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.
Reader Anne-Marie Cournoyer in Montreal has named her backyard animal feeder “Le Cafe Sauvage” (I am honorary co-manager), and is documenting the customers. Here are a few:
There are also “early bird specials”. . .
A satisfied customer:
Today’s specials: shelled pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and toasted coconut:
Monsieur Lapin gets carrots. Note the reflection in his eye:
Where’s my dinner?
And some robins of spring (actually summer) sent by reader David Twenhafel:
Some American robins built a nest on my front porch light earlier this year immediately adjacent to my front door. When they first started nest-building, my wife pulled down their efforts the first few mornings. But one day she forgot. I came home for lunch and the nest was done. Five hours max to build the nest. We had a set of eggs and chicks in the spring. [JAC: They all successfully fledged.] I left the nest up to see what might happen. And now there is second set of eggs. I’ve no idea if the adults are the same or a different pair (or even if robins pair up for more than one brood).
When someone goes through the door, the robin on the nests flies to a nearby branch, complains bit, and flies to the ground to hunt for food. I’ve watched it through the windows. It can take 5 minutes or more to return to the nest.
UPDATE: Friday noon. David said, “They just hatched!” Here’s a photo:
It’s July 15, the day after Bastille Day, and I awoke to learn that the death toll in Nice, which is being called a terrorist attack (we know little right now) has risen to 84. It’s immensely sad, and I have no idea how to stop it. I’m sure France will go on, and will put on a brave face, but enough is enough. But of course it’s not enough: this will continue.
It’s Elderly Men Day in Kiribati (Christmas Island), where Stephen Barnard goes to fish. On this day in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt, and, in 1839, an event occurred described on Wikipedia like this: “Ralph Waldo Emerson delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacts with outrage.” I did not know that. On July 15, 1918, the Battle of the Marne began, and exactly ten years ago today, Twi**er was launched. I am not sure that was a good thing.
Notables born on this day include Carl Woese (1928), Jocelyn Bell (1943), Linda Rondstadt (1946; she turns 70 today), and Diane Kruger (1976). Those who died on this day include Julia Lennon, John Lennon’s mother and subject of his song “Julia” (1958). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is dong his job as part of Hili’s staff:
Hili: Those crows make me nervous.
A: Relax. They are afraid of black dogs.
Hili: Oh, that’s nice.
In Polish:
Hili: Te wrony budzą mój niepokój.
Cyrus; Spokojnie, one się boją czarnych psów.
Hili: O, to miło.
Here’s a lovely kitten warming itself on a computer cord (what are those white boxes, anyway?):
And here’s Gus in Winnipeg, enjoying the evening air. Can you spot the white cat?
From the BBC and Mental Floss via reader Don B. we have the new discovery of a cat’s pawprints on a Roman roof tile in Gloucester. Here’s the photo:
The BBC reports:
It was dug up in Berkeley Street in 1969 but the footprint has only just been discovered.
The print was found by an archaeologist at Gloucester City Museum who was examining thousands of fragments of Roman roof tile.
The cat is thought to have snuck across the wet tiles which were drying in the sun in about AD100.
The tile, a type called tegula, was used on the roof of a building in what became the Berkeley Street area of modern Gloucester, a spokesman said.
Councillor Lise Noakes, from Gloucester City Council, said it was a “fascinating discovery”.
“Dog paw prints, people’s boot prints and even a piglet’s trotter print have all been found on tiles from Roman Gloucester, but cat prints are very rare,” she said.
Of course! Cats are too smart to go walking across wet clay, for crying out loud
Reader Robin sent this, which I see is available all over the Internet. It’s sort of cool, and so we’ll end the day with this. I like Newton’s, Gödel’s, Feynman’s, and Einstein’s. But Watson and Crick, as well as Jane Goodall, are kind of a stretch. And I suppose someone will point out that “Darwin” implies a telological evolutionary progressivism!
If you click on the screenshot below, you can go to a vocabulary test, which is a multiple choice test asking you. . ., well, I won’t give a spoiler. This was all over Facebook. I’m a sucker for this stuff, and, as my score says below, I did pretty well, though I invariably suck on biology tests. Anyway, see how you stack up against a sample that’s not defined!
