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.
We have some photos today from a new contributor, A. W. Savage, whose notes are indented:
The first three pictures come from Cley Marshes on the north Norfolk coast, part of a chain of nature reserves which together make up the longest continuous stretch of protected coastline in Europe. The first image shows a view across one of the pools on the marsh, which are a mixture of fresh and salt-water lagoons, all surrounded by reed beds. Norfolk reed is still the finest material for making and repairing thatched roofs.
Focusing in on part of the group of birds from the previous image. Mostly Pied Avocet(Recurvirostra avosetta), with a single Shelduck(Tadorna tadorna) and two, badly visible Bar-tailed Godwit(Limosa lapponica) asleep to its right.
Finally, a Northern Lapwing(Vanellus vanellus) in full breeding plumage. This is an excellent example of a “dull, black and white bird”, which, when caught in the right light, shows it is anything but dull. Lapwings breed all along the coast here, though their eggs are often predated by gulls, foxes, weasels and the like.
The final three photos were all taken in my garden. The first shows a pair of Eurasian Siskin(Spinus spinus), female in front and male behind; the second shows a female Siskin sitting in a Hawthorn tree.
Finally, a shot I could not resist. A European Robin(Erithacus rubecula) with a large worm! The lower two-thirds of the worm is blurred, since it was swinging about wildly, whether fighting back or simply blowing in the wind.
I just realized that America has a long weekend coming up: May 28 is Memorial Day, so no Americans with a regular job will be going to work. But that’s still four days off, as today is Thursday, May 24, 2018. It’s National Escargot Day (I eschew the consumption of snails) as well as Victoria Day in Canada, a democracy that still pays homage to the deceased head of a monarchy. I believe it’s the case that all Canadian coins, and the $20 bill, have a portrait of the Queen on them. Is this not an embarrassment to you, my friends to the North?
On this day in 1607, 100 English settlers landed in Jamestown, Virginia, the first English colony established in America. On May 24, 1626, Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the Lenape tribe of Native Americans. According to Wikipedia, he paid 60 guilders’ worth of goods in return, today’s equivalent of about $1,200. That would buy a month’s rent on one square inch of downtown Manhattan. On this day in 1683, the Ashmolean Museum opened at Oxford, England: the world’s first University museum. On this day in 1738, John Wesley was converted, beginning the Methodist faith (this day is celebrated by Methodists as “Aldersgate Day.”) On May 24, 1830, Sarah Josepha Hale published the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (the music came later); the rest is history. Exactly 14 years later, Samuel Morse sent a Biblical quotation, “What hath God wrought” (Numbers 23:23) from Washington D. C. to Baltimore, Maryland, beginning the first commercial telegraph line. On May 24, 1940, Igor Sikorsky carried out the first successful flight of a single-rotor helicopter.
Finally, on this day in 1976, the famous French wine competition “The Judgment of Paris” took place, with blind tastings of chardonnays and red wines from France and California. A California wine placed first in each category (Stag’s Leap Cabernet and Chateau Montelena Chardonnay), launching California wines as world-class products and immensely pissing off the French. Many excuses were made.
Here’s Sikorsky at the controls of one of his early helicopters, the same model that set the record noted above. (Born in Russia, Sikorsky developed the machine in the U.S.):
Notables born on this day include Jean-Paul Marat (1743), William Whewell (1794), Queen Victoria (1819), two Nobel Laureates in Literature from Russia, Mikhail Sholokhov (1905) and Joseph Brodsky (1940), Bob Dylan (1941), Patti LaBelle (1944), and Kristin Scott Thomas (1960). Notables who died on this day were few; they include Nicolaus Copernicus (1543), Sonny Boy Williamson (1965), Duke Ellington (1974), and Joseph Mitchell (1996).
