Thursday: Hili dialogue

February 15, 2018 • 6:29 am

It’s now Thursday, February 15, 2018, and National Gumdrop Day. I like only the fruit-flavored ones, and abhor the “spicy” ones. And on Vanatu it’s John Frum Day, honoring the Cargo Cult figure who, sadly, has never returned to the islands.

The death toll in the Florida school shooting remains at 17 but could rise; and the accused killer, a former student expelled for bringing knives to school, is in custody. This tweet from Grania shows the sad history of Trump and his cronies in bed with the gun lobby:

Here’s the New York Times’s graphic, divided by months, of school shootings in the U.S. over the past four years. Light dots are the injured, dark ones the dead (click to enlarge):

 

On this day in 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, Cuba, killing 274 people and precipitating the Spanish-American War.  On February 15, 1923, Greece became the last country in Europe to adopt the Gregorian calendar.  And February 15, 1925, in the famous serum run to Nome (Alaska) a group of dogsled mushers brought a second batch of diphtheria toxin to that afflicted city, covering 674 miles (1085 km) in only five and a half days and staving off an epidemic.  The 20 mushers and 100 dogs who brought the serum—the only way to get to Nome in those pre-bushplane days—were heroes. (Read the link!)  On this day in 1942, Singapore surrendered to the Japanese, with 80,000 Indian, UK, and Australians soldiers becoming prisoners of war. In 1965, the flag of Canada was changed on this day from the “Red Ensign” to the Maple Leaf Banner, and that’s why today is “National Canada Flag Day”. Here are the old and new flags (I definitely like the new one better, and it doesn’t contain the Union Jack):

On this day in 1992, Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison. Two years later he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.  Finally, on this day in 2001, the first draft of the human genome was published in Nature (as I recall, Ventner’s team published in Science at the same time, but I can’t be arsed to look it up).

Notables born on this day include Galileo Galilei (1564), Susan B. Anthony (1820), Ernest Shackleton (1874), Art Spiegelman (1948), and Matt Groening (1954). Those who died on February 15 include Nat King Cole (1965), Ethel Merman (1984), and Richard Feynman (1988).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is up to cat mischief:

Hili: Which dust cloth shall I throw down first?
A: None of them.
Hili: You must be joking.
In Polish:
Hili: Którą ścierkę zrzucić najpierw?
Ja: Żadną.
Hili: Chyba żartujesz.

 

Up in Winnipeg, Gus got a special treat yesterday. Staff Taskin reports:

Gus got some shrimp treats for his special Valentine present. They are his favourites!

Reader Barry found a cat who doesn’t want anyone to touch its Valentine candy:

https://twitter.com/marienassar_/status/963633681138176000

From Grania: a cat sets a jailed d*g free:

A funny zoo sign. Is that a llama?

The kedis of Turkey:

From Matthew, a distressing case of cervid appropriation. This must be an elk (Cervus canadensis) rather than the Scottish red deer (Cervus elpaphus), though they’ve been considered members of the same species.

The collateral damage of winter:

You call that a paw? Now THIS is a paw!

Finally, one from reader Blue, showing a well trained moggie:

https://twitter.com/StefanodocSM/status/963671231005384706

Another school shooting in Florida: At least 17 dead

February 14, 2018 • 5:39 pm

I’ve just heard on the news that at least 17 people (CNN says 16, but another has died) have been killed in a school in Parkland, Florida: the shooter was a former student who has apparently been taken into custody.

What can one say when school shootings like this become an everyday affair in America? (This is the 18th school shooting this year, and it’s only mid-February.) I can’t wish for the dead to come back. All I can do is hope for fewer guns in America, and express deep sorrow to the families, friends, and loved ones of those who were taken too soon.

UPDATE: CNN adds this:

The suspect, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, is in custody, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The sheriff said he was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.

Cornell interviewing a potential professor who claims that the Qur’an miraculously anticipated scientific findings?

February 14, 2018 • 10:40 am

UPDATE: I have heard from Dr. Telliel, who tells me that the newspaper article grossly misrepresented his arguments (which did not involve accepting miracles), and that article has been removed from the Cornell Sun. I asked him to write a correction, which is below:

The article in the Cornell Sun was written by an undergraduate student who attended my talk, and was an unfortunate misrepresentation of my research and my arguments. The article has since been removed from the Cornell Sun’s website, and an apology has been issued (http://cornellsun.com/2018/02/13/scholar-dissects-quaranic-predictions-of-scientific-miracles/).

My talk was a discussion of the beliefs held by people that I study. The article misidentified those beliefs as mine, and implied that my talk was promoting them as true or factual. There are a number of places where the reporter quoted me, but provided incorrect context, changing the meaning of my statements entirely.

