Friday: Hili dialogue

January 19, 2018 • 6:30 am

We’ve reached Friday again—January 19, 2018—and the high temperature will at last rise above freezing in Chicago (it’s now 28° F: -2° C). It’s National Popcorn Day, and in the Indian state of Tripura it’s Kokborok Day, celebrating the local language.

On this day in 1829, Goethe’s Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy, was first performed. In 1853, Verdi’s opera Il trovatore was first performed—in Rome.  Two electricity innovations occurred on January 19: in 1883, the first overhead-wire electrical lighting system, devised by Thomas Edison, began service in New Jersey; and in 1915 Georges Claude patented the neon discharge tube (neon lights) to use in advertisements. On January 19, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded. In 1940, according to Wikipedia, “You Nazty Spy!, the very first Hollywood film of any kind to satirize Adolf Hitler and the Nazis premieres, starring The Three Stooges, with Moe Howard as the character ‘Moe Hailstone satirizing Hitler.” In case you’re curious, here’s the entire 18-minute short. The big question is: would Dan Arel punch Moe?

On this day in 1953, the majority of television sets in the U.S. (73% of them) were tuned to the show “I Love Lucy” for the episode “Lucy Goes to the Hospital“, in which Little Ricky was born.  On this day in 1978, the last VW Beetle made in Germany left the plant in Emden. Production of the Beetle continued in Mexico until 2003, but, sadly, they’re no longer made. In my youth I spent many hours standing by the side of the road with my thumb out, watching for a Beetle—or, better yet, its larger cousin the Volkswagen bus—to come by; the probability that they were driven by fellow hippies, and would give me a ride, was high.  Did any readers have a Beetle, or still have one? Finally, on this day in 1983, the Apple Lisa, Apple Inc.’s first personal computer with a mouse and a graphical interface, was announced.

Notables born on this day include Robert E. Lee (1807), Edgar Allen Poe (1809), Paul Cézanne (1839), Lester Flatt (1914), Phil Everly (1939), Janis Joplin (1943), Dolly Parton (1946), photographer Cindy Sherman (1954) and geneticist Cliff Tabin (also 1954).  Those who died on January 19 include William Congreve (1729), Debendranath Tagore (1905), Thomas Hart Benton (1975), William O. Douglas (1980), James Dickey (1997), Carl Perkins (1998), and Hedy Lamarr (2000; she was not only an actress and singer, but an inventor who devised a torpedo-jamming system that was later used by the U.S. Navy. According to Wikipedia, ” Lamarr and [George] Antheil’s work with spread spectrum technology led to the development of GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.”) Also deceased on this day were Wilson Pickett (2006; I touched him once when he performed at William and Mary for a dance), Suzanne Pleshette (2008), and my favorite baseball player of all time, Stan Musial (died 2013), who played for the St. Louis Cardinals—and only the Cardinals—for 22 years. My father, a huge Cardinals fan, often saw Stan “The Man” Musial play in St. Louis and (on a visiting team) in Pittsburgh (I saw him play once, at the end of his career), and turned me on to his abilities and to Musial’s reputation for being a nice guy. (My dad told me that Musial “never questioned an umpire’s call”). Musial’s father was a Polish immigrant, and so Musial’s real name was Stanisław Franciszek Musiał. Here are some of his accomplishments as recounted on Wikipedia:

Musial batted .331 over the course of his career and set National League (NL) records for career hits (3,630), runs batted in (1,951), games played (3,026), at bats (10,972), runs scored (1,949) and doubles (725), his 475 career home runs then ranked second in NL history behind Mel Ott’s total of 511. His 6,134 total bases remained a major league record until surpassed by Hank Aaron, and his hit total still ranks fourth all-time, and is the highest by any player who spent his career with only one team. A seven-time batting champion with identical totals of 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 hits on the road, he was named the National League’s (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times and led St. Louis to three World Series championships. He also shares the major league record for the most All-Star Games played (24) with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

He also became noted for his harmonica playing, a skill he acquired during his playing career. Known for his modesty and sportsmanship, Musial was selected for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999. In February 2011, President Barack Obama presented Musial with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of the highest civilian awards that can be bestowed on a person by the United States government.

I believe he still holds the record for hitting five home runs in a single day—in a double header.  Here’s a 5-minute summary of his career (yes, the video does work). Obama’s encomiums for Musial begin at 2:32.