Re Duke Ellington: he was a gourmand. Here’s a passage from his biographyDuke: A Life of Duke Ellington, by Terry Teachout (the dessert, a melange, was characteristic of the Duke’s meals):
Duke, who is always worrying about keeping his weight down, may announce that he intends to have nothing but Shredded Wheat and black tea. . . . Duke’s resolution about not overeating frequently collapses at this point. When it does, he orders a steak, and after finishing it he engages in another moral struggle for about five minutes. Then he really begins to eat. He has another steak, smothered in onions, a double portion of fried potatoes, a salad, a bowl of sliced tomatoes, a giant lobster and melted butter, coffee, and an Ellington dessert — perhaps a combination of pie, cake, ice cream, custard, pastry, jello, fruit, and cheese. His appetite really whetted, he may order ham and eggs, a half-dozen pancakes, waffles and syrup, and some hot biscuits. Then, determined to get back on his diet, he will finish, as he began, with Shredded Wheat and black tea.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is making fun of all the folks who tout the superiority of organic food:
A: What have you sniffed out?
Hili: Organic grass.
In Polish:
Ja: Co tam wywąchałaś?
Hili: Organiczną trawę.
Here’s a video of a woodpecker going after a Tesla (original post at Boingboing). When I asked reader and birder Diane G if this was a pileated woodpecker, she sent me this informative reply:
Yes, a beautiful male pileated! Probably going after its reflection–trying to get at the “interloper.” Lots of birds attack their reflections this time of year. Apparently they see competitors. 🙂 When the light is right I get some birds doing this to my front bay window–happily NOT pileateds, though! Usually cardinals.
Did you know Woody Woodpecker was modeled after a pileated? Even his laugh.
One of the comments below the Boingboing article: “Wouldn’t be the first pecker with a Tesla.” 😉
From Matthew, who said, “Doctor Magic (turn up the sound). How does he does this?” I told him, “I it’s a trick, but it doesn’t look as if he’s palming the lights.” Answer: go below the fold at the bottom.
— Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. 🦖💕 (he/him) (@TomHoltzPaleo) May 23, 2018
This has gone viral. An eagle went after a rabbit caught by a fox, and accidentally took the fox, too. Fortunately for the fox (but not the rabbit), the canid dropped free and is all right. But it lost its dinner!
Several readers sent me this tweet; two lynx are having a vociferous standoff (sound ON!). I posted this as a video a long time back, but here it is again:
From Heather Hastie, who sent several tweets about the flightless kakapo. Click on the tweet below to see more. I’m impressed by the amount of care that the Kiwis put into saving this wonderful species.
The point of the weighing endeavor below: female kakapos who weigh more are in better condition, and, like some other species, may have been selected to produce more males, in accordance with the Trivers-Willard hypothesis (I won’t explain it here; go to the link). The point is that if you’re in good nick, you want to produce males who can inseminate the hell out of the population, spreading more of your genes. That’s why they don’t want the lady kakapos to get too fat, as keeping the species going requires just a few males but a lot of females.
Today is World Turtle Day, and at my request some readers have sent in their pet turtles (and two furry “turtles”). Here are their photos and notes (indented):
Reader Divy Figueroa sent several turtles:
My husband and I house many turtles from all over the world. Here are some pics of some of the species we currently keep and are hoping to breed.
I labeled them with their common name and scientific name.
And since it is World Cat day everyday for us cat lovers, I also attached a pic of my two furry rascals, Jango and Boba Fett.
I might have mentioned our turtle Gimpy before. Gimpy is not a pet, but rather a free and unfettered Terrapene carolina who visits the house from time to time. He hasn’t shown up yet this year and we are getting a bit concerned. Gimpy has gone two years without coming to the patio before. We’re always glad to see him.
Gimpy got his name from a damaged hindlimb. He lost a claw somehow, but the stump was completely healed when we first saw him. It doesn’t seem to slow him down at all, but he’s a tortoise, so who knows. You see that scar on his carapace? I did that by accident a few years ago. I was running the weed whacker and stuck it under the edge of a rhododendron and heard a “whop, whop.” I thought it was a plastic bucket, but it was Gimpy. I apologized and set him up with a gimpburger and a mojito.
From reader Christopher, who sent three:
Wednesday is World Turtle Day, so here are two box turtles (ok, tortoises) I recently found inhabiting my field next to a creek in Missouri, an hour south of KC. The first is Terrepene ornata and the second is Terrepene carolina triunguis.
And another Missouri turtle, Chelydra serpentina [snapping turtle], with a funky front foot, that I picked up from a busy road.
