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.
I am home after a long flight, and Hili will be late today. The good news is that on my flight I almost finished Nick Cohen’sWhat’s Left? How the Left Lost Its Way, which I recommend, along with his You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom, which is even better. Both are must-reads if you’re interested in the decline of the Left and it’s increasing covergence with the right.
On this day in 1953, the most important biology paper of our time appeared in Nature: “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid”, and of course you know the authors. (The pdf is free here.) Here’s its famous last sentence, an understatement in which Watson and Crick note that their suggested (and correct) structure of DNA, a double helix with specifically paired basis, automatically allows the molecule to be perfectly copied during cell division or gamete formation:
Wolfgang Pauli was born on this day in 1900.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being a spoiled brat with her First World problems:
Hili: I’m depressed.
Cyrus: What is the reason for that?
Hili: I’m standing on the threshold of satisfaction but I don’t know what to do next.
In Polish:
Hili: Jestem w depresji.
Cyrus: Z jakiego powodu?
Hili: Stoję na progu satysfakcji i nie wiem co dalej.
And, courtesy of Matthew, here’s a tw**t showing his favorite birds, swifts, mating on the wing.
And now, as they say, for something completely different.
In the past we’ve highlighted the live feed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Okeanos Explorer mission in the Pacific. This involves remote operated vehicles (ROV), complete with hi-res video equipment mooching around on the ocean bottom. On board the ship are a geologist and a marine biologist, and in a conference call are assorted land-based scientists from around the world (mainly the USA) who help to ID stuff.
The result is an amazing, informative and captivating voyage on an unknown planet – most dives produce something astounding. You can find the full back catalogue here. Right now they are preparing for another dive, which you can watch here. [Update – there’s no dive today because of repairs. Tune in again tomorrow!]
The current mission is to the Marianas Trench, and the dives take place a bit too late for poor little me – the ROV generally touches bottom (the other night it was 5000 metres down!) shortly before midnight *UK time* (it’s much more palatable for those in the US, Australasia or Japan), by which time I am beginning to doze off. So I wake up to stunning images in my Tw*tter feed, using the #Okeanos hashtag. This morning was amazing, as they came across this fantastic jellyfish at 3740 m down.
Do yourself a favour – press play and turn it onto full screen. The vid only lasts 2:30 mins, but you will be seriously amazed. Listen to the enthusiasm in the voices of the scientists (the first voice you can hear is @DivaAmon I think), and also the ROV pilot and navigator.
To paraphrase Miranda: O Brave new world, that has such wonders in ‘t!
Here’s a picture of where it’s all happening on the ship (pilot and navigator in front row, scientists behind):
Philomena said: ‘A bit like the tooth fairy, nobody’s actually seen Shakespeare, and nobody knows if he’s real or just made up for kids. So I’ll be talking to some expert people to try and find out more about him and his films.’
With the help of an army of interviewees including academics, actors, linguists and historians, Cunk will tell the life story of Shakespeare. She’ll explore some of the works that have made him the greatest playwright the world has ever known, very much the Michael Bay of Elizabethan England.
And some pictures from the program, released in advance.
I’m jealous that the Brits get to see this before I do—if I get to see it at all (some of her bits aren’t on the Internet)
The paperback edition of Faith Versus Fact will be available on May 17, and it will have a fancy gold band on the cover instead of the drabbish band (which was supposed to be shiny gold) that was on the hardcover. It’s about fifteen bucks in the U.S., and you can preorder it from Amazon, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, and, as always, the audio version is available from several of those places or from iTunes.
Pre-orders are best for promoting the book, of course, but I’ll be chuffed whenever you buy it. And, as always, if you encounter me in person, I’ll be glad to sign it (or WEIT) for you.
I’m leaving Portland this afternoon, and will show a few photos I took in the last two days.
First, some archetypal Portlanders. People like this are by no means rare in the city. One is showing a distorted cultural appropriation: red dreadlocks! I can’t even. . . . I am shaking and crying now about this blatant ripoff of minority culture:
My hotel was only a block from one of the world’s best bookstores: Powell’s. And it’s right across the street from another Portland institution: the Doc Martens store. After you buy Krista Tippett’s new book on spirituality (prominently displayed), you can buy a pair of clunky shoes:
Powell’s had a print-on-demand book machine that looked like a Rube Goldberg device. I didn’t see it in action.
