You won’t believe this albino sea turtle!

February 10, 2016 • 2:30 pm

This is a lovely beast, and I can confirm that it made it to the sea, but that’s only the beginning of its troubles. Baby sea turtles are the buffet of the sea, and until they get big enough to resist predators they have a precarious life. I almost wish this one had been taken into captivity and kept permanently or at least until it was larger. Its lack of coloration makes it an easy target, and its unpigmented eyes mean that it probably can’t see to well, either.

It is adorable, though.

Your vote needed in Virginia poll on a church vs. state issue

February 10, 2016 • 1:52 pm

According to WAVY.com, the sheriff’s office in Poquosan-York, Virginia has decided to put “In God We Trust” decals on all its police cars; the decals cost $1480, paid for personally by Sheriff J. D. “Danny” Diggs. The report:

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Diggs said.  “It honors God.  God has been good to me and this agency.”

Diggs says he has been thinking about putting the decals on the cars for almost two years.

In Monday’s post, Diggs stated:

“Having ‘In God We Trust’ on our vehicles does not injure or threaten anyone. It is not an attempt to urge anyone to support or convert to any one religion. God has blessed me and the Sheriff’s Office. This is one way of honoring God by acknowledging Him for His blessings upon us and it shows our patriotism by displaying our national motto.”

. . . Diggs also stated Monday, “The legislatures and courts approve, and God is most certainly approving of this.”

From God’s mouth to Diggs’s ear!

The decals:

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There’s also this:

Diggs also said Monday, “Based on the experience of others who have done this, there will certainly be a very small minority that will criticize.”

Really—only a small minority?? Well, we shall see, for there’s a public poll on that page (access the site by clicking on the screenshot below and scroll down the page to see the poll):

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And right now the First Amendment is losing! The latest results:

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So go over there and vote your conscience. But if I wake up tomorrow morning and the vote is still 2/3 in favor of God decal, I’ll be sorely disappointed. All I know is that we have 38,000+ subscribers to this site.

Plus, I think there’s a Himalayan cat somewhere in Colorado who won’t like the way the votes are going. . .

h/t: jsp

RIP Sarah, the fastest known land mammal

February 10, 2016 • 12:30 pm

According to a piece on the NPR site, Sarah the cheetah has died at the age of 15 at the Cincinnati Zoo. Or, rather, she was euthanized, for she was old and her health was failing. The site notes that the average age of a cheetah is 12-15 years, but that appears to be longevity in captivity, as the Smithsonian says that nobody has studied longevity of this species in the wild. Sarah, also called “Sahara”, was clocked as the fastest known land mammal, a record you can see in the video below:

Sarah (also named Sahara) was famous for her astonishing speed. We blogged about her on the Two-Way in 2009, when she set the speed record for land mammals: 100 meters in 6.13 seconds.

Three years later, she smashed her own record and set a new one: 100 meters in 5.95 seconds. (For context, Usain Bolt’s best time — and humankind’s best effort — is 9.58 seconds.)

She hit 61 mph on that run, National Geographic reports.

A NatGeo editor said the animal looked like “a polka-dotted missile.

Here’s Sarah breaking the record. I may have posted on this before, but it’s worth seeing again:

If you like cheetahs, watch this video, too. Listen to them purr!

Finally, for d*g lovers, NPR adds this:

Sarah was also notable as one of the first cheetah cubs to be raised with a puppy companion — an Anatolian shepherd named Alexa, or Lexi.

The two animals were “lifelong companions,” writes Cathryn Hilker, the founder of the zoo’s Cat Ambassador program and the woman who hand-raised Sarah as a cub.

This is just not right!:

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The cheetah Sarah and the Anatolian shepherd Alexa were raised together and became lifelong companions. Cincinnati Zoo

Now I’ll ask you to guess what the fastest known land ANIMAL is; put your answers below, and no Googling!

Oxford: Wednesday

February 10, 2016 • 11:30 am

My book event at Blackwell’s last night—a conversation about Faith versus Fact and the five science-vs-religion books I picked for the Five Books site—went very well, I thought. The moderator was Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, who interviewed me on my quintet of good anti-faith books as well as on five popular evolution books when Why Evolution is True appeared earlier. (Do read the latest selections by Tim Radford on science writing and James Randi on skepticism.) Although Sophie and I had two long telephone interviews and intervening correspondence over the years, I hadn’t met her till yesterday, when she treated me to a pint and fish and chips (with mushy peas) at one of my favorite Oxford pubs, the Turf Tavern. Sophie is of Dutch ancestry, so she’s tall:

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The audience, being British, was not very religious, so I didn’t get a lot of pushback, but did get many good questions, and the audience seemed interested.

This morning, after working in the Oxford University Press library (and learning that they’re reissuing WEIT in October with a new cover as part of their “classic science” series, my editor Latha and I went for lunch at The Royal Oak, a pub that has been on that site since 1670. It’s a lovely place, with fires, wooden beams, and NO televisions or “fruit machines” (slot machines to us Yanks). If you see a t.v. or a fruit machine, it’s a bogus pub.

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A rabbit-themed ale tile on the outside:
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Now this is a pub. The critical item is the rank of gravity pumps on the bar, denoting real ale.

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There is no equivalent to the pub in America. There are fake pubs, but the beer you get will be served at refrigerator temperature, and there will probably be televisions. The pub is perhaps my favorite British institution, and began as a warm place for bibulous people to congregate, for the average person’s home was small, dark, cold, and dirty. I’ve also visited what is said to be the oldest existing pub in England, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham, reportedly founded in 1189 though the current building dates to the late 17th century.