A quick note about turtles and tortoises. According to www.turtleconservancy.org/trouble, more than half of the 356 species are threatened with extinction, for usual reasons (poaching, pet trade, habitat destruction) including Rafetus swinhoei (2 males, 1 female left), the ploughshare tortoise, Astrochelys yniphira of Madagascar, and nearly every member of the genus Cuora in Asia and the genus Batagur in Southeast Asia, just to name a few.
From reader Lee Beringsmith:
My two photos for Turtle day.
These are our pet Red-Footed Tortoises (Chelonoidis carbonaria) enjoying their breakfast.
This is our cement garden decoration that survived a terrible fire we had at our ranch last summer. Lost the beautiful paint job in the flames but has earned a place in our future landscape (Chelonoidis Concretia).
And from reader Mark Richardson:
Here’s a couple of Red-Eared Slider pics (Trachemys scripta elegans). She’s named “Big Mama”.
NBC News has highlighted some ofthe Interior Department’s proposed changes to the federal regulations about hunting. First designed to take effect in Alaska, but now proposed for the entire U.S., these changes (proposed regulations here) will overturn the following Obama-era prohibitions and thus allow barbaric forms of hunting (well, many forms of hunting, like using bows and arrows, already are barbaric):
The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens.
Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.
These and other hunting methods — condemned as cruel by wildlife protection advocates — were outlawed on federal lands in 2015. Members of the public have 60 days to provide comment on the proposed new rules.
From the regulations themselves; this will now be allowed (note that you can use light to lure bears too). It’s horrible!
The Final Rule codified prohibitions on certain types of harvest practices that are otherwise permitted by the State of Alaska. The practices are: Taking any black bear, including cubs and sows with cubs, with artificial light at den sites; harvesting brown bears over bait; taking wolves and coyotes (including pups) during the denning season (between May 1 and August 9); taking swimming caribou; taking caribou from motorboats under power; taking black bears over bait; and using dogs to hunt black bears.
I don’t understand the mentality of people who would permit these things. They value trophies more than the lives of animals, and as for shooting mothers and hibernating cubs, well, I have no words except it’s Trump and his environment-hating minions.
The rationale for the regulations, at the Federal Register, includes “increasing outdoor recreation.” How “recreational” is it to lure bears with donuts and then kill them? Or slaughter hibernating mothers and cubs? CUBS, for crying out loud:
Part of the stated purpose of Secretarial Order 3347 is to increase outdoor recreation and improve the management of game species and their habitat. Secretarial Order 3347 directs the Department of the Interior to identify specific actions to (1) expand access significantly for recreational hunting and fishing on public lands; and (2) improve recreational hunting Start Printed Page 23622and fishing cooperation, consultation, and communication with state wildlife managers.
What can you do about this? Here’s what:
You may submit comments, identified by Regulation Identifier Number (RIN) 1024-AE38, by either of the following methods:
Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.
Mail or hand deliver to: National Park Service, Regional Director, Alaska Regional Office, 240 West 5th Ave., Anchorage, AK 99501.
Instructions: Comments will not be accepted by fax, email, or in any way other than those specified above. All submissions received must include the words “National Park Service” or “NPS” and must include the docket number or RIN (1024-AE38) for this rulemaking. Comments received will be posted without change to http://www.regulations.gov, including any personal information provided.
Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to http://www.regulations.gov.
In short, go the the link, put RIN: 1024-AE38 in the search box, and then make a comment and submit it. I ask readers who are opposed to this proposed legislation to at least say a few words. Please!
I believe I’m back on solid ground again with this post about the Templeton Foundation (in this case, the Templeton Religion Trust) and their incursion into Aeon magazine, a secular site devoted to “ideas and culture.” What we have here is an article by Manini Sheker whose work apparently wasn’t underwritten by Templeton—which would mean that Sheker was supported by the organization—but where the magazine itself apparently got money from Templeton to publish a dire piece touting the benefits of Catholicism. Or so I interpret from the phrase in the disclaimer below: “this essay was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to Aeon.” In other words, Templeton gave money to the magazine for publishing, or enabling publication, of this article.
But how would that work? Readers are invited to help me out here, for this appears at the end of Sheker’s piece:
A bit about the author:
Manini Sheker is a scholar and writer interested in religion, the arts, social justice, the environment and the good life. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, openDemocracy and Litro, among others
I’m a PhD candidate in social anthropology at the University of Sussex studying development and ethics in post-liberalization India. I hold a MPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford and a Masters of Social Work from the University fo Toronto. My writing has been featured in the Guardian, the Hindu, openDemocracy, Litro and Seminar magazines among other publications. In 2013, I was awarded the Ngo Human Welfare Prize by the University of Oxford for an essay on religion, freedom and development.
