Moar adventures with the TSA

April 11, 2016 • 2:30 pm

I forgot to note that, on leaving Chicago for Houston, I was again groped on the buttocks by the avid agents of the Transportation Security Administration. Once again the see-you-naked machine showed a yellow patch on my lower back, and so I was once again thoroughly goosed. (The same patch showed up a short while ago when I went through security at Houston’s Hobby Airport, but they just swiped my tuchus lightly.) I’m not sure what it is about my rump and lower back that sets off these machines, but I swear that I haven’t had buttock implants, and there’s no metal in there.

In Chicago, they not only goosed me, but swabbed my hands AND my computer for explosives (none were found). I have no idea why they did this.

But the saddest thing I saw was this guy in a wheelchair in Houston, who got the most thorough examination I’ve ever seen. I didn’t want to take a lot of photos with my camera, but I saw them not only pat him down thoroughly, but put their fingers underneath his waistband and run them completely around his body.  I can imagine what that felt like! And then they patted down every part of his body and thoroughly inspected his wheelchair. I’m starting to get damn sick of this stuff. What about this man made them think he was more of a potential terrorist than anyone else?

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Ohio State University stands up to student protestors

April 11, 2016 • 1:30 pm

According to a report on April 6 by the NBC channel in Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University students staged a sit-in the University’s Bricker Hall about issues of “diversity, sexual assault, and the university’s budget.” Here are some of the student statements and “demands” linked by the station:

PDF: #ReclaimOSU Press Statement

PDF: An Open Letter to President Drake From Concerned Faculty

PDF: #ReclaimOSU-Demands

The administration decided that the sit-in was a violation of the student code of conduct, as it disrupted people who worked in the building. The students who remained after a deadline would thus be subject to arrest and likely expulsion. In the video below, OSU Senior Vice President Jay Kasey explained to the demonstrators about their impending arrest and expulsion should they fail to leave the building:

This is a rare instance of a university standing up to students protests. (Most have let the students continue illegal sit-ins.) Of course, the students complain during the video that they shouldn’t be arrested, but that’s the nature of civil disobedience: you disobey the law, and you take the consequences—something that was part and parcel of the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties. Now, however, students want the right to break the law, or violate university regulations, without consequences.  After all, they’re Special Snowflakes.

Later that evening, and before the deadline, the students dispersed. I guess they didn’t adhere to their claim that they wouldn’t leave the building until their demands were met. Here’s the list of those demands:

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You can read more on the NBC site.

British Muslims feel at home in Old Blighty, but still hold retrograde views

April 11, 2016 • 12:00 pm

According to today’s Guardian, a poll taken for Channel 4 in the UK reveals that while Muslims feel at home in England, they aren’t psychologically integrated into the Englightenment values undergirding British society. While this is no surprise to those who have watched documentaries about British Muslims, or have seen earlier and similar polls, the Muslim failure to internalize Western “values” is still worrying, and should give pause to those who continue to claim that, in their sociopolitical views, Muslims are basically the same as non-Muslims who share their land.

Here are the data; quotes are taken directly from the Guardian story. The survey was conducted between April and May of last year; there were 1008 individuals in the Muslim group and 1000 in the “general population” group. Oddly, the Muslims were interviewed in person and the others by phone. That’s bad polling technique, but also means it’s likely that the figures for Muslims espousing non-“British” views are likely to be underestimates.

The results:

  • “The research suggests that 86% of British Muslims feel a strong sense of belonging in Britain, which is higher than the national average of 83%. A large majority (91%) of the British Muslims who took part in the survey said they felt a strong sense of belonging in their local area, which is higher than the national average of 76%.”
  • “Of those questioned, 88% said Britain was a good place for Muslims to live in, and 78% said they would like to integrate into British life on most things apart from Islamic schooling and some laws.”

But then things get worrisome. Note the disparity between figures for British Muslims and that of the population as a whole:

  • “. . . when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed.”

Get that? 52% of British Muslims want homosexuality to be made illegal in Britain—more than ten times the figure for the general population.

  • “Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.”
  • “Nearly a quarter (23%) supported the introduction of sharia law in some areas of Britain, and 39% agreed that “wives should always obey their husbands”, compared with 5% of the country as a whole.”

That comports with the Pew data from other countries, and explains why Muslim student societies try to segregate women from men.