Finally, on this day two years ago, ecologist Richard Levins died; I knew him slightly and his office at Harvard’s main campus was on our floor in the MCZ. Levins ran his lab like a Marxist collective (he was a Marxist), and even had “criticism sessions” in which his entire lab would go into a closed room and single out one person to chastise for political improprieties. It was the Cultural Revolution enacted at Harvard! I sometimes saw students leaving these sessions in tears.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, restless and housebound by the snow, is fighting with the rug:

Hili: I will teach it a lesson!
A: But it was lying down quietly, doing nothing
Hili: Exactly.
In Polish:
Hili: Ja go nauczę!
Ja: Ale on leżał sobie spokojnie i nic nie robił.
Hili: No właśnie.

And out in frigid Winnipeg, Gus (also housebound) watches for rabbits from his Katzenbaum:

 

A tweet from Stephen Fry found by Grania. Look at that determined kid!

Also from Grania: really wonderful Japanese paper toys. Can I have one of the penguins? (I haven’t talked about my penguin fetish.)

https://twitter.com/PhysicsVideo_/status/954195612311764994

A bizarre tweet found by Matthew:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/953988871662067712

Rescued fawn returned to mom

January 18, 2018 • 1:30 pm

Here’s a 16-minute heartwarmer about a white-tailed deer fawn (Odocoileus virginianus) with an injured leg who was abandoned by her mother, rescued, rehabilitated, and eventually returned to mom. All’s well that ends well! The fawn is adorable, and you can see it interact with pet cats and dogs.

The video maker adds some other links;

Here is follow up video one year after release:  https://youtu.be/GvRcix5-qVs

Here is few videos how she learn to drink milk and bathing: https://youtu.be/-KNY_UXHc44 and https://youtu.be/dgNJ05cRXdo

The man appears to be of Russian descent, but the rescue appears to be in the Rockies.

More on #MeToo #TimesUp, and schisms within feminism

January 18, 2018 • 12:00 pm

I suppose the fracturing of feminism that’s the byproduct of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements—both creating a tsunami of pushback against the misuse of power—was inevitable. For what is considered “consent” varies widely among people, and feelings are running high. I strongly support the calling-out of anyone who uses their power to prey sexually on others, and the reporting, firing, or jailing of those who violate employer’s norms or the law.  But given the present political climate, I think one could have predicted that a bit of the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. Here are a few pieces about current disputes about these issues. (I’m not writing about the justified accusations against people like Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey, as discussions of those are amply available on the Internet.)

If there’s a writer who should be a feminist icon, it’s Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, many of whose works deal with women oppressed by patriarchy. She wrote, for instance, The Handmaid’s Tale, something of a feminist must-read (it was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize). Yet she’s now been damned by many feminists because she signed an open letter to the University of British Columbia (UBC), which decried UBC for its climate of secrecy around the case of Steven Galloway, former Chair of the Creative Writing Program. Accused of sexual assault, Galloway was cleared after a judge’s inquiry, but was fired anyway. The letter simply calls for fairness and openness toward Galloway, and for an independent investigation of how UBC handled Galloway’s case.

That was enough to damn Atwood in the eyes of many women, and she voices her distress in a new article in the Globe and Mail, “Am I a bad feminist?” Her answer is “yes, to many ‘good’ feminists.  An excerpt:

The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn’t get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next? The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall, and also a lot of asteroids.

If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place? Who will be the new power brokers? It won’t be the Bad Feminists like me. We are acceptable neither to Right nor to Left. In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn’t puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.

Yesterday I wrote about the Aziz Ansari affair, which began with a piece published on Babe by Katie Way, recounting the sexual liaison that a woman called “Grace” had with actor and comedian Aziz Ansari. Columnist Bari Weiss in the New York Times wrote a column defending Ansari against charges of sexual predation, claiming that while he was guilty of being boorish, he could not be expected to pick up “nonverbal cues.” An excerpt from Weiss’s piece:

There is a useful term for what this woman [“Grace”] experienced on her night with Mr. Ansari. It’s called “bad sex.” It sucks.

The feminist answer is to push for a culture in which boys and young men are taught that sex does not have to be pursued as if they’re in a pornographic film, and one in which girls and young women are empowered to be bolder, braver and louder about what they want. The insidious attempt by some women to criminalize awkward, gross and entitled sex takes women back to the days of smelling salts and fainting couches. That’s somewhere I, for one, don’t want to go.

