My Jesus and Mo posts blocked in Pakistan for “hurting the sentiments of many Muslims”

June 14, 2018 • 10:00 am

I suppose it was only a matter of time before my weekly postings of Jesus and Mo, which I’ve been putting up for years, were flagged as offensive. Someone in Pakistan filed a complaint (in bold below) that they were BLASPHEMOUS, and so WordPress contacted me with the following message (I’ve put the complaint in bold below). This is ridiculous, of course, but I have no control over it and will continue to post Jesus and Mo cartoons, which I suppose are also blocked in Pakistan on the artist’s original site. It’s just that the folks in Pakistan won’t be able to see them.

As for “hurting the sentiments of many Muslims,” it’s sad that the government of Pakistan can’t take criticism about their country’s main faith. But we already knew that. Although I have no hope that Pakistan will enter the Enlightenment during my lifetime, accepting freedom of the press and freedom of religion (which includes freedom to reject and criticism religion), I’ll just adopt the attitude, “Well, too bad for you. You may be offended by criticism of Islam, but that’s your problem, not mine.”

Here’s what I got from WordPress:

A Pakistan authority has issued a demand to block a file on your WordPress.com site:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/2013-12-181.png?w=500&h=500

Unfortunately, we must comply to keep WordPress.com accessible for everyone in Pakistan. We will not be challenging this demand, but if you wish to discuss what the legal avenues of appeal may be, please get in touch as soon as possible. There is usually a very short period of time in which objections can be lodged.

As a result of this demand, the file (below) [JAC: also above: it’s this week’s Jesus and Mo post] on your site is now inaccessible for Internet visitors originating from Pakistan. They will instead see a message explaining why the content was blocked.

Visitors from outside of Pakistan are not affected.

You and your readers may be interested in the following document for suggestions on bypassing Internet restrictions:

https://beatcensorship.wordpress.com/

For your reference, we have included a copy of the complaint. No reply is necessary, but please let us know if you have any questions.

— BEGIN NOTICE —
Dear WordPress Team,

I am writing on behalf of Web Analysis Team of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) which has been designated for taking appropriate measures for regulating Internet Content in line with the prevailing laws of Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

In lieu of above it is highlighted that few of the webpages hosted on your platform are extremely Blasphemous and are hurting the sentiments of many Muslims around Pakistan. The URL’s mentioned are clearly in violation of Section 37 of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 and Section 19 of Constitution of Pakistan.

The below mentioned websites can be found on following URL’s:-

S.No

URL

[…]

17

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/2013-12-181.png?w=500&h=500

[…]

You are requested to contribute towards maintaining peace and harmony in the world by discontinuation of hosting of these websites for viewership in Pakistan with immediate effect. We will be happy to entertain any query if deemed necessary and looking forward for your favorable response at your earliest.

Regards

Web Analysis Team

When Grania saw this, she made the following comment:

I am disappointed to see that WordPress is rushing to do their censorship for them.

It is a US company (part of Automattic) and they are carrying out censorship against an American citizen in the USA for writing an article in the USA that was posted on a blog hosted in the USA on demand of jumped up little tyrants in Pakistan.

Elon Musk to build high speed train from downtown Chicago to O’Hare Airport

June 14, 2018 • 9:00 am

Well, weigh your time versus your money. Elon Musk’s Boring Company (that’s “boring” as in “drilling”, not “ennui”) has been tapped by the Mayor to build a high-speed rail system between downtown Chicago (“the Loop”) and O’Hare Airport. It will be a short but expensive ride. As the Chicago Tribune reports:

In choosing Boring, [Mayor Rahm] Emanuel and senior City Hall officials are counting on Musk’s highly touted but still unproven tunneling technology over the more traditional high-speed rail option that until recently had been envisioned as the answer to speeding up the commute between the city’s central business district and one of the world’s busiest airports.

Emanuel and Boring officials said it’s too early to provide a timeline for the project’s completion or its estimated cost, but they said Boring would pay for the entire project. That would include the construction of a new station at O’Hare and the completion of the mothballed superstation built at Block 37 under previous Mayor Richard M. Daley, who like Emanuel pushed for high-speed rail access to O’Hare.

Musk and Emanuel are expected to formally announce the proposal Thursday afternoon at that long-dormant underground station.

Under the proposal, passengers would be able to travel from the Loop to O’Hare in just 12 minutes at an estimated cost of $20 to $25 per ride. A final route for the high-speed tunnels is still subject to negotiations, and a Boring official and Deputy Mayor Robert Rivkin declined to identify where it might run.

