Readers’ wildlife video

February 14, 2016 • 8:00 am

Reader Dennis Hansen, whose photographs of Aldabra (a large coral atoll that’s part of the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean) and its tortoises and crabs have appeared on this site before (see, for instance, here, here, here, and here), has now sent a video of his work on the island’s tortoises, “Ghosts, giants, and resurrection.” It’s a wonderful video made by a man who truly loves his tortoises. (See also his posts on Mauritius here and here.) Dennis’s notes:

Here’s a slightly unusual set of visuals for your consideration for the Reader’s Wildlife Photograps section – in the form of a video.

The video is from a recent private & annual TED-like event here in Zurich, where business people, artists, and scientists get together and discuss ideas and stories presented by artists and scientists. It’s usually great fun and a very broad mix of topics and people. The curator of the event, Rolf Dobelli, generously provided me with an opportunity to share our work with giant tortoises, resurrection, and islands with the audience.

As the talk contains almost nothing but photos (and a few video clips of the giants & what they’re up to!), I thought it could be an interesting semi-personal way to share some wildlife photos with your & your readers.(like you, though, I absolutely hate listening to my own voice, so I hope I remember what I said in case you or anyone else has questions…).

Afterwards, when discussing tortoises with attendants, a lot of people enjoyed touching and examining the carapace I’d brought along, leading to discussions about tortoises and ecology in general. Turns out that show & tell works even for CEOs

I have had Monster Munch

February 14, 2016 • 7:46 am

Ever since Philomena touted the wonders of Monster Munch snacks in the video below (start at 2:15), I have waited on tenterhooks to try them. And I just have, as they were part of a sandwich/crisp/drink meal deal at Heathrow. I got the pickled onion variety (touted by Cunk), and it was, as she said, “loovleh.”

This was my last meal in Old Blighty, at least for the time being. Perhaps if I wander round I can scare up a real pint.

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Obama says he will nominate a replacement for Scalia (and a contest)

February 14, 2016 • 7:30 am

Well, let the games begin. Today’s New York Times, after reporting on the death of Antonin Scalia yesterday, notes that Obama plans to nominate a successor while he, Obama, is still President:

Speaking to reporters from Rancho Mirage, where he is golfing with old friends, Mr. Obama paid tribute to Justice Scalia, who died earlier in the day at a resort in Texas. The president described him as “one of the towering legal figures of our time,” a jurist who dedicated his life “to the cornerstone of our democracy: the rule of law.”

Note the absence of snark, criticism, or mention of bigotry or hyperconservatism;  this is the classy way to pay tribute to an opponent.

But, he added, “I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time.”

“There will be plenty of time for me to do so and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote,” the president said. “These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone. They are bigger than one party, they are about our democracy.

. . . With Democrats and the independents who caucus with them holding 46 seats in the Senate, Mr. Obama faces a challenge in getting the simple majority needed to confirm a nominee, and it would be an even steeper climb to rally the 60 votes needed if Republican opponents mount a filibuster.

While the Times obituary adds that Richard Posner (our University of Chicago professor and federal judge) called Scalia ““the most influential justice of the last quarter century,” Posner also had other thoughts, expressed in a piece in the New York Times last year (“Judge Scalia’s majoritarian theocracy“) and discussed on this site. My view of Scalia’s rulings are, of course, highly critical, but this isn’t the time to rehash those, or even mention them; it’s time to look ahead.

This political season has now become doubly interesting, as Republicans will fight tooth and nail to oppose any nominee with even vaguely leftist leanings, although traditionally the President is given deference in his choice of nominees.