A related piece, by Elizabeth Breunig in the Washington Post, is not as powerful but does add—and I agree—that we need to have a public conversation about sex, which differs from other forms of human interaction that have well defined and widely understood rules of etiquette. Breunig implicitly criticizes both Ansari, for lacking the empathy to see his date was uncomfortable, and Grace, for not having the temerity to just leave the apartment and the situation:

Instead, we ought to appreciate that sex is a domain so intimate and personal that more harm can be done than in most social situations, and that given that heightened capacity for harm, we should expect people to operate with greater conscientiousness, concern and care in that domain than in others. If you are still hanging around your tired host’s home long after the party is over, excuse yourself and leave — don’t wait for them to order you out or call the police. If you are kissing someone and they’re barely responsive — if they say, as Ansari’s partner did, “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you” — then get their coat for them and call it a night. Ansari didn’t commit a crime. But cruelty isn’t restricted to criminal acts. In all domains of life, but especially where it comes to sex, we must insist that people consider one another’s interior lives, feelings, personhood, dignity.

I also posted a video by HLN and former CNN Anchor Ashleigh Banfield (here), strongly criticizing both Grace and Katie Way for the Babe piece. I’ve never seen a news anchor so publicly exercised, even mentioning the term “blue balls”, but Banfield was plenty angry. Some of her words from that video:

“But what you [Grace] have done in my opinion is appalling. You went to the press with the story of a bad date and potentially destroyed this man’s career. . . And now here is where I am going to claim victim. You have chiseled away at a movement that I, along with all of my sisters in the workplace, have been dreaming of for decades: a movement that has finally changed an oversexed professional environment that I too have struggled with over the last thirty years in broadcasting.”

After hearing this, Katie Way invited to appear on television, refused and wrote a nasty email about Banfield. A piece in MEDIAite by Lawrence Bonk (?): “Ashleigh Banfield fires back after getting insulting email from writer of Aziz Ansari piece.“, gives Way’s gratuitiously nasty email response. Here it is in full (originally from Business Insider):

It’s an unequivocal no from me. The way your colleague Ashleigh (?), someone I’m certain no one under the age of 45 has ever heard of, by the way, ripped into my source directly was one of the lowest, most despicable things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Shame on her. Shame on HLN. Ashleigh could have “talked” to me. She could have “talked” to my editor or my publication. But instead, she targeted a 23-year-old woman in one of the most vulnerable moments of her life, someone she’s never f—— met before, for a little attention. I hope the ratings were worth it! I hope the ~500 RTs on the single news write-up made that burgundy lipstick bad highlights second-wave feminist has-been feel really relevant for a little while. She DISGUSTS me, and I hope when she has more distance from the moment she has enough of a conscience left to feel remotely ashamed — doubt it, but still. Must be nice to piggyback off of the fact that another woman was brave enough to speak up and add another dimension to the societal conversation about sexual assault. Grace wouldn’t know how that feels, because she struck out into this alone, because she’s the bravest person I’ve ever met. I would NEVER go on your network. I would never even watch your network. No woman my age would ever watch your network. I will remember this for the rest of my career — I’m 22 and so far, not too shabby! And I will laugh the day you fold. If you could let Ashleigh know I said this, and that she is no-holds-barred the reason, it’d be a real treat for me.

Thanks,
Katie

Banfield responds here (her response begins 50 seconds in):

Banfield, who applauded the #MeToo movement in her video yesterday, is certainly a feminist, but, like Atwood, wants both compassion in sexual encounters as well as legal and professional punishment of those who violate the law in those encounters.

Finally, and I’ll just drop this in passing, there’s yet another controversy involving Catherine Deneuve, who, along with others, signed an open letter (which could have been clearer) decrying the infantilization of women they discern in regarding every come-on as sexual harassment. It’s too long to go over this one, so, if you want to see the ire it’s aroused, read the Quillette essay by Ulysse Pasquier, “Catherine Deneuve, #MeToo, and the fracturing within feminism.“

Ethan Siegel damns those who claim that science and religion are incompatible

January 18, 2018 • 9:30 am

Reader Steve sent me an email with a link and his comment: “I enjoy reading Ethan Siegel’s posts. This one goes a bit too far in support of religion in my opinion.”  I didn’t really know who Siegel was, but he’s apparently pretty well known: his Wikipedia bio describes him as is “an American theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, who studies Big Bang theory. He is a professor at Lewis & Clark College and he blogs at Starts With a Bang, on ScienceBlogs and also on Forbes.com since 2016.” They add this:

Described as “beautifully illustrated and full of humour”, [Siegel’s] blog won the 2010 Physics.org award for best blog, judged by Adam Rutherford, Alom Shaha, Gia Milinovich, Hayley Birch, Lata Sahonta, and Stuart Clark and the people’s choice award, and his post “Where Is Everybody?” came third in the 2011 3 Quarks Daily science writing awards, judged by Lisa Randall, winning a “Charm Quark” for “[taking] on the challenge of simplifying probability estimates without sacrificing the nature of the enterprise or suppressing the uncertainties involved”. Siegel headed the RealClearScience list of top science bloggers in 2013, as his “unmatched ability to describe the nearly indecipherable made him an easy choice for #1.” Siegel also wrote a column for NASA, The Space Place.

I’ll take people’s word about the high quality of Siegel’s blog, but it’s surely been diminished a tad by his new piece on Medium (the apparent host of “Starts with a Bang”) to which Steve pointed me:  “Yes, science is for the religious, too.” It’s a poorly thought out defense of accommodationism that is short on arguments and long on thinly-disguised invective against people like me, who, he says, are harmful to society because we don’t recognize that religious people can like science and that science isn’t “hostile to faith”.  It’s basically Steve Gould’s NOMA argument all over again: “People of good will should recognize the beneficial effects of both science and religion, and respect each other’s views. Those who don’t are simply hurting society.” (That’s my characterization, not Siegel’s quote.)

And here’s how non-accommodationists hurt society:

There’s a public perception that’s harmful to everyone: that science is hostile to faith, and that religious people aren’t interested in science. Yet this is not what the data shows at all. While there certainly exist scientists that are elitist and antagonistic towards religion, the vast majority of scientists share the same levels and types of religiosity as the other members of their country’s culture. While there are a number of religious people who have no interest in science, widespread surveys indicate that most religious people support science quite strongly.

. . . To push the viewpoint that religion and science are inherently at odds not only does a great deal of damage to the integrity of both, it runs contrary to people’s actual, lived experiences.

The “lived experiences” trope alerts you immediately that there may be some virtue-signaling going on here, and I think there is. But let’s look at Siegel’s argument, which is threefold:

1.) Many religious people are interested in science and support scientific research.  That’s true; I have no quarrel with this. But that doesn’t address my own argument, made in Faith Versus Fact, that the grounds for incompatibility have nothing to do with whether scientists can be religious and religious people can be fans of science. This kind of cognitive bifurcation just shows that people can accept two incompatible ways of judging what is “true” at the same time. Here’s my argument, in brief:

  • Religion and science both make claims about what’s true in our Universe. Theologians and believers, when being honest (almost an oxymoron), will admit that, yes, their religious beliefs are underlain by claims about reality, and if those claims be not true, then religion be not true. Here are two of several quotes to that effect I cite in FvF:

A religious tradition is indeed a way of life and not a set of abstract ideas. But a way of life presupposes beliefs about the nature of reality and cannot be sustained if those beliefs are no longer credible.  —Ian Barbour

Likewise, religion in almost all of its manifestations is more than just a collection of value judgments and moral directives. Religion often makes claims about ‘the way things are.’ —Karl Giberson & Francis Collins

Or, if you want the Bible, look at 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”  That is, if Jesus wasn’t resurrected, it makes no sense to be a Christian.

My further argument:

  • Science has a way to find out what is true, or at least to arrive at better and better approximations of what is true, while religion has no way to do that.
  • The result is that different religions make conflicting claims about reality (e.g., “Was Jesus the divine son of God?”) that cannot be resolved.
  • Religion has also made false claims about reality (e.g., creationism, the Exodus, etc.) that science can correct, while religion has no way to correct science.
  • Therefore, religion is incompatible with science because it uses a different methodology to adjudicate truth, and because the outcomes of that methodology (what religion deems “true”) cannot be verified.

