speech that denigrates religion, ethnicity, or national origin) is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution” (a factual statement, though a false one), and “The Constitution allows all Americans to own handguns to protect themselves.” (Another false factual statement; not all Americans are allowed to own guns.) You can also invent your own questions.
Upping the percentage of people who can distinguish between facts and opinions could in fact be a very useful goal of a “critical thinking” course. In fact, it might be the very first exercise in such a course.
Have a listen to this 26-minute BBC show (click on screenshot to go to the show, which should be accessible worldwide). It’s the second part of a show about whether it’s moral to kill or hurt insects.
A personal note: I avoid killing insects, or any animal, whenever possible. I may swat a mosquito, but if I see a millipede, an earwig, or anything else in my home or lab, I take it outside and release it. Yes, I killed millions of flies doing genetics research over my career, but I always killed them humanely, first putting them to sleep. (When I was doing undergraduate research on flies at William & Mary, I would take my spare flies to the roof of the biology building and let them go. I was finally caught doing this by my advisor, who chewed me out for polluting the natural gene pool—of the cosmopolitan species Drosophila melanogaster!) But yes, I do eat meat, and am aware of this hypocrisy, so there’s no need to remind me of it.
This show features a number of scientists, including our own Matthew Cobb, weighing in on the issue of whether insects feel pain. It’s not just pain alone, though—it’s a matter of sentience and consciousness, of whether in some sense insects value their lives. Of course we don’t know what it is to be a fly or a bee, but some scientists and philosophers urge caution because of the possible consciousness (and pain “qualia”) of insects. I always err on the side of caution, and my grounds are these. Both insects and mammals like us have evolved the ability to avoid stimuli that might hurt our survival and reproduction. Pain is simply an evolved sensation that tells mammals to get away from harmful stimuli. If pain wasn’t, well “painful,” then we wouldn’t be so quick to avoid it. Thus it’s at least possible that insects also feel “pain” in the sense that they don’t like sensations that are harmful. (Of course that doesn’t mean that aversion involves anything like the pain we feel when we sit on a thumbtack.)
Of course it’s possible that the whole aversion behavior in insects and so-called “lower” animals comes through a system of evolved automatic response that doesn’t make its way through consciousness or produce qualia. But it’s possible that it does include that, so, like many other scientists (see below) I err on the side of caution. After all, science progresses: one example is recent evidence that fish can feel pain, after people thinking for years that they didn’t. With this increasing awareness of possible animal sentience comes stricter regulations on how scientists can treat their research animals.
Anyway, have a listen; it’s a good show, with thoughtful opinions on both sides. Matthew, as always, is eloquent. I asked him if he had a quote about the show for readers here, and he sent this:
I think it’s a very thought-provoking programme by Adam Hart, and the producer, Andrew Luck-Baker. My take? We don’t know the answer, so be as nice as you can to insects, just in case. Which, in my experience, is how most scientists act towards their animals. But maybe readers think we are wasting our time doing this?
And that leads to an article in The Freethinker (click on screenshot to read the whole thing):
Jesus and Mo’s reaction:
This strip will of course be banned in Pakistan, the land of Outrage about Religion. But since it satirizes both Christians and Muslims, it should be banned everywhere. Clearly, the Religion of Peace is really The Religion of Offense.
It’s time to start getting your photos together if you’d like to submit them here. I still have an appreciable backlog, but there can never be too many. Today we have (wait for it) DUCKS! Yes, more Anas platyrhynchus. Charlie Jones of Pennsylvania has sent the brood near him, and his notes are indented:
You’ve got 8 ducks, Stephen of Idaho has 9, and we’ve got TEN. Not that this is a competition.
The photos were taken by Hannah Jones in low light at the Wingfield Pines acid mine drainage treatment area about 8 miles south of Pittsburgh. Since you sometimes visit the area, I thought you might be interested to know (if you don’t already) that they took an environmental problem—a gushing spring of acidic mine waters that are very rich in iron—and turned it into a series of settling ponds and a wetlands that are otherwise rare in our region. (Since the glaciers stopped north of here, we do not have the abundant lakes and wetlands seen farther north.) The passive treatment system attracts a host of birds that would otherwise fly over us, which makes Wingfield Pines a local birding hotspot. Giving the acidity of the mine waters, the analogy of turning lemons to lemonade is relatively apt!
And a video.
This one has the ducklings working hard, and near the end the rear duckling rear-ends his siblings, causing a bit of a chain reaction.