And the contest. The first person to correctly name the successor to Scalia who is confirmed by the Senate will win an audiobook (autographed, if you want) of Faith versus Fact.  If you don’t want that, you can have the new paperback, out in May and with spiffy gold foil in the cover. One name per person, please, and put it in the comments. Contest closes when the nominee is confirmed.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

February 14, 2016 • 6:30 am

This afternoon I fly back to Chicago, leaving about 5 p.m. from Heathrow Hell and arriving in Chicago at about 8 pm. February 14 is, of course, the Christian feast day of St. Valentine, the patron of courtly (not lascivious!) love. It’s a day of historical events, too, for on Feb. 14 Henry IV was excommunicated (1076) and Richard II died (1400). In 1556 Thomas Cranmer was declared a heretic, and later burned in Oxford. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent on the telephone, and, in 1929, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in Chicago. The horrible fire-bombing of Dresden began on this day in 1945 (see Slaughterhouse-5), and in 2005, YouTube was launched, inundated the world with a flood of kitten videos. Births on this day included Jack Benny (1894), Jimmy Hoffa (1913; his body was never found, proving, according to Denis Alexander, that he was bodily resurrected), Teller (1948), Renee Fleming (1959). Deaths on this day included Captain Cook, slaughtered in Hawaii on February 14, 1779, P. G. Wodehouse in 1975, James Bond (ornithologist, name model for the spy) in 1989, and John Ehrlichman in 1999. Wikipedia also lists Antonin Scalia as having died on this day, but that’s an error; he died either yesterday or before midnight on February 12. 

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is dissing Cyrus again. Malgorzata comments on the photo: “Hili was watching Cyrus eagerly fetching the ball, and commenting.”

Hili: I have a feeling that dogs like to carry out orders.
A: And cats?
Hili: We prefer to issue them.

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In Polish:
Hili: Mam wrażeniem, że psy lubią wykonywać polecenia.
Ja: A koty?
Hili: Wolimy je wydawać.
As lagniappe, we have Theo, staffed by Laurie and Gethyn in London, who couldn’t make it to my talk as Theo was ill (he was badly constipated but “cured himself” on the way to the vet!). Now he’s back in shape, demonstrating that by licking the remains of a cup of espresso (I’ve posted before on his penchant for coffee.) Theo loves java and even tries to eat the coffee out of the grinder:

And, for extra lagniappe, here’s a photo sent by reader John Williamson, who interprets it as a lightning bolt striking a plane at one end, exiting the other end, and “with a halo or rainbow colors, possibly due to camera effects.” Do readers concur?

https://twitter.com/Fascinatingpics/status/698764119483277312

Antonin Scalia found dead at a Texas ranch

February 13, 2016 • 4:22 pm

Well, this is something totally unexpected. According to the San Antonio Express News, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at a luxury resort in Texas:

Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.

According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.

Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, of the Western Judicial District of Texas, was notified about the death from the U.S. Marshals Service.

. . .A federal official who asked not to be named said there was no evidence of foul play and it appeared that Scalia died of natural causes.

He was older, and didn’t look in the best of health (I suspect a heart attack), but still—Justices tend to hang on forever.

I am sorry for his friends and family; and even the liberal women justices generally liked him as a person. But as a Justice he kept the court well behind the moral arc. As reader Howie (who sent me this piece) noted, perhaps Obama has time to appoint a more liberal justice before the November elections. Even if that can’t happen via Obama, it will happen via any Democrat who gets elected as President. We can expect stiff Republican opposition to any liberal candidate, for they too know what’s at stake.

This makes it more urgent than ever to get a Democrat into the White House, as a liberal replacement for Scalia will swing the court to a 5-4 majority for progressive decisions.

 

Saturday: London

February 13, 2016 • 1:30 pm

First, here’s Steve Jones introducing me last night. If you’ve heard him you’ll know that he’s quick with a quip and cracks audiences up, which he did yesterday. Steve and I worked together for a long while in the 1980s, studying the movement of fruit flies in Death Valley, California as well as in Maryland. The BHA now has a writeup of my talk that you can see here.

