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.
All I can say is that we’ve had videos similar to this one before, and they show that raccoons (Procyon lotor) are a lot smarter than we think. (See, for instance, here, here, and here.) Below is the YouTube caption of a video posted just two days ago:
Occurred June 16, 2016 / Camdenton High School, Camdenton, Missouri, USA
“I am a Police Officer in Camdenton Missouri and was working security one evening at the local High School. I saw the mother raccoon on the wall with one of her babies as she was attempting to get her other baby over the wall. The mother raccoon leaned over the wall as the baby held onto her legs so she could reach out and grab the other baby and pull him up. Great example of a mothers love and teamwork!” -Chris Williams
Now how did the baby at the top figure out to hold its mother’s legs? Another question: why aren’t scientists studying raccoon cognition as avidly as they study porpoise cognition?
In yet another attempt to infantilize the American people and slant the news in such a way that Islam is exculpated in mass murders by Muslims, the Attorney General of the U.S. has decided to bowdlerize the transcripts of the phone calls that the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, made during his murderous rampage. Here’s some audio from Attorney General Loretta Lynch interviewed by Chuck Todd on t.v.’s Meet the Press show. I’ve put part of the transcript below.
My emphasis is in bold:
LORETTA LYNCH: What we’re announcing tomorrow is that the FBI is releasing a partial transcript of the killer’s calls with law enforcement, from inside the club. These are the calls with the Orlando PD negotiating team, who he was, where he was… that will be coming out tomorrow and I’ll be headed to Orlando on Tuesday.
CHUCK TODD: Including the hostage negotiation part of this?
LYNCH: Yes, it will be primarily a partial transcript of his calls with the hostage negotiators.
CHUCK TODD: You say partial, what’s being left out?
LYNCH: What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda.
CHUCK TODD: We’re not going to hear him talk about those things?
LYNCH: We will hear him talk about some of those things, but we are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance and that. It will not be audio, it will be a printed transcript. But it will begin to capture the back and forth between him and the negotiators, we’re trying to get as much information about this investigation out as possible. As you know, because the killer is dead, we have a bit more leeway there and we will be producing that information tomorrow.
Salonreported that: “Everybody who was in the bathroom who survived could hear him talking to 911, saying the reason why he’s doing this is because he wanted America to stop bombing his country.”
The Washington Postalso noted that during his 911 call from the club, the gunman referenced the Boston Marathon bombers and claimed “that he carried out the shooting to prevent bombings, [echoing] a message the younger Boston attacker had scrawled in a note before he was taken into custody by police.”
FBI Director James Comey said at a press conference that the shooter’s past comments about Islamist groups were “inflammatory and contradictory.”
“We see no clear evidence that he was directed externally,” the president added. “It does appear that at the last minute, he announced allegiance to ISIL. But there is no evidence so far that he was in fact directed by ISIL, and at this stage there’s no direct evidence that he was part of a larger plot.” ISIL is another name for ISIS, or the Islamic State.
Now there are two ways to construe this. The charitable one, which the government will undoubtedly use if pressed, is that showing the shooter’s ideological alligience will inspire copycat killings, so they’re just trying to prevent more violence. That may sound good, but we already know about the ISIS and Islamist connection from previous reporting. So that’s not a surprise.
I suspect the real reason is that the government, in a misguided effort to exculpate extremist religious ideology (perhaps to placate the American Muslim community), is simply redacting the transcript to omit all the killer’s motivations for his act. This is perfectly in line with Obama’s recurring policy of avoiding the mention of religion at any cost.
If that is indeed the reason, which seems the best explanation to me, then our government has not only insulted our intelligence, but kept useful information from us. In what world does such censorship, for whatever reason, take precedence over our right to know what really happened? And, as I said, we already know what the killer said about ISIS and his allegiance.
And really, who cares if Mateen was directed by ISIS or simply carried out an act that ISIS publicly announced was specially approved for Ramadan? The FBI will find out if Mateen had accomplices (his wife may be one) or overseas connections. Can we really say that the religious angle of this murder is completely irrelevant?
And that, indeed, is what the Regressive Left is saying: it was either homophobia or mental illness that prompted the murder spree. The mental illness excuse I can’t judge, for it’s often used tautologically: someone who does such a deed must have been mentally ill. Homophobia may be relevant in light of the report that Mateen frequented gay clubs in the months before his act. But homophobia (or mental illness) and a faith that demonizes gays—those are toxic combinations.