Traffic to O’Hare is dicey at best: taking a cab from where I live to O’Hare would cost about $75 with tip, and there are frequent traffic jams on the freeway there. I never take a cab because if there’s congestion I might miss my plane. Instead, I take the Metrarail electric train downtown from Hyde Park (about 10 minutes) and walk to the Blue Line subway station to O’Hare, which takes about 10 minutes. Trains come frequently, and it takes about 40 minutes to get to the airport. Total time: about an hour and 30 minutes including waiting time. Were I to use the MuskTrain, I’d still have to take the Metra downtown and walk to the station, and even residents of downtown would have to get to Musk’s Loop terminus.

For me, then I’d have to weigh my regular 1.5 hour commute to O’Hare against the 50-55 minute commute using the proposed MuskRail. Right now, with my senior discount, I pay a total of about $3 to get to O’Hare. Is a half hour of my time worth $17-22? Given that I use the travel time to read, I doubt it. And remember that because there are many poor people in Chicago, this would be a luxury train for the well off, not a “people’s train.”

It sounds like a losing proposition to me, but Musk has not been unsuccessful in his ventures.

Spot the luna moth!

June 14, 2018 • 7:45 am

I still have a decent backlog of readers’ wildlife photos, but will post a “spot the” puzzle today. This one comes from reader Mark Sturtevant, who has graced us with many insect photos before. Click on the photo (twice) to make it really big.

Mark’s notes:

I had a batch of luna cocoons (Actias luna) sent to me by mail order earlier this year. Just the other day I heard quite a ruckus in the bug cage where I had been keeping them. One of the last moths was eclosing! As I held the cocoon the luna moth slowly emerged, crawling out into my hand. That was a moment that I will forever hold as precious.

Anyway, after its wings had expanded I hung her in my cherry tree and took pictures with my 50mm lens. Can the readers find Luna? She is in there somewhere!

First, a photo of a male moth, and then a female (these are not Mark’s photos but are taken from Wikipedia):

 

Now, find it! Answer at noon Chicago time. I would rank this one very, very hard.

Thursday: Hili dialogue

June 14, 2018 • 7:00 am

It’s already Thursday, June 14, 2018, and National Strawberry Shortcake Day. I like it New England style: served on a biscuit with whipped cream, and not too sweet. Here in the U.S. it’s Flag Day, celebrating the day when our Flag (Make American Great Again!) was adopted in 1777. (It’s also The Donald’s damn birthday.) The World Cup begins today in Russia, and I hope the grad students manage to set up the conference room so we can watch some games on the big screen. Google has a Doodle celebrating the event

I’m not watching today’s game:

Forbes notes that there’s also a secret minigame in which you can defend against goal kicks:

This isn’t the first soccer Doodle Google has put out. The search giant released a Soccer Google Doodle mini-game that let you play as the goalie against an AI kicker.

While this is (sadly) not a diverting mini-game, it’s still a good-looking Doodle. It’s also just the beginning. Google will release a new Google Doodle every single day of the tournament from June 14th to July 15th when the World Cup ends.

A total of 32 teams from around the globe will compete over the next month, with the first game, between Russia and Saudi Arabia, kicking off Thursday morning.

32 different artists from each of the competing nations will contribute Google Doodles over the course of the next few weeks, with all 32 artists collaborating on this first entry.

Clicking on the Doodle will take you to a schedule of upcoming games. Scroll down and you’ll find current news stories and other relevant information.

I am having trouble braining again today, and have no idea what to write, or whether to write. We will see if the Muse strikes, as she struck yesterday.

On this day in 1775, the U.S. Army was born as the Continental Army, as established by the Continental Congress. And on June 14 two years later, the Stars and Stripes was adopted by Congress as the U.S. flag.  On this day in 1789, as reported by Wikipedia, “HMS Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km (4,600 mi) journey in an open boat.”  On June 14, 1822, Charles Babbage proposed his “difference engine” (a computer) in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society; it was to be used to compute mathematical and astronomical tables. On this day in 1907, Norwegian women got the right to vote.  On June 14, 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown left from St. John’s, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic flight. Using a biplane, they arrived in Galway, Ireland, the next day. It’s not often known that Charles Lindberg was feted not for making the first nonstop transatlantic flight, but the first nonstop SOLO transatlantic flight (1927). On June 14, 1937, the U.S. Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act. This prescribed a tax (and special revenue stamps) for growing, selling, and prescribing “marihuana”.  But of course it was illegal, so buying the stamps incriminated you. Here’s what they looked like:

A dark day for the First Amendment: on this day in 1954, President Eisenhower signed a bill establishing that the words “under god” would be inserted into the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. Finally, on June 14, 1966, the Vatican finally deep-sixed its list of prohibited books (started in 1557): the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Notables born on June 14 include author Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811), Nobel Laureate Karl Lansteiner (1868, he distinguished the A, B, and O blood groups), Burl Ives (1909), Ernesto “Che” Guevara (1928), Junior Walker (1931), and, yes, Donald Trump (1946). Also Leon Wieseltier, my old editor at the New Republic (1952) and Steffi Graf (1969). Those who joined the choir invisible on this day include Benedict Arnold (1801), Edward FitzGerald (1883), Adlai Stevenson I (1914), Mary Cassatt (1926), G. K. Chesterton (1936), Jorge Luis Borges (1986) and Alan Jay Lerner (1986).

Here’s a Cassatt: “Children playing with cat” (1908):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is trying to insert herself into the Oppression Hierarchy. Malgorzata explains:

“Hili doesn’t know why she feel excluded. But it’s nice to be a victim and she wants to be one as well so she is working hard to find a reason for feeling excluded and to blame somebody for it.”

Hili: I feel excluded.
A: From what?
Hili: That’s what I have to investigate.
In Polish:
Hili: Czuję się wykluczona.
Ja: Z czego?
Hili: Właśnie muszę to zbadać.

And in Winnipeg, Gus looks cute—”Earless and fearless,” as I call him

From reader Gethyn, part of Theo’s staff, we have a cat discovering refraction. I do believe this is real and shows the cat’s puzzlement at its paw not being where it feels it should be.

Grania sent some tweets:

From BBC’s Moscow correspondent, showing the Russian press billing Kim Jong-un as the “victor” in the Singapore summit. Ask me if I care.

The same goes, of course, in the DPRK:

As I wrote the other day, Trump’s biggest faux pas was lauding Kim Jong-un and his supposed love for his people:

Achilles, of whom we’ll probably hear much in the next month, predicts a Russian soccer win over Saudi Arabia. Reader Michael sent a link to news about Achilles, the FIFA “Official Animal Oracle”.

A new species of turtle. Translation of the French:  “Let’s take a moment to greet the arrival of this little tortoise in the scientific world. Kinosternon vogti is a totally new species discovered in Mexico and this photo is… ❤
The link to the species description is here.

Tweets from Matthew: Look at those antennae!

A lovely fly, though I have no videos of the “leaping larvae”:

Move over, Gene Krupa! Listen to this girl play the drums:

And I find this completely appropriate; after all, raccoons are Honorary Persons. I still think the female Procyon lotor should have been given its own woods and many treats. It wasn’t even named!

From reader Su: a SJW cat up for adoption kvetches about cultural appropriation:

And from Merilee. This trope on Air Force One has been going around, but I think it’s hilarious:

 

Wednesday: Duck report—with THREE videos!

June 13, 2018 • 3:00 pm

All is well with the ducks despite yesterday’s trauma. I had a mini-trauma today: I went to the pond and there were FOUR DRAKES swimming about: Henry, Hank, and two new interlopers. Honey spent a long time chasing them around, and I worry that this wears her out. The ducklings stayed on the island and wouldn’t venture into the water, as they got chased by the males. But I brought out my trusty Super Soaker and drove the drakes away with some well-aimed squirts of water. They haven’t yet returned. I present some pictures but we have three videos. Be sure to watch them, as they’re short and show a lot of the behavior we see at the pond.

Four drakes: Honey is chasing two. It’s out of focus because it was dark and the shutter speed was slow

Various pictures of bathtime this afternoon (bathtime is the best time):

Note that the ducklings have started dabbling (going upside down to forage):

It is most adorable when the ducklings flap their stubby little wings (you can see that in the first video below):

Double dabble:

Mom is checking out the dabbles:

It gets frenetic out there. Sometimes the ducklings just take off swimming as fast as they can for no apparent reason. And they can swim fast!

We love our ducks!

We mustn’t neglect the many turtles, who clean up any leftover duck food and also climb on anything possible to get more sun—including each other:

And the usual fight for space on the “duck” ramp:

This video was taken by Anna just a few minutes ago. She is convinced (note video title) that the ducklings had a quantum leap in growth yesterday, so to her they appear much larger than they did yesterday. I’m dubious, but they are getting big! This shows bathtime after today’s feeding, and you can see why we love these ducklings so. Watch them dabble, pop underwater and resurface, and flap their little stubs of wings. It’s a delightful show, and they do it after every meal. Do watch this with the screen BIG.