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After my talk I finally got a good night’s sleep, and woke up today to a Big British Breakfast Buffet in the Hilton. It included all the usual suspects, including black pudding and baked beans, which I eschewed. (The British penchant for baked beans with breakfast mystifies me.) After a big tuck-in, a shower, and a little more rest, I wandered down to Bedford Square to meet Anthony Grayling for lunch. On the way, as one does in London, you pass buildings that would be considered architectural marvels in the U.S. but are quotidian in this historical town.

Here’s the University College Hospital, which I believe is still a teaching hospital associated with the University of London:


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Waterstone’s bookstore on Gower Street, Europe’s largest academic bookshop (it was formerly Dillon’s). It was built in 1908.

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The Art Deco entrance of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (built 1905):

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The Bonham Carter House, bearing one of the blue oval plaques that denotes a historic site (see photo below). I have no idea whether this is an ancestor of Helena Bonham Carter, but the house is on a site where anesthesia was first used in Britain.

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Almost next door on Gower Street is the house of Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), famous member of the Bloomsbury Group, hostess of a literary salon (Yeats, Eliot, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf etc.), and well known for her many lovers, including Dora Carrington and Bertrand Russell.

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Here’s Lady Morrell, who I think looks a lot like her friend Virginia Woolf. They both have that equine insouciance that I find irresistible in British ladies:

Ottoline Morrell

Woolf:

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This is Senate House, the administration building of the University of London, which looks very neo-fascistic to me. It was apparently the model for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984. I think of that book every time I see this scary building:

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Here’s a Victorian building near Russell Square that’s lovely, but I don’t know what it is. Some reader will surely identify it:

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My goal for the afternoon: 19 Bedford Square, home of New College of the Humanities, founded in 2012 and still headed by Anthony Grayling, the well known ethical philosopher and atheist. (The College is quite controversial because, in contrast to other British universities, it charges very high tuition.)  I was there to meet Anthony for lunch:

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In the foyer as you enter is a big photo of Anthony’s hero, Bertrand Russell. Anthony admires him, as do I, because Russell was not just an academic philosopher, but believed in public engagement, and lived out his philosophy—including stints in jail for objecting to war.

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Grayling took a selfie of the three of us, and of course the biologist’s hair is much more unkempt than that of the philosophers’! In the tonsorial department, Grayling is like the Werewolf of London.

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We had a nice two-hour lunch and talked about many things, including free will, whether there is any objective morality, the problem of modern philosophy (postmodernism), and so on. I won’t characterize Anthony’s views, but I did ask him if he could meet one philosopher from history, who would it be? He demurred, saying that there were many, so I rephrased the question, asking him which philosopher he would choose to meet to ask questions clarifying that person’s views. He answered that one immediately: Kant.

After lunch I repaired to the British Museum, almost next door, for my usual wander round my favorite relics. More on that tomorrow if I have time.

Quilliam co-founder appears to be an evolution denialist

February 13, 2016 • 12:30 pm

Stephen Knight, the Godless Spellchecker, has done another bit of sleuthing and found out, sadly, that Ed Husain, the co-founder of the anti-religious-extremism think tank Quilliam (the other founder was Maajid Nawaz) appears to be an evolution denialist—or at least a questioner.

Here’s the first tw**t from Husain,

https://twitter.com/Ed_Husain/status/698066603066445825

It was followed by followed by some pushback by geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford as well as journalist and t.v. presenter Nicky Campbell. Husain replies to the pushback with a definite indication that he doesn’t accept evolution (it’s other people’s “theory”, he notes but doesn’t seem to comport with “Husain’s own facts”).

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Husain then follows with a snarky remark about the evolution “cult”:

Husain doesn’t appear to be on staff at Qulliam any longer, so this is not on Maajid Nawaz’s watch. Still, according to Wikipedia, Husain is on several “moderate” faith organizations, and it doesn’t help his credibility if he denies one of the most well established facts of science.

Wikipedia:

Ed Husain (born 25 December 1974) is a writer, adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and senior advisor at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Husain is the author of The Islamist, a book about political Islamism and an account of his five years as an Islamist activist. Husain cofounded, with Maajid Nawaz, the counter-extremism organization the Quilliam Foundation.