As 90-year-old Razie notes in this entertaining documentary, “Bacon & God’s Wrath”, her deconversion from Judaism began with her foray onto the Internet, seeking recipes. When she began typing things into the Google search box, the Big Changes Began. (See the video by clicking the screenshot below, which takes you to a New Yorker piece containing the whole 9-minute film and some commentary.) Razie explains:
“That feeling of connectedness. . .i t was more than I ever got from going to synagogue! Well, as you can imagine, it was the first step on a slippery slope, and I went very quickly from Julia Childs [sic] to Christopher Hitchens. It soon became very difficult for me to believe such incredible nonsense any more.”
Chalk up another convert for the Hitch, despite his so-called stridency. She continues:
“What you’re filming now. . .is a symbolic advancement of reason over faith. Now and then I hear people say that it takes courage to be faithful! But there’s nothing courageous about it. Faith is belief without evidence. It comes from Iron Age superstitions: our fear of the dark. But we know better now. It’s courageous to choose the truth, even if it means abandoning what you know.”
Later in the film, Razie converses with a pig’s head (below) and, in a symbolic gesture of freedom at the end, tries bacon for the first time in her life (click below). Her reaction is amusing.
UPDATE: I’m sorry some viewers couldn’t see the New Yorker embed. But I’ve now found it on YouTube, so everyone should be able to see it:
The documentary is by the Canadian filmmaker Sol Friedman, and the short New Yorker essay about the film is by Joshua Rothman, himself an atheist. Sadly, Rothman’s take on the movie undercuts its message, but what else do you expect from the faith-coddling New Yorker?:
. . . the title also contains, at least for me, a hint of sadness. Religious faith is a consolation; if you trade it in for bacon, have you made a good trade? I’m an atheist, and I think I would give up bacon in exchange for the conviction that the universe has a purpose. Razie, of course, hasn’t traded belief for bacon; she has traded it for the freedom to follow her own conscience, to do and think as she sees fit. These, the film seems to say, are the signs by which we communicate, to others and ourselves, our ideas about the fundamental questions of existence. Look how small they are!
I wouldn’t give up bacon, or nonbelief, for some phony conviction; the fact is that there’s not a scintilla of evidence that the Universe has a purpose. “Purpose,” of course, implies a Planning Mind, and what Rothman expresses is what many believers would like athiests to feel: a profound sense of loss at not having a god. But Razie has no sense of loss, just an ebullience at embracing the truth, combined with a lingering feeling that she just may have lost Pascal’s Wager. But she forges ahead bravely, showing us that it’s never too late to embrace reason.
I’m not sure what Rothman means about the fundamental questions of existence being “small.” The meaningful questions of existence, which include inquiries about evolution and The Big Bang, are certainly not small, and I for one, felt no loss as the idea of God vanished when I was sixteen.
Today reader Robert Lang, who previously sent us photos from Costa Rica, weighs in with some arthropods:
I realize this is close on the heels of my last set of Costa Rica photos I could not resist passing on a few more photos taken much closer to home (in the East Bay area of California), which I similarly hope you and readers might enjoy.
First, we have a dragonfly, a Flame Skimmer (Libellula saturata), which has been hanging around the goldfish pond (a.k.a. the raccoon feeder) for a week or so. Pretty sure this one is a female, because she repeatedly makes passes over the pond, dipping her abdomen in it. (Sadly for her, I expect that the goldfish make short work of the offspring.) What I love about this picture is that the sunlight casts an orange shadow through her wings, looking for all the world like a fossil impression in the rock.
Next, we have a Darkling Beetle (family Tenebrionidae). There are many species; this looks like it might be genus Eleodes (which have fused elytra); I invite further clarification from readers. This was taken in Mitchell Canyon, on the north side of Mount Diablo.
The reason I was in this particular canyon was not for the beetles, though; it was for this next creature, the California Common Scorpion (Paruoctonus silvestrii), which crawls out of its daytime lairs (typically cracks in cliffs and dirt) after sunset. Like many scorpions, it is fluorescent under UV, and while most scorpions fluoresce in the blue-green, this one is a brilliant chartreuse.