The incompatibility can be seen with a religious scientist like Ken Miller, a pious Catholic. In the lab he acts like an atheist, never considering the supernatural and accepting only as true what can be tested scientifically. But when he steps into his church he immediately believes in things like the Resurrection and transubstantiation—things that are not only unevidenced, but disbelieved by other faiths and, frankly, ridiculous for a grown man to believe. Accepting truths about the cosmos using two different methods demonstrates the incompatibility between science and religion. To put it another way, in science faith is a vice while in religion it’s a virtue. Or still another way: science has ways of finding out whether its claims are wrong, while religion doesn’t. (As I said, science can sometimes demonstrate that religion claims are wrong.)

So Siegel simply misses the boat here. Showing that there are religious scientists and science-friendly believers doesn’t show that science and religion are compatible, any more than saying that someone who believes in faith healing as well as scientific medicine has compatible beliefs.

Siegel’s argument for compatibility gets worse when he argues that the “unknowables” of science are comparable to the “unknowables” of religion:

The truth of the matter is that there are certain unknowables in this Universe; certain questions that even if we gathered all the data we could ever gather, we’d be unable to answer. The amount of information we have access to is enormous, but finite nonetheless. There will always be room for wonder, and there will always be questions beyond humanity’s capabilities of drawing robust scientific conclusions. Most importantly, there will be differences in what each of us determines is the “most likely” or “most logical” possibility in the absence of certainty, and that we must treat one another with respect, even when we reach different conclusions.

Yes, science may not be able to answer all questions about the Universe because we lack the tools to do so, because the questions are hard (how does consciousness work?), or because the questions involve knowing irrecoverable history (how, exactly, did life begin?). But science has explained many previously enigmatic phenomena that, for lack of answers, were once imputed to God of or the supernatural (e.g. epilepsy, disease, lightning, etc.), while religion has never answered a single question about the “nature of reality” that it claims to adddress. The progress of science over the last 500 years stands in stark contrast to the absence of progress of theology, which has not answered a single question about the nature and workings of the divine over a much longer period of cogitation. That’s why we have thousands of religions, all making different (and often incompatible) claims about reality

2.) “Among scientists, belief in God aligns quite closely with the beliefs held by other members of that particular country.” To support this, Siegel shows a graph taken from the work of Elaine Ecklund, a professional accommodationist funded by Templeton:

Yep, it’s true that in religious countries scientists tend to be more religious, and in less religious countries are more atheistic, but it’s not a perfect correlation (look at the US vs. UK, realizing that the US is far more religious than the UK). More important, so what? Of course scientists will be more religious in more religious nations, because that’s the way they were brought up! This says absolutely nothing about the compatibility of science and religion.

Sadly, Siegel neglects the really important statistics: Scientists, at least when we have the data, tend to be far more atheistic than the general public. We know this from both the US and the UK. In the US, for example (data differs slightly from Ecklund’s; see FvF pp. 12-13 for references), 83% of the general public believes in God, and only about 4% admit to being atheists. In contrast, the figures for US scientists as a whole are, respectively, 33% and 41%. For scientists at “elite US universities”, the figures are 23% and 62% (the latter number includes atheists and agnostics), and for members of the National Academy of Sciences, the figures are 7% and 93%!  Siegel doesn’t point out this disparity, which should be evident from the US data above! Figures from the UK are comparable, with more accomplished scientists being less religious.

If science and religion are compatible, why, at least in countries where we have data, are scientists so much less religious than the general public? It could be that nonbelievers are more attracted to science, or that science actually makes people less religious, or (most likely) a combination of these factors. Either way, this shows some conflict between science and faith.

Siegel also neglects these data from a 2015 Pew Poll:

So much for “lived experience”: your own and your perception of other people’s!

3.) “While there are a number of science-and-society issues where the general populace and scientists have differing opinions, there are many such issues where their viewpoints align extremely closely.” The quote is from Siegel, and he gives this figure to support it:

Well, there are SOME areas where their viewpoints align extremely closely, but more, it seems, where there’s a significant disparity between the views of scientists and the public. But how, at any rate, does the graph above demonstrate Siegel’s point? It may show that in some areas religious people adhere to the views of scientists, but that doesn’t mean that science and religion are compatible. I haven’t denied that many believers respect science and promote scientific research. That’s admirable, but doesn’t speak to the fact that in the religious realm, believers have no good reasons for believing what they do.

