Wednesday: Hili dialogue

February 7, 2018 • 6:30 am

Good morning on another snowy day: Wednesday, February 7, 2018. It’s National Fettuccine Alfredo Day, one of my favorite forms of pasta. And it’s snowing again in Chicago—only lightly today, but we’ll have snow on Friday and Saturday, too.

On this day in 1497, the actual Bonfire of the Vanities took place in Florence, during which supporters of Girolamo Savonarola burned cosmetics, art, and books. I had no idea Tom Wolfe’s novel was named after a real incident. On this day in 1898, Émile Zola began his libel trial for publishing this:

It was a letter to the French President accusing the French Army of anti-Semitism and obstruction of justice for having convicted Alfred Dreyfus of treason and sentencing him to life imprisonment. Zola’s intention was to be tried for libel so that new exculpatory evidence supporting Dreyfus could be publicized. Zola was convicted, and fled to England rather than go to jail.  Returning to France within a year, Zola was offered by the new government a choice between a pardon and a re-trial; he chose the pardon, which meant that his legal guilt remained but he was allowed to go free.  Dreyfus was fully exonerated in 1906.

On February 7, 1940, Pinocchio, Walt Disney’s second full-length animated film, was released (do you know the first one?). On this day in 1949, Joe DiMaggio became the first baseball player to get a $100,000 contract: the Yankees realized how much attendance had dropped when he was absent serving in WWII.  On this day in 1964, two things happened: the Beatles landed in New York for their first US tour, and Cassius Clay converted to Islam, taking the name Muhammad Ali. In 1984, Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert Stewart made the first untethered space walk using the “Manned Maneuvering Unit.” On November 7, 1986, President Jean-Claude Duvalier, a corrupt git, fled Haiti, ending 28 years of family rule.  Finally—and this is amazing—it was only five years ago on this day that the US state of Mississippi officially “certified” the Thirteenth Amendment, making it the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. (It had, of course, been abolished long before, as adoption of an amendment requires only 3/4 of the states.)

Notables born on this day include Henry Fuseli, a painter of grotesque scenes (1741), Charles Dickens (1812), Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867), G. H. Hardy (1877), Sinclair Lewis (1885), banjo player and singer Dock Boggs (1898; see below), and writer and bank wrecker Matt Ridley (1958).

Those who expired on November 7 include Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001), and Blossom Dearie (2009).

Below is a recording by Dock Boggs (died 1971); I have several of his songs on various collections of folk music. He was a weird-looking guy and sang weird songs, of which this is one. Even his name was weird. But, as Wikipedia notes,

[Boggs] is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues. Contemporary folk musicians and performers consider him a seminal figure, at least in part because of the appearance of two of his recordings from the 1920s, “Sugar Baby” and “Country Blues”, on Harry Smith’s 1951 collection.

Here’s “Sugar Baby”:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being her usual solipsistic self. But she’s cute.

Hili: I have a dream.
A: Me too.
Hili: Stop thinking about your dreams. Fullfil mine.

In Polish:

Hili: Mam marzenie.
Ja: Ja też.
Hili: Przestań myśleć o twoich marzeniach, zrealizuj moje.

Here’s a swell video tweet; I was surprised that the BBC allows such language, but I’m told that “The Mash Report” is a late-night comedy show. Still, no non-cable US television station would dare use such language—and so much the worse for us:

From Matthew, showing that cats are gases, expanding to fill the space allotted:

The main Google searches for “why do academics. . .?”:

https://twitter.com/AcademicsSay/status/960582579614289921

Another from Matthew. I think I’ve put this up before, but it’s so freaking adorable that I’ll do it again:

And who would have thought that turtles could be so fast?

From Grania. What kind of animal is that?

Also from Grania, a swell reflection photo:

And yesterday’s magnificent touchdown of two SpaceX boosters—perfectly synchromized. An amazing feat, and I’ll have more on this later.

Finally, we have a tweet from AstroSam, one of my great loves. Grania explains it:

The space car has the words DON’T PANIC on it, which is a reference to Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe.

She is referencing another part of the book which states that to be a good hitchhiker you always need to know where your towel is, and that you will be considered a hoopy frood (cool guy) for doing so.