They’re tiny (most that I saw were 2-3 cm in total length), but you can spot even the smallest from several feet away; they stand out like a beacon. This one is a bit washed out (and I’m sure the camera is a wee bit confused by the bimodal color distribution), but by turning down the exposure, quite a bit of detail becomes visible. I’ve tweaked the colors of this next one to approximate what it looks like to the human eye.
Why they fluoresce is a bit of a mystery, but a few years ago Animal Behavior published a paper in which the authors suggested that it served the function of aiding light sensitivity by transmuting the dim level of UV from the night sky into green light that their existing photoreceptors could detect.
Since there are noticeable differences in the peak wavelength of fluorescent emission among species, it would be interesting to see if there were corresponding differences mirrored in the peak photoreceptor sensitivity.
It’s Monday, June 20 (already so close to July?), and I hope that all the dads out there had some special noms and treats yesterday. It’s hot in Los Angeles: yesterday at 5 p.m. it was 98°F (37 °C). But it’s a dry heat and I didn’t find it oppressive. On this day in 1248, the University of Oxford (or “Oggsford”, as Meyer Wolfsheim called it in The Great Gatsby) received its royal charter. Wikipedia also notes that on this day in 1782, Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States. This caused considerable difficulty since the Great Seal required a lot of fish, something not provided for by first U.S. budgets. On June 20, 1972, the infamous and still unresolved 18½ minute gap appeared in the Watergate tapes, supposedly due to an error by the White House secretary. And on this day in 1975, the summer blockbuster “Jaws” was released—one film I have seen.
Notables born on this day include Errol Flynn (1919), Eric Dolphy (1928), and musicians Brian Wilson (1942) and Anne Murray (1945). Those who died on this day include Bugsy Siegel (1947), and Erwin Chargaff (2002), who discovered the DNA “rules” that the amount of C equals the amount of G and the amount of T equals the amount of A: an early clue, unrecognized, that the structure of DNA involves C pairing with G and T with A. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the staff’s loss is Hili’s gain, as she observes while strolling along the Vistula with Cyrus.
Hili: I don’t see any future for our cherries.
A: Why?
Hili: It seems we have a plague of starlings this year.
Hili: Nie widzę przyszłości dla naszych wiśni.
Ja: Dlaczego?
Hili: Wygląda na to, że mamy plagę szpaków w tym roku.
Up in Montreal, reader Anne-Marie has photographed the female squirrel who frequents her yard. This one is about as pregnant as they get, and is clearly enjoying the grape she was given. I predict a large litter!
And here is a very beautiful kitten from Bengal Cat World. Someday a kitten like this will be mine.
Here are the latest photos on the progress of my Last Pair of Boots, under construction by the estimable Lee Miller of Austin, Texas. They were sent, and the captions written, by Lee’s wife and business partner Carrlyn. You can see how laborious it is to make this kind of inlaid decoration of the tops (“shafts”). It won’t be long now till the boots are done.
We’re into the nitty gritty of things now. I have quite a few pictures to send you.
Now we start on the tops. This is the back side of the kangaroo tops.
The cutting patterns have been cemented to the tops.
Lee is cutting out the pieces of the design. He uses a sewing machine, and the needle has been
sharpened and has become knifelike.
Here’s another view of him cutting out the rose.
Now he carefully uses an awl and pulls the cut pieces out.
Here is the top partially done.
Here you see all the pieces from the back panels have been removed, along with the paper. [JAC: remember that the cut out portions will eventually be filled with different colors of inlaid leather. There will be four of these panels, so it’s a lot of work.]
Here are the front panels with the design cut out.
Lee is pulling the paper pattern off the tops.
The paper pattern is off.
The cut out pieces will be put back in. That will make sense later. Lee has marked which is for the
front and back.
This is what the back side looks like.
When he cuts out the design, both tops are cemented together and done at the same time. Here Lee is
pulling the two top panels apart.
Then he uses his hand to rub off the rubber cement. It comes off easily.
Now, he hand skives [JAC: skiving is shaving the leather so it’s thinner, to keep the boot with inlays at a uniform thickness] the edges and the design on the tops. That needs to be thinned down because there will be other leathers added to the tops, and without skiving this be very bulky and hard to work with.
Another view of Lee skiving.