I don’t want to go on, because Siegel’s article doesn’t make any new arguments for compatibilism. His main point seems to be that religious people and scientists need to respect each other for the good of society, and that both science and religion make positive contributions to society. As for “respect,” well, I’ll respect believers as people in the sense that I’ll be civil to them, but I refuse to respect their superstitious beliefs. As for both making a contribution to society, I’d argue that science is essential to human progress, while religion merely impedes it, has become superfluous, and one day will disappear without ill effect (as it has in Scandinavia).

I get it: Siegel wants to look like a good guy, just as Gould did in his NOMA book Rocks of Ages. You don’t look very good if you claim that science and religion are incompatible, but if you say they are compatible, well, you don’t offend anybody. You look conciliatory and nice. That’s why Siegel’s whole piece is infused with a distasteful kumbaya tone. One example, from near the end of his piece:

While there are elements of society that are quick to brand anything religious as “anti-science” or anything scientific as a “threat to your religion,” the truth is that people of all different religious beliefs and upbringings grow up to be outstanding scientists. The truth is that scientists have religious beliefs that are in-line with the rest of their country. There is no universal religious perspective or experience, and that we all have ways of making personal connections with each other, and finding common ground for building trust and mutual respect. It’s time to put an end to the insensitive, snide, and snarky remarks that denigrade [sic] those with differing beliefs from our own, and to work together to educate, share knowledge, and respect the diversity of possibilities for what we don’t know.

. . . Religion is for anyone who wants it in their life, and science is as well. They are neither fundamentally incompatible, nor are they mutually exclusive. Knowledge, education, self-improvement, and the bettering of our shared world are endeavors that are open to everyone. We don’t have to (and likely won’t) always agree with one another, but we can always work to understand a perspective that differs from our own. Perhaps, someday in the near future, that will be the story that makes headlines, rather than attempts to sow discord between two of the most influential forces for good in our world.

This sounds lovely, yes? But it has no bearing on Siegel’s point. As for me, I’ll continue to “sow discord”, which, no matter how civil I am, will still be perceived as “insensitive, snide, and snarky.” There’s no way you can argue against religious delusions without being perceived that way!

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 18, 2018 • 7:30 am

Reader Linden Gledhill sent a bunch of nice pictures from Costa Rica, and I’ll divide them between two posts. Here’s the first; Linden’s notes are indented:

Guanacaste, Costa Rica is located in the northwestern region along the Pacific Ocean coast.  It experiences little rain and is a hot tropical dry forests habitat. We stayed in the all-inclusive resort of the Riu Palace, which is surrounded by farmland and unspoilt countryside.  Most of the images were captured during early morning walks just after sunrise apart from those labelled with  Palo Verde National Park. This park is a floodplain with marshes next to a limestone ridge fed by Rio Tempisque.  My equipment was a Canon EOS 5DS R with a EF 500mm f/4L IS USM lens and a 1.4x extender.  All shots were hand held with image stabilization.

Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). I spent a few hours capturing these stunning birds actively feeding just off the beach and I also followed them to a grooming roost on the side of a cliff at the end of the resort beach. I love their webbed feet especially when standing on a branch grooming.

Variegated Squirrel (Sciurus variegatoides). A  native tree squirrel of Central America. I came across a group of 10 or so collecting nuts from a tree just off the beach.

Common Black Hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus). An impressive raptor with very broad black wings often found in coastal areas. The short tail is black with a single broad white band and a white tip.  He was perched on the very top of a tree next to the beach. This was a difficult shot due to distance and the image was cropped by about 200%.  The advantage of using the 50 mpix sensor of the Canon EOS 5DS R.

Black-headed Trogon (Trogon melanocephalus). This species is well at home in subtropical or tropical dry forests.  Trogons have large round eyes, and I came across this species many time in the open farmland near the hotel.

Mangrove Cuckoo (Coccyzus minor)   Palo Verde National Park. Living mainly on a diet of insects, they are often found remaining still for long periods as they look for prey.  I wouldn’t have spotted this guy unless the guide had pointed him out.

Double-striped Thick-knee (Burhinus bistriatus) Palo Verde National Park. We came across a flock of these birds in an open field.  They stand very still when being watched and prefer to walk away rather than fly when approached.

Crested Caracara (Caracara cheriway), Palo Verde National Park. This is a stunning bird.  Despite its raptor appearance, this is very much a scavenger mainly feeding on carrion.  We watched this individual for a while as he gathered nesting materials.