Big SpaceX flight today at 1:30 EST

February 6, 2018 • 11:30 am

Reader Darrelle called to my attention that there’s a big SpaceX launch today, and it’s live on the internet (link below). His words:

I’m not sure if this kind of thing interests you, but today SpaceX will be attempting the first launch of their new Falcon Heavy rocket. This is a big deal! The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket since the Apollo and STS stacks and, if successful, will be the most powerful rocket currently operating. The launch window opens at 1:30 PM Eastern time today. The Falcon Heavy is basically 3 Falcon 9 rockets connected together. Sounds simple, but this is actually fairly complex, and while such configurations have been tried in the past, mainly (only?) by the  Soviets, they were not very successful and were notorious for failures.

SpaceX is of course known for re-using their rockets. They’ve had great success at landing the first stage boosters of their F9 rockets. They land them vertically, tail first, in a maneuver called a “hover-slam.” Instead of coming to a stop just above the ground and then gently setting down they calculate the landing burn to reach zero velocity (or nearly 0) at the same time the rocket touches down. Typical of SpaceX  they aren’t wasting any opportunities with the first launch attempt. They will be attempting to land all three of the “cores” (the 3 Falcon 9 first stage boosters that comprise the FH)—two on land and one on a barge in the Atlantic.

I really hope all goes well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if things don’t.

To see it live, click on the link below a bit before 1:30 pm Eastern time (6:30 pm GMT):

 

Templeton gives millions of dollars to promote “intellectual humility”

February 6, 2018 • 10:30 am

Perhaps readers can help me out with this one. First, remember that the goal of the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) has always been what its namesake specified in its will—Sir John’s money was to be used to promote the use of science as a way of helping make “spiritual discoveries”, i.e., entangling fact and faith. As Wikipedia notes:

. . . . .one of the major goals of the Templeton Foundation is to proliferate the monetary support of spiritual discoveries. The Templeton Foundation encourages research into “big questions” by awarding philanthropic aid to institutions and people who pursue the answers to such questions through “explorations into the laws of nature and the universe, to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity.”[29]

Templeton asserts that the purpose of the Templeton Foundation is as follows:

We are trying to persuade people that no human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities. So we are encouraging people to start using the same methods of science that have been so productive in other areas, in order to discover spiritual realities.

— Sir John Templeton, Interview with Financial Intelligence Report

What, pray tell, is a “spiritual reality”?

“Big Questions”, of course, is a euphemism for “spiritual and religious questions”, as the JTF has been sweeping the religious aspect of its mission under the rug. Here’s part of its mission statement (click on screenshot to go to site):

Note the questions. Some are already answered by science (Do we have free will? Is evolution directional? Are we immortal?), and the answers are all “no”. But of course the motivation for those questions is religious, not scientific. As for “What is love?”, do they seriously think they’ll be able to answer that? However, this shows the religious foundations that still underlie the JTF’s activities.

And the JTF is loaded. Loaded with so much dosh that they can easily skew the direction of research—in science, in sociology, in psychology, and in theology—toward the aims they want. Look at this money! $77.4 million awarded just in 2016! And the endowment is huge!

Reader Michael called my attention to one of Templeton’s recent funding areas: “science and humility”, for whose study the JTF has appropriated millions of dollars. For example, in 2013-2015 it gave 2.7 million dollars to St. Louis University to study “the philosophy and theology of intellectual humility”.

Here’s the original announcement of the grant from St. Louis University . (The middle two paragraphs come straight from Templeton’s description of the grant, in the screenshot below).

The emphases are mine:

The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility

Saint Louis University has received a generous grant from the The John Templeton Foundation to explore the subject of intellectual humility. The Templeton Foundation will contribute over $2.7 million to the project, with contributions by SLU bringing the total grant to over $3 million. The Philosophy and Theology of Intellectual Humility project will focus on a variety of philosophical and theological issues relevant to the topic of intellectual humility. The project is being led by John Greco and Eleonore Stump.

Intellectual humility is an intellectual virtue, a character trait that allows the intellectually humble person to think and reason well. It is plausibly related to open-mindedness, a sense of one’s own fallibility, and a healthy recognition of one’s intellectual debts to others. If intellectual humility marks a mean between extremes, then related vices (on the one side) would be intellectual arrogance, closed-mindedness, and overconfidence in one’s own opinions and intellectual powers, and (on the other side) undue timidity in one’s intellectual life, or even intellectual cowardice.

The project will focus on a variety of philosophical and theological issues relevant to the topic of intellectual humility, as informed by current research in the empirical sciences, including: virtue epistemology; regulative epistemology; peer disagreement; intellectual humility, intellectual autonomy and deference to authority; religious pluralism; divine hiddenness; intellectual humility and theological method; biases, heuristics, dual-process theories and evolution; intersubjectivity and mind reading.