My talk on Free Will for the Center of Inquiry was at the Lucky Labrador Beer Hall (oh, the ignominy of lecturing in a pub named after a d*g!), which has a large side room with a stage. It was a standing-room-only crowd, decreed by the laws of physics. I have no photos of it, nor would I particularly want to show them, but it went fine, I thought. More exciting was that I got to meet several readers whose names I knew from their comments. And one of them, Bruce Thiel, is an amateur paleontologist who does the most fantastic preparations of fossil specimens. Two years ago I posted some of the wonderful fossils he’s prepared.
Here’s a crab he brought to show me:
And its provenance:
Bruce doesn’t sell his specimens, as he wants them to be in museums and other places where the public can see them. (A pity, as I’d dearly love to have one.) It takes him about 20 hours to prepare a fossil like the crab above.
Yesterday CfI officer Bill Dickens kindly offered to take me outside the city to see a few attractions, including the Columbia River Gorge and the Multnomah Falls, the latter being the biggest tourist attraction in the state. Here’s a view of the gorge; the scenery was even more dramatic because it was (as usual in the area) overcast.
There’s a lovely old structure built on the spot from which I took the photo above; it’s the Vista House at Crown Point, finished in 1918. Inside is a sign absolutely diagnostic for being in either Oregon or Washington:
This is the first drop of Multnomah Falls, which is 542 feet high: almost as high as the Washington Monument.
There’s a second drop of 69 feet, and a bridge over the falls between the drops, which we walked over. It being Saturday, the place was crawling with tourists like us, and they were from many countries.
My arty photo of the falling water:
Some of the tourists were making bizarre poses in front of the falls:
. . . while others were using the Device that Presages the Fall of Society: the odious and narcisssistic “selfie stick”: We also visited the nearby Bonneville Dam, built in 1937. It’s an important source of hydroelectric power, and also has a cool visitor’s center and a fish ladder to allow the salmon to swim upstream: a necessity if they’re to spawn. The water flow was quite vigorous because of rains and snowmelt; seals were cavorting in the rapids, trying to catch salmon:
Part of the very long fish ladder; it’s a very strenuous swim up against the current, and some salmon have to do it for six or seven dams. I don’t know how they do it given the rapid water flow; it’s no wonder that they die after they spawn. It must take every ounce of energy they have to navigate upstream!
Another part of the fish ladder. It was the beginning of the spring coho salmon run (there are two a year in this river, with the biggest in the fall), and there’s an underwater viewing window where you can watch these intrepid fish swim around the dam:
Next we visited the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, largely devoted to rearing salmon and steelhead trout for release. How could you possibly ignore a sign that says “Sturgeon viewing”? I couldn’t! Note the cute directional fish arrows on the sidewalk:
Bill photographed me next to a famous resident: Herman the Sturgeon, a ten-foot-long fish that is 70 years old and weighs 450 pounds.
Herman is a white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), the largest species of freshwater fish in North America. The largest specimen caught weighed 1,100 pounds!
Here’s a YouTube video of Herman:
Finally, last night Peter had a small party for some of his colleagues, friends, and students. He decided to make sandwiches, and I discovered that Peter is an artisanal sandwich maker. He takes great care with each one, folding the lettuce carefully and making sure the wet condiments don’t contact the bread. His philosophy (he’s a philosopher) is that “every bite of the sandwich should taste the same as every other bite.”
Here he is folding the lettuce:
And the finished product for the party. They were damn good!
Here’s a question: if the veiling of women or forcing them into cloth sacks in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan was purely voluntary, why do those countries need “morality police” to ensure that women obey those religious dictates? If they all did it willingly, you wouldn’t need police!
Here, for instance, is a Morality Policeman in Afghanistan beating a women who didn’t cover her head properly:
More details Kabul, 2001, image obtained by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan showing a religious policing member responsible for promotion of virtue and prevention of vice enforcing Sharia rules on a woman for removing in public her burqa headpiece.