  • “Two-thirds (66%) said they completely condemned people who took part in stoning adulterers, and a further 13% condemned them to some extent.”

How can you condemn this “to some extent”? And seriously, 34% of British Muslims refuse to completely condemn those who stone adulterers (or perhaps have no opinion)?  If you’ve ever watched a stoning, you’ll know that even 34% is a barbarically high figure.

  • “Nearly a third (31%) thought it was acceptable for a British Muslim man to have more than one wife, compared with 8% of the wider population.”

The Guardian notes that pollsters also asked people about “their attitudes toward the Jews,” but, curiously, those data aren’t given in the article. But you can find them in the Jewish Chronicle:

  • “Extensive research by polling group ICM for Channel 4 found that the Muslim community is more likely to believe that Jewish people have too much power in Britain and too much power over government, media, the business world, international financial markets, and global affairs. Jews were also said to be responsible for most of the world’s wars.”=
  • “Asked whether they thought antisemitism was a problem in Britain today, only 26 per cent of 1,081 British Muslims who took part in the poll said they would describe it as ‘a problem’ – compared to 46 per cent of the 1,008 people in the poll’s control group, representative of the average UK citizen.”
  • Thirty one per cent agreed that Jews have too much power in government compared to seven per cent in the national average; 39 per cent of Muslims felt Jewish people have too much power over the media, compared to 10 per cent nationally; while 44 per cent of British Muslims said Jews have too much power in business compared to 18 per cent.
  • More than 40 per cent of British Muslims said Jews were more loyal to Israel than the UK, while 34 per cent said Jewish people talk “too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust”.
  • It found that 26 per cent of British Muslims believe that Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars, compared to six per cent nationally; while 27 per cent said that people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave.

This is the one bright spot, assuming that everyone’s telling the truth:

  • “In a series of questions on the terror threat in Britain, 4% said they sympathised with people who took part in suicide bombings (1% said they completely sympathised and 3% said they sympathised to some extent), and 4% said they sympathised with people who committed terrorist actions as a form of political protest generally.”

These findings will be given in a documentary, “What British Muslims Really Think” which will be broadcast this Wednesday on Channel 4. You can see the program guide here.

The Guardian piece goes on to quote Trevor Philips, the program’s presenter and former head of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission:

“We are more nervous about Muslims because we feel people will be offended. But my view is that looking at the results of this survey, which have surprised me, that we have gone beyond the situation where we can say: ‘OK, don’t worry; they will come round in time,’ because that is not going to happen we have to make things change now.'”

But then the article quotes some British Muslims who find these figures encouraging, saying that things are changing, and implying that all will be well. They, in turn, are countered by Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP, who worries that things are not changing—that integration of Muslims into British society isn’t working well.

Regardless, this is one disparity you cannot blame on colonialism. Regardless of how much Muslim disaffection you think has been caused by the West’s intervention in the Middle East, these attitudes about gays, about sharia law, and about women reflect cultural differences heavily conditioned by religious differences.

I wonder how people like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, and C. J. W*rl*m*n will explain these data. My own view is that the difference won’t disappear simply after the Muslims have lived longer in the UK. Rather, they have to give up some of the tenets of their faith.

My conversation with Gad Saad

April 11, 2016 • 10:30 am

On Gad Saad‘s new videocast, “The Saad Truth” on Larry King’s network (Ora.tv), I talked with the affable Lebanese/Canadian psychologist for about 75 minutes. The original video is here, but it’s also on YouTube, which I’ve embedded. As always, I can’t stand to watch it; maybe you can.

Saad, as I’ve noted before, is a really nice guy, and though he has strong feelings about stuff like free speech and unthinking critics of evolutionary psychology, he’s always very mild-mannered when he’s proselytizing. Gad’s the kind of guy you’d want to have a few beers with. He also writes a column at Psychology Today, Homo Consumericus.

Britain’s National Union of Students excludes gay men from LGBT groups because those gays aren’t sufficiently oppressed

April 11, 2016 • 9:00 am

This story, from reason.com, is a few weeks old, having languished in the queue of stuff I have to post. But it’s still timely, for it demonstrates clearly how the Left is beginning to eat itself as various groups vie for the title of Most Oppressed.