Then he takes a match and burns whatever frays are on the back side. One top finished skiving. Three more to go.
This is a pretty cool cartoon with an admirable goal: to advance the education of women in Pakistan, a country where there’s considerable opposition to that goal. Reader Geoffrey sent me this link and a note (indented below), and I watched one episode of the cartoon. That video is below, and I like it. (You can find other episodes on YouTube.)
I just found out about this recently, and with the site’s repeated use of that Pew poll (a very useful and powerful instrument in my opinion) I felt it might be nice to have some good news about the countries represented in that poll.
The show Burka Avenger is apparently very popular in Pakistan, with its message to give girls an education—what Captain Planet is to caring for the environment. It’s not all that good [JAC: I disagree], but hey, if one of the most popular shows in Pakistan is preaching girls’ right to an education, then that is a good sign. Further, while the superheroine does wear a burka, it’s mostly as a disguise, going for a sort of half-ninja / half-superhero look. When outside of her disguise, she doesn’t even wear a hijab.
This show started airing around the time of that poll (2013), which incidentally shows that 88% of Pakistani Muslims believe women should always or mostly submit to their husbands. So, it’s got an uphill battle. But it is nice to see that there are good people winning that kind of battle in Pakistan. I hope it’s a sign of things to come.
Here’s the first episode of Burka Avenger: “Girls’ school is shut”. The YouTube notes say this:
The first episode of the Burka Avenger, Season 01. In this episode, the crooked politician Vadero Pajero and evil Baba Bandook conspire to shut down the girls’ school. Burka Avenger must come to the rescue and help save the day. The series was made using a combination of 3D animation and 2D art. The characters are 3D but all the backgrounds are painstakingly painted in 2D by our talented artists.
I wonder if the hurling of stones at beginning means is saying something about stoning of women. There’s really very little religion in the cartoon—only one Invocation of God, and I love that the hero uses a book and a pen as weapons.
Just a quick note to mark the increasing official religiosity of Turkey. Because I love that country, and have visited several times (once speaking about evolution to an appreciative audience of 1200), it causes me great pain as President Recep Erdoğan continues his authoritarian transformation of the Turkish government, infusing it more and more with Islam. Freedom of the press is largely banned, and those who criticize the President face legal action. Is it any wonder that the EU balks at letting Turkey become a member?
As the Guardian reports, Istanbul has now banned public parades in support of gays and transgender people:
Authorities in Istanbul have banned transgender and gay pride marches this month, citing security concerns after ultra-nationalists warned they would not allow the events to take place on Turkish soil.
A march in support of transgender people was planned for Sunday [today!] in the city centre, while an annual gay pride parade – described previously as the biggest in the Muslim world – had been due to take place a week later on 26 June.
The Istanbul governor’s office said on Friday the marches had been banned amid concern for public order. Security in the city remains tight after a series of bombings blamed on Islamic State and Kurdish militants in recent months.
The ban also follows a warning from an ultra-nationalist youth group, the Alperen Hearths, that it would not allow the marches, calling them immoral and threatening violence. “To our state officials: do not make us deal with this. Either do what is needed or we will do it. We will take any risks, we will directly prevent the march,” the group’s Istanbul provincial head, Kürşat Mican, told journalists on Wednesday.
The Alperen Hearths is a youth wing of the right-wing and Islamist Great Unity Party. The article continues:
“Degenerates will not be allowed to carry out their fantasies on this land … We’re not responsible for what will happen after this point,” he said, citing a Turkish proverb: “If you’re not taught by experience, you’re taught by a beating”.
Unlike many Muslim countries, homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey. But if Erdogan has his way, it might be. And, of course, this all reflects the dictates of Islam. As the Guardian notes;
Historically the gay pride parade in Istanbul – a city seen as a relative haven by members of the gay community from elsewhere in the Middle East – has been a peaceful event.
But last year police used teargas and water cannon to disperse participants, after organisers said they had been refused permission because it coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, as it does again this year.
Turkey has a secular constitution, the handiwork of one of my heroes, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who almost singlehandedly wrested his land from the grips of religiosity to enforce a kind of mosque-state separation. Now, after a century, Erdogan and his minions are trying to dismantle that, creating a regressive theocracy. If this continues a once secular and vibrant land will become increasingly like Iran or Afghanistan.