He has also worked for HSBC Private Bank and the British Council. In 2014, he was appointed to the Freedom of Religion or Belief Advisory Group of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is also a member of the Independent Review Panel for the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF).

In a way I’m glad Husain is no longer affiliated with Quilliam, as the organization would then be tainted by his antievolution views. Still, when has it become acceptable for someone in England to publicly deny evolution?

Husain is still a Muslim, and the majority of Muslims deny evolution, so perhaps it’s his faith still speaking. But the less closely “moderate” Islam is associated with creationism, the more credibility it will have.

RationalWiki guts a reader’s attempt to correct its article on female genital mutilation

February 13, 2016 • 12:00 pm

JAC: I haven’t used RationalWiki very much, as its articles are not only not as thorough as those in Wikipedia (though some day Greg will produce his long-awaited post, “What’s the matter with Wikipedia?), but also appear slanted toward the Authoritarian Left. Although created to counter the odious Conservapedia site, it seems to have swung too far in the opposite direction—towards censorship of Incorrect Thought. Wikipedia says this about the site:

RationalWiki is a wiki written from a skeptical, secular, and progressivist perspective. It was created in 2007 as a counter to Conservapedia after an incident in which contributors attempting to edit Conservapedia were banned. Since then, it has developed into a wiki that criticizes “crank” ideas, pseudoscience, and fundamentalism. Ideologically, RationalWiki typically argues in favour of freedom of religion, atheism, feminism, and LGBT rights, and it criticises conservatism and right-libertarianism. RationalWiki frequently uses sarcasm and humor in its articles. Unlike many wikis, RationalWiki has no formal system for electing sysops, and most users who are thought to have good intentions are given the tools.

But the skepticism has been tainted by authoritarian leftism, something amply documented by reader Aneris, who attempted to fix RationalWiki‘s article on female genital mutilation (FGM). Its original article (the one that’s still there) did everything it can to dissociate the practice of FGM from Islam, even though, as reader Heather Hastie documents on her website, at least four schools of Islam either recommend the practice or deem its obligatory. There have also been fatwas saying that the practice is Islamic, and the vast majority of women mutilated in this way are Muslims whose families follow the practice. Only the blinkered, or those who excuse Islam of all malfeasance, could deny the close association of the practice with Muslim belief.

Below Aneris’s recounts his/her unsuccessful attempt to get RationalWiki to give the fact about FGM instead of an Islam-exculpating ideological take. He rewrote their article, only to discover that his additions were quickly and completely expunged. Why? Because they associated FGM with Islam. I doubt there would have been the same reaction had FGM been a habitual practice of evangelical Christianity.

by Aneris

Some wikis document fictional universes like that of Harry Potter, Star Wars or Creationism. The “RationalWiki” documents the beliefs of what is perhaps imperfectly called (authoritarian) “Regressive Left” or “Social Justice Warriors”. Jerry’s recent post about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) motivated me to look into the matter and also see where those “Regressive Leftists” are coming from, and perhaps suggest improvements to their RationalWiki article. I wound up writing a section for them.

I try to make a difference, but typically find that what is deemed “true” is not determined by sources and evidence, but by a spontaneous majority that merely wins the “edit war”. Alas, FGM was just such a case. I sacrificed style for direct quotations in the belief that this would provide a solid evidential basis; however, I found everything I wrote was deleted quickly – including about a third of all sources of the article, down from 39 to 24 (this doesn’t mean much in itself, but gives a rough idea).

Before I touched it, the article already contained a small section on FGM and Islam, but that has now been purged as well. The reason given, and they’re serious, is this: “terribly written section with random unsourced statements […]”. But the icing on the icing on the cake is that such Regressive Leftists deny what they are doing. The RationalWiki is adamant that neither Social Justice Warriors nor Regressive Leftists really exist. The current article, one that would please even Reza Asla, can be viewed here.