Now, why would Templeton fund this one way or the other? Well, read the article if you have the kishkas (click on screenshot below).
It’s a very bizarre piece of prose. The author begins on reasonable ground by discussing how the United Nations’ Human Development Index was formulated, and about the input of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s “capabilities approach” for formulating that index of the well being of various countries. Sheker makes the point, with some justification, that one should also include non-material well being in the index, although I’m sure people would prefer clean water, toilets, sufficient food, and good healthcare, before they start worrying about whether their spiritual needs are met. I also feel that people always manage to find a way to meet their need for comity and fellowship regardless of whether there’s religion involved, so dragging in religious stuff, which is the real point of Sheker’s piece, seems almost irrelevant. Are Sweden and Denmark not sufficiently “developed” because they’re largely atheistic countries?
Then, all of a sudden, Sheker goes off the rails, touting the need for including Catholic social teaching and morality as a good way to improve countries’ well being. And that is surely why Templeton paid some money for this article, whomever the recipient was. A few quotes from Sheker:
As the world faces moral and economic crises, perhaps it is more relevant than ever to return to Maitreyi’s question, and to ask: what if economic and social arrangements were actually conceived within a moral or even religious framework? Would it help open our eyes to the real task at hand – human fulfilment? Would the most urgent problems, from global poverty to climate change, benefit from the kind of moral deliberation that is required by a religious point of view?
Her answer to the last question is clearly “yes!”
For the most part, the development establishment has been suspicious of religion, a nervousness only exacerbated in recent years by the rise of religious extremism. Institutionalised religion carries dark associations – it can be authoritarian, offend reason, thwart progress towards social justice and, in its most egregious, illiberal expressions, it serves up a retrograde vision of the future. There’s also the real fear that development activities, especially when carried out by faith-based organisations, can easily become pretexts for proselytising. Then there are those who, against much evidence, cling to the belief that religions are irrelevant to modern societies; that modernisation means secularisation.
This is a Big Lie: modernization does mean secularization, for as people’s lot improves, they have no need for religions. Sociologists have given evidence for that time and time again. Sheker simply ignores the fact that nearly all countries in the West are becoming less religious at the same time that their well being is improving. And yes, religions are irrelevant to modern societies; as Hitchens says, they’re the vestigial remnant of our fearful and bawling childhood as a species.
She goes on:
Post-Vatican II, Catholic social teaching engages directly with applying theological insights to the problem of contemporary poverty. It recognises that social problems can benefit from reflection on the Christian message. In many ways, the understanding of human flourishing derived from Catholic social teaching and from Sen’s work converge. Both recognise that the purpose of development is human dignity. Dignity depends on exercising one’s agency and realising freedoms such as being healthy, living in a peaceful environment, and so on. Any economic model that comes out of Catholic social teaching would rest on the principles of equity, participation, sustainability and human development. The rationale for human dignity in Catholic social teaching is a bit different, however.
You don’t need Christianity to deal with social problems; in fact, spreading religiosity is a way, as Marx realized, to get people to accept a problematic status quo: religion, as he said, is an “opium of the people”. Without the promise of a Better Life Hereafter, we have to figure out how to improve our lot in the Here and Now. The best “belief system” for tackling social problems is secular humanism, especially since Sheker adduces not a shred of evidence that Catholicism is the “true” religion, or that any of its grounding, in the new Testament, is based on true facts.
And get this Mother Teresa approach:
Catholic social thinkers hold that poverty neither determines human worth nor is a constraint to achieving ethical or salvific liberation. While poverty is not condoned, there is a recurring theme in Catholic thought that poverty can even strengthen and beautify the human spirit – voluntary poverty is certainly a mark of the good. Think of Saint Francis in Dante’s Paradiso, in romantic pursuit of Lady Poverty; he was the shepherd who, in making his choice to own nothing, ‘wore a crown again’.