On March 22 the site reported that the “LGBT+ Campaign” of Britain’s National Union of Students—that most ridiculous of Authoritarian Leftist groups—has decided that gay males aren’t as oppressed as the rest of the LGBT contingent, and passed a resolution that gay men should no longer be represented on their committees. (See also the report on PinkNews.)

The motion, which you can find here (it’s #408) says this:

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That is, the committees are there to ensure not that bigotry based on sexual behavior or identity is eliminated from society, but from the groups themselves, and apparently gay men on the committees perpetuate bigotry. Therefore, they have to go.

Here’s the resolution (see #4):

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As Pink News noted, this resolution is in fact at odds with assertions in the rest of the NUS document:

Pink News noted the irony of the motion—other approved motions stressed that gay men were at increased risk of HIV infection, and even violence, relative to other marginalized groups.

Other motions were just as absurd. One asserted that the ‘A’ often found in the LGBT+ acronym should and must always stand for “ace” (as in, asexual), rather than “ally.”

It’s easy to laugh at these developments, though they speak to a real sickness on the left: hysterical obsession with group identity. In the eyes of the NUS LGBT Campaign, no one is an individual—everyone must be labelled according to their sexual preference, skin color, and gender expression, and then assigned a grievance based on the collective wisdom of their similarly marginalized peers.

In Resolution 210, the NUS instructs local LGBT+ groups on the proper use of acronyms:

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There’s really nothing to add to this; all we can do is sit on the sidelines and watch people who are basically on the same side ingest each other.

Readers’ wildlife photographs

April 11, 2016 • 7:30 am

Well, we don’t often get a full biology lesson along with our photographs, but we are lucky to have reader Lou Jost, who’s not only a crack photographer and artist, but a naturalist and biologist living and working in Ecuador. I’ve posted about treehoppers before, but Lou has encountered them in the flesh (rather, in the chitin). Here are his photos and a comprehensive update on mebracid biology; his notes are indented:

You’ve written a lot about the weird membracid treehoppers (here, here, here, here, and here). Ever since reading those posts, I’ve wanted to see one of the fancier ones myself. Last week it finally happened! I found a group of membracid treehoppers (Cyphona cf. trifida) eating a rare plant I was growing in my yard (in the eastern Andes of Ecuador). They’re just 7mm long and so darn cute!

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Your posts and commenters wondered what function those weird antenna-like back appendages might have. As you mentioned, some definitely mimic ants. Others may mimic insect-eating fungus. Some may just protect the body from predators by acting as a spiny shield.

But recently people found out that these bugs sing through the stems of their host plants, vibrating the stems at frequencies that humans could hear, if the vibration could be mechanically transmitted to the air. People have made such devices and there are now libraries of treehopper songs!! The songs are complex and a given individual can give different calls depending on context: warning calls, male courting songs, female acceptance songs, etc, much like simple birds. Males may even jam the songs of other males. The babies even call for their mother when disturbed by a predator, and the mother comes to the rescue!! Almost certainly they also signal their ant associates using this medium.

This makes me wonder if the weird helmets with their “antennae” may play a role in adjusting the frequencies of sounds emitted, or if they may be resonators to better detect some of these signals. The helmets are completely hollow and only attached at the neck and front legs. One of the commenters in one of your threads made a similar suggestion. (Another comment somewhere suggested that the antennae are actually used to communicate their earthly observations to the Mother Ship.)

Anyway these things are a joy to watch.

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Turns out there may another side to the story of insects using plants to transmit their songs. . . Heidi Appel and Rex Cocroft (the latter a specialist in membracid songs) discovered that plants can “hear” insect-generated vibrations (in this case, caterpillars chewing) and increase their production of defensive chemicals in response!! So far, however, Arabidopsis (the plant used in the experiments) did not respond to leafhopper songs, only to caterpillar chewing. But membracids mostly feed on trees and perhaps some tropical trees can hear their songs and respond. Interesting future avenues for study.

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Here’s a great video about membracids, set in eastern Ecuador:

The narration was originally in English for Animal Planet but is so banal and ungrammatical I can’t bear to listen to it. I don’t understand French but the narration sounds mysterious and beautiful in that language! Much better than the English version, trust me. But it has some gaps. The English version is here (Rex Cocroft’s bits are good; skip to the 2:00 timeframe.)