The Saint Louis University effort complements the activities and research occurring under Templeton’s Science of Intellectual Humility project by encouraging philosophers and theologians to integrate empirical research on questions surrounding intellectual humility into their own investigations.

Note, please, that this project is “informed by current research in the empirical sciences”. What I take this to mean is that the project is aimed, as is so often the case with Templeton, at doing down naturalism and criticizing “scientism”, at the same time promoting religion by looking for “divine hiddenness” and using the “theological method”. They don’t appear to address this topic “informed by current work in theology”.  While scientists themselves can be less than humble, science itself is, and any scientist saying they were using faith to discern the truth would be laughed out of the field. All of us, even if personally arrogant, must couch our findings in terms like “this suggests that. . . ” or “we suspect. . .”. Yet theologians generally operate with certainty or near certainty, and nobody accuses them of a “lack of humility.”

As far as I can see, then, “intellectual humility” is aiming an arrow directly at science, not at theology. For when the dust settles, theology and religion are far more arrogant than science, with doubt being at best a trivial part of theology, rarely encouraged in religion, with religion having no tools to ascertain what is really true. What can be more arrogant than holding as firm truth that there is a God and his son/alter ego Jesus was killed and resurrected to expiate our sins? Or that Allah dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad through an angel, and that Qur’an is the final truth. It will be a cold day in July when Templeton decides to examine the “intellectual arrogance” of theologians!

And now Templeton has given another $5.75 million to the Humanities Institute of the University of Connecticut (click on screenshot) for another mushbrained humility initiative:

Part of the announcement (my emphasis):

The John Templeton Foundation has awarded $5.75 million to the UConn Humanities Institute for research on balancing humility and conviction in public life.

The grant is the largest for the humanities ever awarded to UConn, and is one of the largest humanities-based research grants ever awarded in the United States.

. . . The grant will allow the Humanities Institute, which is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to sponsor three high-profile public forums; summer institutes for high school teachers on how to incorporate intellectual humility into their classes; an online course on project themes; and a series of awareness-raising media initiatives. The co-principal investigator for the project is Brendan Kane, an associate professor of history and associate director of the Humanities Institute.

The project’s research activities include a visiting fellowship program hosting leaders from the academic, media, and non-profit sectors; an international research funding competition targeting interdisciplinary teams of researchers pursuing project themes; four research workshops hosted at UConn; and a collaboration with UConn’s Mellon Foundation-funded “Scholarly Communications Design Studio” for the presentation of project research in new interactive modalities.

And their definition of “intellectual humility”:

For the purposes of this CFP, intellectual humility can be understood to involve the owning of one’s cognitive limitations, a healthy recognition of one’s intellectual debts to others, and low concern for intellectual domination and certain kinds of social status. It is closely allied with traits such as open-mindedness, a sense of one’s fallibility, and being responsive to reasons. Traits and behaviors opposed to intellectual humility and its allied traits, then, would include closed-mindedness, overconfidence in one’s opinions and intellectual powers, dogmatism, an exaggerated sense of intellectual autonomy, reluctance to pursue and consider new evidence, intellectual arrogance, and intellectual vanity.

For the life of me, I can’t see the value of investing $8 million in studies of “humility”.  My take, as I said, is that this money is meant to fund studies of “scientism”: the overreach of science beyond its so-called proper boundaries, and the role that close-mindedness among scientists (e.g., towards God) impedes intellectual advance.

But I welcome other people’s takes. Templeton is really good at cloaking its accommodationist agenda, and I can’t quite figure this one out.

Finally, a cartoon comment from reader Pliny the in Between:

 

Satirical ICE posters deemed “hate speech” at Stanford University

February 6, 2018 • 9:00 am

Isaac Kipust is a student at Stanford University, which, though a private school, has a free speech policy that makes it equivalent to a state university—that is, speech is protected under the courts’ interpretation of our First Amendment. This is the case for all universities in California. As Stanford’s President and its Provost wrote:

Certain types of speech are not permitted under university policy (and, in some cases, state or federal law) – for example, threats of harm that constitute a hate crime, instances of unlawful harassment, or speech that disrupts classes or other university functions. But our commitment to free expression means that we do not otherwise restrict speech in our community, including speech that some may find objectionable. In addition, a state law in California known as the Leonard Law prevents private universities from placing restrictions on students for speech that is protected by the First Amendment; in fact, a speech code Stanford had in the early 1990s was struck down in court under this law.