There is also a deep ambivalence towards material liberation. Eliminating social deprivation is a moral imperative, but there is a very real danger that material prosperity presents acute dangers. Real liberation comes only when material things are renounced and one accepts suffering and complete dependence on God. True freedom comes when material, ethical and salvific liberation are cultivated together. In other words, true freedom can be attained only when all worldly goods are redirected towards God through charity.
. . . Though Sen recognises the limits of focusing on material needs, his model places importance on freedom and agency over the realisation of God (or the good). Social arrangements should be gauged by the extent to which they enable the former. From a religious point of view, earthly freedom is subordinate to the highest liberation in God. It is important not to disregard the significance of these concerns for millions of people worldwide, to remember that religious and non-religious communities share many ideas related to human fulfilment. The Catholic view of human flourishing performs an important task by requiring any approach to economic development to consider seriously the moral and non-economic consequences of development.
This is just preaching; she adduces no evidence that people would prefer God over starvation and sickness.
In all of this Sheker makes several fundamental errors:
She equates morality with religiosity, not really considering that secular morality can be an even better source of welfare than is Catholic teaching. After all, “Catholic social teaching” can include “abortion is bad under all circumstances”, “homosexuality is a sin”, “women are inferior to men”, and so on. Those aspects of “morality” surely aren’t conducive to any form of progressive human development.
She doesn’t consider that Christian morality doesn’t really come from scripture, as we know from the Euthyphro argument, but is pre-Biblical, probably based on rational reflection, evolved behavior, and non-religious social contracts.
Sheker doesn’t deal at any length with how one is suppose to use Catholic moral teachings to improve the well being of the majority of countries in the world, which aren’t Catholic.
She doesn’t consider whether, even if Catholic morality could improve people’s welfare, it matters whether the dogma on which that morality is based is true. After all, if the New Testament is fictitious, which most of us think it is, then morality based on Jesus and scripture is out the window. Why not “Muslim morality” or “Jain morality”? My view, of course, is that we have to have some ethical principles guiding how we determine the welfare of a country, but most of this will involve the idea that material well being (including health, reproductive freedom and so on) supercedes spiritual well being. Religion is irrelevant here.
I cannot emphasize how shockingly bad this article is. It starts out fine, but soon Sheker’s mask slips, apparently revealing her as a staunch Catholic who wants to proselytize a morality based on her religion, not worrying about the morality of other religions or the sounder principles of secular humanism—principles that don’t depend on belief in fictitious books.
And how did Templeton get its sticky fingers in here? Who were they paying to get this article published? We don’t know. Shame on Aeon for publishing such tripe!
This is not a joke. Kristin Rawls is a journalist who writes for the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, Alternet, Salon, and other sites, while Ian Miles Cheong writes for the conservative website the Daily Caller. Have a gander at Rawls’s tweet.
I couldn’t find Kristin Rawls’s Twitter feed to check on this, as I thought her tweet may have been satirical, but later on Ian Miles Cheong answers that question.
Nope. She had a whole thread on it before going private.
Given that this is accurate, it’s reprehensible, for it means that, as Cheong maintains, you can’t even adopt someone else’s religion if that means you’d be “believing down”, i.e., adopting a religion—or any religious beliefs—held by those considered more oppressed than you.
But it is not freaking problematic, it’s just religious appropriation—analogous to cultural appropriation. In fact, religious appropriation is even less problematic than cultural appropriation, as there isn’t a way I can see to adopt someone’s religious beliefs in a way that mocks or denigrates that religion.
I realize that Kristin Rawls is only one person, but she publishes in visible places, and her excoriating someone who “appropriates” Buddhist beliefs is just one more step in the Left’s policing of thought and behavior. Believe me, this is not an isolated incident of stupidity, but a bellwether of change to come.
But, as Cheong notes, this also violates the Left’s general acceptance of freedom of religion. I guess we have to modify the First Amendment to permit freedom of religion only if, when converting, you adopt a religion held by those seen as more oppressed. (Does this include, by the way, conversion to Judaism? Can Buddhists convert to Islam?)
The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “ha ha”, strikes close to the bone for empiricists, and is relevant to a piece I’ll put up today about an Aeon article. In that article, the author urges adoption of Catholic moral teachings as a way to assess the “well being” of countries, but doesn’t examine the question of whether the basis for those moral teachings—the New Testament—is true.