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Photo notes: The mating pair and the individual clinging to a stem were taken in life (taken with a little Panasonic FZ300 + Raynox close-up lens). The others were of preserved specimens, made by focus-stacking (some involving 600+ stacked images) using an SLR with 90mm, 135mm, or 200mm lenses. In front of these lenses I attached a reversed Nikkor 60mm macro lens or reversed 50mm Nikon enlarger lens which act as highly-corrected close-up lenses.

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Monday: Hili dialogue (and many lagniappes)

April 11, 2016 • 6:30 am

Happy Monday, April 11. On this day in 1727, Bach’s “The Passion of St. Matthew” premiered in Leipzig. On this day in 1945, Allied forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, and, in 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann began (remember “the banality of evil”?). On this day in 1976, the Apple 1, the first Apple product, was created. Six working examples remain. Notables born on this day include Kasturba Gandhi (1869) and Ethel Kennedy (1928; still with us).  Those who died on April 11 include Primo Levi (1987) and Kurt Vonnegut (2007). So it goes.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus (who learned to like cats only reluctantly) is protesting that Hili is treating him like her private property:

Cyrus: I told you that I dislike cats.
A: What are you on about?
Cyrus: Look what she is doing now.

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In Polish:
Cyrus: Mówiłem, że nie lubię kotów.
Ja: O co ci chodzi?
Cyrus: Patrz co ona teraz wyprawia.
And in Wroclawek, Leon is mourning the advent of Monday, even though cats don’t have to work:

Leon: I just had time to rest my head on the pillow when it was the end of the weekend.

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Out in Winnipeg, Gus’s IKEA box has almost been converted to a cardboard mat. The lad continues to gnaw, and will need a new box soon. At least he’s getting his fiber!

Courtesy of reader Stan, here’s a photo of Dan Barker and I discussing FvF on Saturday:

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Finally, readers Linda Calhoun and Diane G. both sent me this Non Sequitur cartoon by Wiley Miller. I’m sure many believers are conflicted about whether it’s offensive or not (it is):

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Poland backs off draconian stance on abortion

April 10, 2016 • 4:30 pm

I’ve written a few articles on the regressive and pro-Catholic new government in Poland (the “Law and Justice” party), and especially its proposed abortion ban, a bill that would ban all abortions (see here and here), even if the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life, involves a deformed or medically doomed fetus, or results from rape or incest.

Many Polish women (and men) rose up in protest at this draconian move, and I’m happy to report that, at least according to the Financial Times, the Polish government appears to be backing off.

Poland’s ultraconservative government this week backed away from supporting a proposal to ban abortion, its first major retreat in the face of public condemnation. Leaders of the ruling Law and Justice party had previously been backing a complete ban, even for women who had been raped.

The party has previously ignored public protest and international ire to push through laws, as part of its stated mission to “fix” Poland after winning a sweeping majority in October. This push has included new rules that give the government power over public media stations and change the working of the country’s top court.

The broadly Eurosceptic and nationalist party has remained defiant as its flurry of legislation has sparked sovereign debt downgrades, criticism from human rights bodies and the first-ever EU investigation into whether a European government has endangered “rule of law”.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told reporters late this week that a proposal by the country’s powerful Catholic church to ban all abortions called for consideration and discussion — a marked change of course from their support for the ban seven days earlier.

Polish women also used a new social-media tactic, one that’s been used in countries like Ireland, and may have worked in this case. The government, after all, can’t afford to lose the support of a substantial part of its population:

After Ms Szydlo said she supported the ban because she cared for female fertility, her Facebook profile page was inundated with messages from Polish women detailing their menstruation cycles, their sexual health and their attempts to get pregnant.

Even if the law remains unchanged in Poland, it’s still not a great one, for Poland, like the Republic of Ireland, currently bans all abortions except in when it endangers the mother’s health, when the fetus is malformed, or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest. In other words, the “choice” is severely limited. Such is the power of the Catholic Church in Poland.

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Polish women up in arms. Caption from the Guardian: “People demonstrate against the Polish government’s plans of tightening the abortion law in Kraków on 3 April. The signs read: ‘I’m giving a birth from love not from being forced’ and ‘My womb does not belong to homeland.’ Photograph: Łukasz Kamiński/Agencja Gazeta/Reuters”