Unfortunately, the University didn’t practice its own policy in the incident Kipust describes. As he reported in the Stanford Review (a conservative/libertarian student paper), students in his dorm distributed the following poster asking people to report activities of ICE (the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency). This is, of course, a liberal poster meant to call attention to legal but unsavory activities of ICE.

(Full disclosure here: while I think that some deportations are okay, both the Obama and—especially—Trump administrations deported a number of people that should have been allowed to stay in the U.S.: people who had integrated well into American society and were making contributions, despite coming here illegally long ago. And the deportations of people already living here, as opposed to arrests at or near the border, have increased under Trump. I further support the DACA policy for “dreamers.”)

At any rate, Kipust, though reporting that his feelings about immigration aren’t fully formed, felt affronted by that sign, and made his own, which he also put up in the dorm:

I wouldn’t have done that, of course, and even Kipust admits that it “definitely wasn’t the smartest or most eloquent argument I ever made” and lacked “the intellectual rigor to which I must hold myself.”  (He also criticizes the Right for inviting “provocateurs” like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter to speak.) The sign is of course not a serious call for reporting, but a satire of the first sign, and surely can’t be construed as “hate speech”.

But it was.  Kipnus’s posters were taken down and he was called to a meeting with Stanford authorities and three offended students who, he reports, cried during the meeting (my emphasis):

Asking students to report ICE activities against illegal immigrants is hardly different from asking them to report police officers and FBI agents to protect common criminals. And yet, on Wednesday afternoon, I discovered that all my flyers had been removed. Kimball Residential Fellows (RFs), biology Lecturer Andrew Todhunter and his wife Mrs. Erin Todhunter, informed me that since three students felt unsafe and hurt, they and the Kimball RAs [resident assistants] had removed my flyers.

Later that evening, I met with the Kimball RFs, RAs, three aggrieved students, Ms. Kadesia Woods of Residential Education, and Associate Dean of Students Dr. Alejandro M. Martinez, who directs Stanford’s policies on “Acts of Intolerance.” According to them, my flyers were “hate speech” and hence inappropriate for the Kimball community. Because they apparently mocked a flyer protecting an identity group, they constituted an act of intolerance. Most egregiously, because of their effect on the three crying students at the table, I was not permitted to repost my flyers.

I arrived at the meeting expecting to confirm that my flyers were protected by Stanford’s policies on free speech advertised by President Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Drell in November. Instead, I was told that feelings trumped my right to express speech others might find objectionable.

The fact that my flyers were censored because they made students cry stunned me. If speech’s impact mattered more than its content, then the possibilities for censorship were limitless. For instance, at the meeting, the other students—some University staff—were visibly emotional; I was not. Emotions are too subjective a criterion for some arguments to be accepted and others denied.

Here Stanford was clearly violating its own free speech policy. Two days later, Kipust met with the Lead Residence Dean, Dr. Lisa De La Cruz-Caldera. This time he came armed with formidable documents:

I brought with me a strongly worded defense from Professor Michael McConnell, Director of the Constitutional Law Center at the Law School, which stated that posting my flyer appeared to fall clearly within my rights because “at Stanford, lawful speech cannot be restrained or suppressed merely because it is offensive to others.” Professor Peter Berkowitz, a Senior Fellow and free speech expert at the Hoover Institution, quietly observed and took notes on my invitation and the advice of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. I was keen to prove to Stanford administrators that I might only be one student, but student liberties have strong and powerful defenders across the Stanford community.

Luckily, Dr. Cruz-Caldera chose to respect Stanford’s free speech policy. She conceded that it was wrong for staff to take down my flyer, and went even further, stating that no flyer containing speech protected by the First Amendment should ever be removed for its content. Laudably, she is now working to shape a new policy on flyers in dorms that will prohibit restrictions on content.

So all’s well that ends well, and Stanford ultimately did the right thing. What’s telling for me is that three students were actually crying during the meeting: weeping over a poster that was not only satirical, but simply supported the law—invidious though the application of that law may be.

These hyper-emotional reactions are familiar to me by now, but the only time I saw it in the past was when black people were getting physically attacked with dogs and billy clubs during the civil rights marches of the Sixties. That was real, physical pain and the normal human reaction to such brutality. But these days that kind of pain has become equivalent to the kind of emotional offense that is now deemed “painful”, “unsafe,” and a physical threat. Students need to get a grip.