This video was taken by Mr. Bill Dimitroff two days ago. He comes down here occasionally from Montreal and always checks on (and films) the ducks. Honey, the brood, and Frank are foraging in the grass, eating some corn we put down, and you can see Frank taking out after the ducklings. Like all mallards, a chase is preceded by a “head down” display. Fortunately, Frank never pecks or hurts the babies; he just wants their food.

Anna took this video of Frank yesterday. He was being sequestered in the small pond and fed copious noms so he’d stay away from the other pond, where I was feeding Honey and the brood.

New Jesus pareidolia

June 13, 2018 • 1:30 pm

This speaks for itself (click on screenshot to see article):

 

This would be Limulus polyphemus, the Atlantic horseshoe crab. Is it also a sign that this species is regarded as a “living fossil”?

My enlargement:

The backstory:

A Florida woman seeking inspiration from a higher power was shell-shocked as she found it — on a horseshoe crab.

Photographer Cathy Rader, of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., had recently quit her job to work full time on a picture book about her town. Eager for help, she called out to God and asked for a sign.

The devout Christian then turned to a horseshoe crab shell that was recently given to her and held it up to the light — and that’s when she saw it: an image of Jesus Christ on the bottom.

“It is crazy,” Rader told InsideEdition.com. “I was trying to find funding for my book and asked God for help and he is always saying, ‘Wait on me.'”

At first, she didn’t believe it and started Googling for images of the top of a horseshoe crab shell. She found hers looked totally different.

When she showed it to her friends, many agreed it looked like Christ. Others did not.

“It doesn’t look like him to every person, but when you hold it to the light, it comes through,” she said.

She said she is “absolutely” taking it as a sign from above.

Rader received the shell on May 4 and made the discovery a short time later. She said she wanted to keep the news of the image to herself at first, but then shared it with a local news station, which helped her crab shell go viral.

The shell is now on display at a local library in the town, where it’s protected by a glass case and security.

“Not everyone is going to see Christ and that is totally fine,” she said, adding, “It is something for me.”

But will she get funding?

There’s also a link to her book, but it says “unsafe” when you click on it. I think it’s fine, though.

Try this one, too. There’s a video! But this Jesus looks a bit, well, unsavory.

 

 

Lionel Shriver removed as judge of literary competition for questioning a diversity algorithm

June 13, 2018 • 11:30 am

Four days ago I reported on a piece author Lionel Shriver published in the Spectator: a criticism of UK Penguin/Random House’s (PRH) striving for diversity in its authors and employees in the form of a questionnaire. The piece, called “When Diversity Means Uniformity,” accused PRH of being “drunk on virtue”, and pointing out two problems with this quest for diversity (granted, the questionnaire was bizarre):

I see two issues here. First: diversity, both the word and the concept, has crimped. It serves a strict, narrow agenda that has little or nothing to do with the productive dynamism of living and working alongside people with widely different upbringings and beliefs. Only particular and, if you will, privileged backgrounds count. Which is why Apple’s African-American diversity tsar, Denise Young Smith, got hammered last October after submitting, ‘There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.’ She hadn’t bowed to the newly shackled definition of the word, which has now been effectively removed from the language as a general-purpose noun.

Second: dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some.

I wouldn’t have written it exactly that way, partciularly the antepenultimate sentence. But it’s a fair point, and worthy of discussion. Are we striving for equal representation or equal opportunity? That is the most important question that progressive liberals need to answer for themselves, along with “does unequal representation mean unequal opportunity?”

Well, there are always professional consequences to bucking the tropes of Control Leftism, and Shriver is about to pay one—not that it’s going to hurt her much. Mslexia, a British magazine aimed at women authors, is holding a short story competition for women from any country with a £5,000 top prize. Shriver was going to be a judge.

Not any longer:

Translation: Mslexia has to have a safe space for authors, and by questioning a “proportional representation” view of diversity, Shriver has violated that. So she’s out.

Somehow I suspect that the strong-minded Ms. Shriver won’t mind; in fact, she’ll probably write a snarky piece about it. But this just goes to show how those who are Ideologically Impure get punished. Shriver is now is a non person, or rather a person who doesn’t create a “safe space for all women writers.”

Of course Mslexia can choose whomever they want as a judge. But removing Shriver as a judge isn’t going to improve the quality of the entries and winners; Shriver, I suspect, would judge submissions on their merit. Why would she not? No, this is, pure and simple, a form of virtue signaling by Mslexia.  It’s not as if some women weren’t going to submit their stories because they’d be judged by Shriver.

h/t: BJ