I am a cultural anthropologist. I conduct ethnographic research on different views that Turkish Muslims have about modern science. One is the idea that the Qur’an “predicts” modern scientific discoveries. My talk at Cornell was an examination and analysis of this idea – as a cultural phenomenon (not as ‘fact’ or ‘truth’). In my work, I am trying to understand why this idea, but not, say, Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria, appeals to some Muslims, and how the growing popularity of this idea is reflective of broader socio-cultural transformations in Turkey and the Middle East over the last two centuries.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify this misunderstanding. I would be happy to talk with any of your readers further about my research: ytelliel@berkeley.edu

 

***************

This article appeared two days ago in the Cornell Sun, the student newspaper of the eponymous university (click on screenshot to see it):

The piece isn’t written sufficiently clearly to tell us what the scholar said, but appears to show that Yunus Telliel, a candidate for an assistant professorship in Cornell’s Near Eastern Studies department, thinks that the Qur’an seems “miraculous” not only in its language, but in its prescience about scientific miracles. Apparently, Telliel maintained in his job talk, the Qur’an gives scientific predictions that turned out to be accurate. Read this excerpt and tell me that I’m wrong:

Yunus Telliel examined Quranic “scientific miracles” — scientific discoveries that are predicted in literal translations of the Quran — in a talk in White Hall on Monday.

Telliel’s ideas originated from a conversation he had with a stranger on a bus ride to Istanbul.

His talk was part two of a three-part series hosted by the Near Eastern Studies department in its search for a new assistant professor. Telliel is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, researching the “cultural shift that transformed, and continues to transform, Quran translation practices.”

One of the predictions the Quran makes is the idea that the universe is constantly expanding and another is the prediction of the stages of fetal growth. Telliel said that both of these examples, among others, can be found in literal translations of the Quran.

Telliel argued that the fact that the Quran was revealed in Old Arabic was only a “contingent factor,” a simple byproduct of the fact that it was delivered to Arabs. He did not attribute it to Arabic linguistic superiority — a shift from what some in the Muslim world believe. Telliel argued that the “miraculous” nature of the holy book was found in more than just its language, but in its “scientific miracles.”

Although many conversations around the nature of the Quran do not delve deeply into the “scientific miracles,” the concept is one that is gaining traction with Turkish youth, especially those in the lower and middle class, according to Telliel.

A prominent group in the movement is the Istanbul Quran Research Association, an institution that focuses on the examination of “scientific miracles” and a propagation of that information into mainstream media, through television shows, books and talks.

According to Telliel, the research has served as a “translation” for many young Muslims, who find that religious and scientific discourse are “complementary vehicles of one communication.” That communication is Islamic spirituality.

Now it’s possible—and I hope it’s true—that Telliel is only describing how Muslim accommodationists manage to find vindication of their faith by twisting the Qur’an into being a miraculous predictor of scientific truth. (That doesn’t explain, of course, why it gives a creationist account of human origins). After all, this is a pastime of some Muslim scholars, as I explain on page 105 of Faith Versus Fact:

Muslim accommodationists, who, like most Muslims, take the Quran literally, have their own form of scientific creationism, asserting that the book is not only scientifically accurate on all issues, but actually anticipated every finding of modern science. The results are both pathetic and amusing. Dr. Halûk Nurbaki, for instance, collected fifty verses from the Quran, striving mightily to show that they predicted the discovery of gravity, the atomic nucleus, the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics. He translated one such verse as, “The fire you kindle arises from green trees.” Nurbaki sees this as a divine indication of the oxygen produced by plants and consumed by fire, adding, “It was impossible 14 centuries ago for unbelievers to understand the stupendous biological secret this verse contains, for the inside story of combustion was not known.” All this shows is how far some people can twist scripture to comport their faith with science. (The one exception for Muslims is human evolution: while many have no problem with evolution itself, they nearly all agree with the Quran that our species is unique, created instantly by Allah from of a lump of mud. And nearly all Muslim science classes exempt humans from the evolutionary process.)

It’s hard to imagine that a respectable scholar, let alone one interviewed by Cornell, would engage in this kind of apologetics, but the words in bold imply that he is. But perhaps he’s arguing only that Muslims—not including him—see the book as miraculous because of this kind of scientific prescience.  If that’s the case, the article might have clarified it. But his claim that the Qur’an was “delivered to Arabs” is an implicit agreement that the book was indeed dictated to Muhammed, through the angel Gabriel, by Allah.