Readers’ wildlife photos

February 6, 2018 • 8:00 am

Reader Gareth Price sent us some lovely landscape photos (landscapes count as “wildlife”). His notes are indented and I’ve put his captions under each photo.

Here are some landscapes and waterfalls, all taken in Oregon (I live in Portland) except the view of Yosemite.
Except for the one of the Punchbowl Falls, they are all high dynamic range photos ie they are fusions (done in software) of three photos taken at different exposures: one normal, one overexposed and one underexposed.
The Yosemite photo is taken from Olmsted point. My dad and I were taking a road trip around California and visited Yosemite. Unfortunately, we had a longish drive and couldn’t stay in the valley into the evening to take photos; however, as we passed Olmsted Point, the sun was catching the peaks beautifully so I jumped out quickly with my camera. The light only lasted a few minutes. Half Dome is on the far right.
Yosemite panorama 
The Punch Bowl Falls are along Eagle Creek in the Columbia Gorge. Sadly, this is where a wildfire was started back in September and this trail, along with many others, is closed and apparently may not open for a year or more.
Punchbowl Falls
The photo of South Sister is taken from Sparks Lake.
South Sister

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

February 6, 2018 • 7:00 am

Good morning: it’s Tuesday, February 6, 2018. Foodimentary says it’s National Chopsticks Day, but chopsticks aren’t even a food. And it’s a UN-decreed day: International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation.

Oh, be sure to listen to the BBC’s free-speech discussion today.  It’s already been on but will be broadcast again at 21:30 GMT (4:30 pm EST in the US). I hope it will then be archived.

On this day in AD 60, it was, as Wikipedia claims, “The earliest date for which the day of the week is known. A graffito in Pompeii identifies this day as a dies Solis (Sunday). In modern reckoning, this date would have been a Wednesday.”  On February 6, 1840, New Zealand became a British colony with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It’s my understanding, though, that not all Maori tribes signed on, and even the interpretation of the existing agreement is contentious.  On this day in 1918, British women got the right to vote, though they had to be over 30 and meet some property requirements. Full women’s voting rights in Britain, equivalent to those of men, weren’t established until 1921. On February 6, 1952, Elizabeth II became the queen of the UK and Commonwealth after her father George VI died. Apparently at the moment she became queen she was in a treehouse at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya. Finally, today marks the beginning of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, as the Round Table Talks with Solidarity and other dissident groups began in Poland on February 6, 1989.

Notables born on this day include Aaron Burr (1765), Charles Wheatstone (1802), J. E. B. Stuart (1833), Babe Ruth (1895), Ronald Reagan (1911), Mary Leakey (1913), François Truffaut (1932), Tom Brokaw (1940), Bob Marley (1945) and Kate McGarrigle (1946).

Those who joined the Choir Invisible on February 6 include Joseph Priestley (1804), Gustav Klimt (1918), Barbara Tuchman (1989), Danny Thomas (1991), Arthur Ashe (1993), and Max Perutz (2002). Here is the great Klimt with his beloved cat:

Meawhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is acting like a typical cat:

Hili: After doing some thinking I’ve come to a conclusion.
A: What conclusion?
Hili: I will go inside now and I will go out a moment later.
 In Polish:
Hili: Po dłuższym zastanowieniu się doszłam do wniosku.
Ja: Jakiego?
Hili: Teraz wrócę do domu, a wyjdę za chwilę.

Here’s today’s comic, from Bizarro (first sent by reader Pete, then by many others). It would have been a much better strip had the hand puppet said “. . .free will is not an illusion.” And that puppet should have been labeled “Dennett.”

A tweet found by Grania: Those who watched the t.v. show “Frasier”, will remember his curmudgeonly dad, played by John Mahoney. Mahoney died Sunday in Chicago at age 77. And you’ll also remember what the cartoon below means:

A happy Siamese:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/960219699924602881

I feel like this today:

https://twitter.com/CUTEFUNNYANIMAL/status/960481373298491395

Note an error in the translation given in the tweet below (the placement of “only” should be after “like”, not “I”).

https://twitter.com/alexhern/status/960407173279993856

Lovely footage of a whale disporting with dolphins:

Matthew sent this: be sure to turn on the video to see cryptic mantids in action:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/960220295780061185

God on the couch:

Finally, a tweet found by reader BJ, in which sheep become staff:

https://twitter.com/planetepics/status/959758424337780736