There are other such tests, too; a somewhat harder Merriam-Webster quiz is here. And, once again, I’m the king out dere, faddah! But don’t laud me—it’s all the laws of physics.
Amandla Stenberg (born 1998) is an American actress best known for her roles in the Hunger Games movie series. Here, from an article in the Authoritarian Left DailyHuffington Post, is a video in which Stenberg complains about the wearing of cornrows by non-blacks as a form of cultural appropriation. The PuffHo piece has the title below; click on the screenshot to go to the article.
After the headline, the article ends like this:
Jenner should watch this video and think twice before she wears cornrows again.
So proclaims a privileged white editor at PuffHo. Here’s the video, called “Don’t Cash Crop on My Cornrows”. (Note Stenberg’s own hairstyle.)
I’ve always thought that this kind of complaint is misguided, for—as in the example of cornrows—the “appropriation” is not in any sense a denigration of black culture, but a sign of admiration for a hairstyle that—let us recognize it—originated in Africa. As they say, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
In the video, Ms. Stenberg definescultural appropriation, which apparently applies to this hairstyle, like this:
“Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalization or stereotypes when originated, but is deemed as high fashion, cool or funny when the privileged take it for themselves. Appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture they are partaking in.”
Note that this differs from others’ definitions of cultural appropriation, which don’t involve “racist generalizations or stereotypes,” but “stealing” from oppressed cultures without paying tribute from them, like eating Chinese food without some kind of mental genuflection.
Now I’m not sure whether cornrows were once the subject of racist generalizations or stereotypes, though there has been controversy about banning that hairstyle from the workplace, but let us also grant that some people who weren’t black made fun of that hairstyle in the past. I could then understand why some blacks would be miffed if that hairstyle was originally subject to racist taunts, but then was later adopted by non-blacks. (The earliest example I remember is Bo Derek in “10”.) In such cases, what do you do? I would think that the proper response would not be to tell white people to stop wearing cornrows, but to tell white people, “Look, if this hairstyle is so ugly, why are you people wearing it?” Or, “You do know that that hairstyle was once made fun of, right?”
And I can understand bad feelings if, for example, white people took over rap and hip-hop, musical forms originated by blacks, and then made tons of money while black artists made nothing. But that isn’t the case. Yes, we have Eminem and Iggy Azalea, but there are plenty of rappers and hip hop artists who are black, rich, and successful.
Further, if people incorporate cultural borrowing along with invidious stereotypes (Stenberg shows Katy Perry with a watermelon fan, though I’d need to watch that whole video to see the context), then yes, that’s offensive and inappropriate.
Finally, I do agree with Stenberg that if you’ve become successful using a trope from another culture, particularly one that’s considered oppressed, you’d do well to recognize and pay homage to your roots. When jazz began, it was almost entirely played and enjoyed by blacks, who developed the style, but became so attractive that it was adopted, played by, and enjoyed by many whites; these include Benny Goodman, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Django Reinhardt, and so on. Is that cultural appropriation? Not according to Stenberg’s definition, as jazz was rarely, to my mind, subject to much racial denigration. For a while it stayed within the black community, but quickly became widely popular in both Europe and the U.S. It was just too good! And even if a few whites in the 1920s and 30s made fun of early jazz as “black people’s music,” is it now and forever cultural appropriation for them to enjoy it these days? I don’t think so. Jazz is now accepted as a musical form that anyone can enjoy.
In fact, many of the white musicians who first played jazz were fighters for black equality. Benny Goodman, for instance, was criticized for incorporating black musicians into his bands and quintets. He ignored the criticism. It seems to me that if you take a behavior, food, or style from one community, it makes you less likely to demonize that community, and that’s what happened with jazz. Granted, white people’s love of jazz in the 1930s and 1940s didn’t immediately lead to integration: one remembers the odious spectacle of black musicians playing for all-white audiences in Harlem’s Cotton Club.
But if the popularity of jazz isn’t cultural appropriation, why is it so for rap and hip hop? Can’t we just take those bits of culture we like, appreciate their sources, and make them part of our culture? Isn’t that the real melting pot we all favor in America?
I’ve tried hard to appreciate what points Stenberg is trying to make, and can sort of understand why people like her get offended, but in the end I think that offense is a losing battle. Cultural appropriation is not racism or oppression; it seems to me it’s the opposite. But by all means comment below if you feel differently.