And even if I’m wrong here, it’s still disturbing that youth in Turkey are being indoctrinated with Islam by phony demonstrations that it also serves as a textbook of science.

h/t: Tom

Okay, I have a poll for Matthew; no need to join Twitter

February 14, 2018 • 9:35 am

I didn’t realize that you had to actually JOIN Twitter to vote on Matthew’s poll about microbes. My apologies, and I’ll put Matthew’s poll here as well. PLEASE vote, and he’ll add our results to those on his poll from a few hours ago. Here it is, but you can vote here:

If you already voted on Twitter, please don’t do so here, as then the votes wouldn’t be independent.

 

The “normalization” of North Korea

February 14, 2018 • 9:15 am

I’m not the only one who’s noticed that American animus towards the world’s most repressive and tyrannical country—North Korea—has waned during the Winter Olympics. To represent his country, dictator Kim Jong-un sent his 30 year old sister Kim Yo-jong, who is now being seen as more appealing than Mike Pence. Well, she may be more attractive, but remember that Trump and his regime, though odious, is infinitely preferable to the DPRK. Further the North Korean cheerleaders are getting favorable attention, and everyone seems to think that the North Korean presence is some kind of harbinger of peace. It’s all beer and skittles over there.

Well, I do favor us trying to talk to North Korea, but as I’ve said before, I think it’s futile. If we know anything, it’s that Kim Jong-un will give up neither his nuclear program nor his relentless propaganda campaign against the U.S.—much less the shameful and disgusting way he treats his people—and I see little to be gained from talks. Well, let us still talk to them if it will make us feel better, but let us not think that North Korea is now serious about any settlement that doesn’t let it have nuclear weapons or dominate a unified Korea. South Korea, I maintain, was duped, and what we see is a “charm offensive” by the DPRK that’s actually working. It’s almost as if people hate Trump (and his emissary Pence) so much that they’re willing, in their anger, to smile on a representative of the world’s worst country.

BuzzFeed recounts some of the “normalization” of the DPRK in an article called (apparently to appeal to the kids) “PSA: Kim Jong Un’s sister is not your fave shade queen. She’s a garbage monster.” (Subtitle: “What the hell is wrong with you people?”)

And here’s some of that normalization:

Look at this bullshit!:

Here’s the headline of the NYT story (click on screenshot), which spends a lot of time criticizing Pence, adding just a bit at the end to tell us that the DPRK has “repression and human rights abuses”.

And this from a credulous Tweeter:

https://twitter.com/flyosity/status/962148537076240384

For a riposte to the following WaPo tweet (don’t they know better?), read Frank Bruni’s column in today’s New York Times: “The Ivanka Trump of North Korea? Oh, please.” It ends with these two sentences: “But there can be no mistake: America is in a rotten moment. North Korea is rotten to the core.”

And USA Today called the North Korean cheerleaders, who creep me out, “amazing” and “a huge hit”, adding this tweet:

Do we really need to be reminded of the perfidies of North Korea: how the government starves its people, prevents them from having any outside contact with the world, imprisons them in horrible camps (along with their families) for imagined crimes, and executes them in public, forcing people to watch? Has Donald Trump got us so deranged us that we’ll ignore all these human rights abuses in admiration of Kim Yo-Jong’s “style”?

The Hill also reproves the media for their unseemly fawning in a piece called “At the Olympics, North Korea’s appalling media boosters.” An excerpt:

Kim Yo-Jong, sister to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, received not merely respectful, but even complimentary coverage. Most egregious among the media outlets was a CNN piece titled “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics.” It’s opening line stated “If diplomatic dance were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister would be favored to win gold.”

This is bizarre and disgraceful. For one, Kim Yo-Jong is not a powerless dignitary or mere figurehead family member in North Korea. She is the director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Worker’s Party of Korea, where she helps oversee the brainwashing and psychological terror apparatus of the North Korean state. The rush to praise the “diplomacy” of a woman whose country currently holds around 100,000 political prisoners in multi-generational concentration camps is malicious stupidity.

Kim is also a member of the Politburo, and is considered one of the most senior and trusted advisors to Kim Jong Un. She is specifically sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for her role in North Korea’s crimes against humanity. By all accounts, Kim is not just complicit in the atrocities of the North Korean state: she is an enthusiastic participant. While the South Korean government has to treat Kim according to protocol, there is absolutely no excuse for journalists to fawn over her.

This is from Think Progress (click on screenshot). Historic? We’ll see about that. And again, it’s mostly critical of Pence:

Now I’ll grant that Pence could have been civil to Kim Yo-jong, and shook her hand, but to say that this is some kind of contest that North Korea is winning is to neglect the whole historical background of the conflict. It is to be duped—just as many on the American Left were duped by Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Here’s another so-called “Leftist” who’s been duped. He’d do really well in North Korea! I suppose this is the Leftist equivalent of lying for Jesus:

https://twitter.com/danarel/status/963504921923305472