Thursday: Hili dialogue

January 18, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Thursday, January 18, 2018, and, dammit, a fast day for me. (This is getting tiring.) It’s National Gourmet Coffee Day, which, in the form of a homemade latte, is the only thing besides water I’ll consume today. It’s also the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which is repugnant, but since prayer is ineffectual, innocuous as well.

On this day in 1535, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded the city of Lima, now the capital of Peru. On January 18, 1778, James Cook was the first European to land on the Hawaiian Islands, which he called the “Sandwich Islands.” And here’s a weird one from Wikipedia; do read the entry: on this day in 1884, “Dr. William Price attempts to cremate the body of his infant son, Jesus Christ Price, setting a legal precedent for cremation in the United Kingdom.”  Jesus Christ Price? Wikipedia adds this:

After cremating his dead son in 1884, Price was arrested and put on trial by those who believed cremation was illegal in Britain; however, he successfully argued that there was no legislation that specifically outlawed it, which paved the way for the Cremation Act of 1902. Upon his death, he was cremated in a ceremony watched by 20,000 onlookers.

Known for adhering to such principles as equal democratic rights for all men, vegetarianism, cremation and the abolition of marriage, all of which were highly controversial at the time, he has been widely labelled as an “eccentric” and a “radical”. Since his death he has been remembered as “one of the great Welshmen of all time” with a permanent exhibition and statue dedicated to him being opened in the town of Llantrisant, where he had lived for much of his later life.

On January 18, 1911, Eugene Ely landed his Curtiss pusher plane on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania, an armored cruiser, in San Francisco Bay. This was the first time an aircraft landed on a ship, and here’s a picture of the feat:

Two events in Poland on this day: in 1919, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, a pianist and composer as well as a statesman, became the Prime Minister of the newly independent Poland. And in 1943, the first uprising of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto took place: when Nazis began deporting people from the Ghetto, the Jews fought back with weapons. They lost, of course: it was all over by May. On this day in 1977, the bacterium that produced Legionanaires’ disease, a previously unknown microbe, was identified as the disease’s cause. Finally, on this day in 1993, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was officially observed for the first time in all of America’s 50 states.

Notables born on this day include Daniel Webster (1782), Paul Ehrenfest (born 1880, sad end to his life, but look it up), A. A. Milne (1882), Oliver Hardy (1892), Cary Grant (1904; real name Archibald Alec Leach), and Danny Kaye (1911; real name David Daniel Kaminsky).

Those who joined the choir invisible on January 18 include Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1873), Rudyard Kipling (1936), and Curly Howard of the Three Stooges (1952, died at only 48; real name Jerome Lester Horowitz [having a Jewish name was not good in show business, as you can see from Danny Kaye]). Here is Curly’s gravestone; I can’t quite understand what the coins are spelling beside it:

Several musicians also died on this day, including Kate McGarrigle (2010), Dallas Taylor (2011), and Glenn Frey (2016). Here’s one of my favorite songs by the McGarrigle sisters, which is ineffably beautiful. It was written by Anna. Kate is the one on the piano:

The song was made famous, of course, by Linda Rondstadt, and you should also watch this version in which Linda sings with Kate, Anna, and, I believe, their older sister Jane. I think the other singer is Maria Muldaur, though I’m not sure. You can see a nice half-hour documentary about Kate and Anna here.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn Hili is still hatin’ on winter. She also looks quite round. 

A: Winter is beautiful.
Hili: That’s your opinion.
In Polish:
Ja: Zima jest piękna.
Hili: To jest twoje zdanie.

A couple of tweets stolen from Heather Hastie (be sure to look at the pictures in the first tweet’s link):

https://twitter.com/planetepics/status/953431793323175936

https://twitter.com/historylvrsclub/status/953432934563958784

From Grania:

I was saddened to hear of the sudden death of The Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan. So, apparently, was the recipient of this note:

https://twitter.com/DerekinBerlin/status/953529636755042305

From reader Barry. Do you think this video is for real?

And some SCIENCE, delivered in a palatable form so you will read it. Matthew found this tweet:

Words that should be deep-sixed

January 17, 2018 • 2:30 pm

Grania found this tw**t, which I think is right on the mark:

The words I especially hate here are “bae”, “totes”, “amazeballs”, “cray cray”, “whatevs”, “be like” and “epic”. Some of them, like “yolo”, “awks,”, and “well jel”, I’ve never heard before.  I’d add “genius” when used as an adjective, but we’ve been over that before.

“Wine o’clock”?????