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ADDENDUM: In Food and Wine magazine, cultural icon Lena Dunham has just endorsed the Oberlin Kerfuffle about banh mi, “disrepectfully” cooked sushi rice, and improper General Tso’s chicken being unacceptable and culturally appropriated foods served in the school cafeteria (Dunham went to Oberlin):
That’s not “right on” at all; it’s ridiculous. Such are the heroes of the young folk.
You don’t get much more respected as an academic than John Searle, a philosopher of mind and language who’s been teaching at Berkeley for 56 years. I’ve read some of his stuff, which I generally like, and admire him for still being an active, non-retired professor at 83. He must love his job! When Sam Harris tw**ted what’s below two days ago, I went over to see what Searle had to say about free will, pleased to see that he was still doing philosophy.
Demonstrates (with unusual clarity) that the illusion of free will is anchored to poor powers of introspection… https://t.co/kbdrJ5ABNR
The link in Sam’s tweet goes to a 10-minute interview of Searle by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, which, it turns out, is part of a larger series of videos on free will at the “Closer to Truth” site. There are dozens of them! I’ll watch a selection over the coming weeks and report on any that seem interesting.
Sam liked this video, as I do, because Searle agrees with us on the main issues, and is quite articulate. As he notes, while other areas of philosophy have advanced over the centuries, there’s been no advance in the philosophy of free will. I’d take some issue with that, since over the last decades the idea of determinism, and the scientific evidence for it, has gradually pushed aside the of dualistic, I-could-have-done-otherwise form of free will that is not only beloved of religionists, but is the type of free will that most people accept. When determinism dispelled that, philosophers stepped into the breach with notions of “compatibilism”—the philosophical idea that there are forms of free will that can exist side by side with determinism. (Yes, I know that some compatibilists operated long ago.)
But I suppose Searle doesn’t see the rise of compatibilism—Dan Dennett is a prominent exponent—as a philosophical advance. Neither do I: rather, I see it as a diversion, as a waste of brainpower. At any rate, when Searle talks about “free will”, he’s talking about the dualistic form that is so widespread.
Searle sees that form of free will as an illusion, which it is if you accept “illusion” as the notion of “something that isn’t what it seems.” The big philosophical problem with free will, which has been highlighted repeatedly by Sam Harris, and here stressed by Searle, is this: we feel as if we are free agents, that we are in control of our decisions—but we’re not. How can that be? Compatibilism simply doesn’t deal with that question, and Searle calls compatibilism (at 6:25) a “copout.”
So does free will remain as a philosophical problem? It is if you need to confect other ways to define free will, and justify them. But if you reject compatibilism, then the philosophical problems are considerably narrowed. As Searle notes,”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” Yes, that’s true, but then what’s the problem.
Most of the problems of free will, it seems to me, involve evolution and neuroscience rather than philosophy. Why did our feeling of agency evolve (evolution and neuroscience)? How far in advance are our decisions “determined” (neuroscience)? And which factors determine them (neuroscience)? But there is still room for philosophy, of course. Its ambit would involve questions like, “In a deterministic world, is there any meaning to the term “moral responsibility?” Or “in a deterministic world, how do we structure the system of reward and punishment to produce the most well being for society and its members?” The last question, of course, involves not just philosophy but empirical observation of how people behave, or are “cured” under different systems of treatment and punishment. (That’s sociology.) As I’ve always said, I think philosophers would do much better to deal with these critical and important questions—questions about real issues in society that have import for us all—rather than spinning their wheels about the “right” definition of free will.
But listen to Searle. His straightforward talk reminds me a bit of Richard Feynman.
UPDATE: If you haven’t read this lovely, carefully researched, and funny piece on the logistical problems with Noah’s Ark, go read “The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark” at the NCSE website. You won’t be sorry!
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There’s no need for me to write about Answers in Genesis‘s Ark Park, which, according to some accounts, is raking in dough hand over fist (admission is $40 per person!). That’s a testimony to the gullibility of Americans, but we already knew that. If you want to see a good piece about it, one loaded with hilarious Ark memes, go read Heather Hastie’s post “Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter” on her site Heather’s Homilies. I’ll just put up a couple of the cartoons she reproduces (there are many):