The Morality Police enforce things other than dress, of course: you get punished, or taken away, if you engage in homosexual behavior, eat the wrong things, like pork, or leave your store open during prayer hours. Things can get quite serious, as Wikipedia notes (see the BBC report here):
Perhaps the most serious and widely criticized incident attributed to them occurred on March 11, 2002, when [morality police] prevented schoolgirls from escaping a burning school in Mecca, because the girls were not wearing headscarves and abayas (black robes), and not accompanied by a male guardian. Fifteen girls died and fifty were injured as a result. Widespread public criticism followed, both internationally and within Saudi Arabia.
Can you imagine a religion that would rather see girls die than go out without their coverings? (Yes, of course you can: Catholicism does something similar when it lets both mothers and babies die rather than give the mother an abortion during a life-threatening pregnancy).
Although Iran already had morality police, they’ve decided to make them more pervasive—and more insidious. According to this week’s Guardian, Iran is recruiting 7,000 undercover morality police to enforce dress codes and other infractions. There are already morality police in Iran, but their presence is obvious, as they drive around in marked vans. In response, they’ve created an app so people can see where the vans are if they want to show some hair. Now, though, there will be “undercover” police.
As the Guardian notes:
Every spring, as the temperature rises and with it the desire of people to go out, the authorities in Iran tighten their grip on social norms, increasing the number of the so-called morality police deployed in public places.
They target anything from loose-fitting headscarves, tight overcoats, shortened trousers for women and glamorous hairstyles to necklaces for men. Walking dogs has also been added to the long list of activities that upset the authorities.
It is not clear if the announcement is a response to the recent launch of the Android smartphone app Gershad, which enables users in Iran to circumvent the morality police vans based on information about their locations collected by other users.
. . . Sajedinia [Tehran’s police chief] said “confronting bad hijab and removal of veils inside cars, driving recklessly, parading in the streets, harassing women and stopping noise pollution are the priorities”, according to AFP.
The new recruits will not confront people directly, local news agencies said, but instead will send number plates to their superiors who will then officially summon them to see the police. Culprits will be prevented from selling their cars if they do not report to police after receiving a notice.
The sick thing is that, along with many Iranians, Hassan Rouhani, the nation’s president, claims to oppose the morality police, but he can’t do anything about it because they’re run not by him but but by Iran’s “Supreme Leader”, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been the all-powerful theocrat in Iran since 1989.
There’s no doubt that the use of police to arrest women who have “bad hijab” shows that wearing of the hijab is not, in general, something that women in Iran do voluntarily—out of love of Islam. Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iranian women didn’t go around veiled; there’s a huge difference between the way women dressed in 1970 and the way they dress now (see the photos in my post on Iranian and Afghan women).
The lesson is simple, and was tw**ted by Maryam Namazie, an ex-Muslim activist born in Iran and living in England:
If veiling was people's culture, you wouldn't need 7000 morality police to patrol the streets of Tehran https://t.co/QZLbftnU2W
Reader John Harshman is a birdophile, but he sent us photos of plants (we don’t get nearly enough plant pix) and a reptile as well. His captions are indented:
Here are some things I found in my neighborhood. First, a hooded oriole (Icterus cucullatus) a nectar-feeder who likes the Australian bottlebrush (Callistemon sp.) in my back yard.
Next, a hillside full of blooming California buckeyes (Aesculus californica). You can see all the huge, white flower spikes.
Here’s what they look like closer up. Unfortunately, the trees I can get close to are inside a canyon and aren’t as far along as the ones above. Imagine a spike in which the entire spike is covered with those little white flowers. California buckeyes are related to eastern species, but the seeds are much, much bigger. To use the standard sports analogy, they’re about the size of a racquetball.
CA buckeyes are famous for their radical change in appearance with the seasons. They’re deciduous, but not the way one would naively expect. They drop their leaves in the summer and start regrowing them when the winter rains come. The flowers arrive in spring, and the seeds, inside pods that look like brown pears. So you can usually spot a buckeye easily: the flowers in the spring, bare branches in summer, and bare branches with huge seeds in the fall.
These are flowers of madrone (Arbutus menziesii), a common tree in the mountains here. It’s closely related to manzanita and in the same family as rhododendrons and azaleas.
And finally, here’s a huge Southern alligator lizard (Elgeria multicarinata), relaxing on the trail.
And a photo by Stephen Barnard, who never runs out of wildlife to snap:
Young bull moose (Alces alces) growing what must be his first pair of antlers.