Only three of the four ales were on at The Royal Oak; I had Sharp’s Doom Bar, a just-okay session pint, though not nearly as good as Landlord. I should have tried the Harviestoun (I allow myself only one pint at lunch):

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Lunch was a lot better than my pint. A three-course lunch for £13 started off with a crock of duck rillettes with toasted bread and chutney. The layer on top is congealed fat, which you can remove as a solid disk.

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Main course: sausage and mash with gravy and a perfunctory watercress topping:
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Dessert: sticky toffee pudding with dates and vanilla bean ice cream. A good meal! Sticky toffee pudding is one of the great delights of England.

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A postprandial walk through Oggsford (the name comes from Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby) revealed several architectural treasures. This is the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxvford’s astronomical observatory from 1773 until 1934:

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Right next door is the huge new Andrew Wiles building of Oxford’s Mathematical Institute, one of the largest mathematics groups in Europe.

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The Institute is well known for its space-filling “Penrose tiles”, named of course after Roger Penrose. Here’s a movie of the tiling:

Near the Royal Oak is perhaps Oxford’s most famous pub, the Eagle and Child. Its fame comes from its being the local of the “Inklings,” a group of Oxford literari who met there for drink and high-powered Brain Talk. The Inklings included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The group also met at a pub across the street that I like better, the Lamb and Flag. But the Eagle and Child is most famous now as “the Tolkien pub.”

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The facade of St John’s College (founded 1555), which happens to own the Lamb and Flag.

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The famous Oxford “Martyr’s Memorial”, built in 1843, memorializes the three Oxford Martyrs (Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury), burnt at the stake in 1555 for heresy and treason. They were Anglicans, and when Mary I, a Catholic, became queen, the three became heretics. Nicholas Ridley is a distant relative of both Mark and Matt Ridley, two distantly related biologists who wrote popular books on evolution.

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And finally, a lovely medieval house in downtown Oggsford, now converted into a Pret a Manger (oy!):

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Twitter goes full authoritarian

February 10, 2016 • 10:00 am

Twitter has formed a “Trust and Safety Council” to “ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely” on their network.  In principle, I think there should be some monitoring to prevent personal threats and incitement to violence, but this seems to go farther. Have a look at their page on this, which states, among other things,

In developing the Council, we are taking a global and inclusive approach so that we can hear a diversity of voices from organizations including:

  • Safety advocates, academics, and researchers focused on minors, media literacy, digital citizenship, and efforts around greater compassion and empathy on the Internet;
  • Grassroots advocacy organizations that rely on Twitter to build movements and momentum;
  • Community groups with an acute need to prevent abuse, harassment, and bullying, as well as mental health and suicide prevention.

We have more than 40 organizations and experts from 13 regions joining as inaugural members of the Council. We are thrilled to work with these organizations to ensure that we are enabling everyone, everywhere to express themselves with confidence on Twitter.

And here are their inaugural members:

Twitter Trust & Safety Council – Inaugural Members:

What worries me is that I know of some of these organizations, and realize that they aren’t simply trying to prevent incitement to violence or threats to personal safety, but to suppress the form of “hate speech” which often amounts simply to criticism of an organization’s or a person’s views. The Anti Defamation League (ADL), for instance, combats anti-Semitism and racism. That’s an admirable goal, but should sentiments like that be prohibited on Twitter? And, if so, who is to decide what counts as anti-Semitism? The ADL? The Dangerous Speech Project, for instance, equates inflammatory speech with violence:

Inflammatory public speech rises steadily before outbreaks of mass violence, suggesting that it is a precursor of, or even a prerequisite for violence.

You can see where this will lead: someone has to decide what “inflammatory public speech is.”

And, from my experience on the Internet, criticism of people’s views is often construed as “bullying,” so there are anti-bullying organizations involved here too. There is a fine line here, for excessive name-calling, particularly of children, can lead to trauma and even suicide, but even adults who promulgate controversial views—and get pushback—often claim they’re being “bullied.” “Bullying” is often a code word for “strong criticism.”

In the end, some restrictions are necessary on Twitter, but this proposal appears to go way too far. Who will decide what speech is “hate speech” or “bullying speech”?  Where on the list are organizations like FIRE or the American Civil Liberties Union that are dedicating to protecting freedom of speech? I see none. It’s a totally one-sides list, comprising organizations that will censor.

This is a very bad move on the part of Twitter. By implying that they’re creating a space where organizations can express themselves “freely and safely”, they’re in effect going along with the “safe speech” crowd. And what, exactly, does “safely” mean? If it means freedom from threats of violence, I agree. If it means—and I think it does—freedom from unwanted or strong criticism, then goodbye to free speech on Twitter.

As always, the best remedy for offensive or unwanted speech is not censoring your opponents, but counterspeech. Apparently Twitter hasn’t learned that lesson. They have a right to control their commercial platform as they wish, but I don’t think they realize that this kind of thought control is positively Orwellian.

Readers’ wildlife photographs

February 10, 2016 • 8:15 am

We have some photographs out of Africa today, all taken by reader Richard Bond. Lots of felids, too! His report:

I am somewhat intimidated by the outstanding quality of many of your wildlife photo contributions, but there have been no big wild cats for a while, so these might interest you. They were taken in one afternoon and early evening in the Masai Mara.

First, though, on our way there we flew over the southern end of Lake Magadi, the southernmost alkaline lake of the Kenyan Rift Valley. We were about 3000 metres above the lake, which is about two kilometres wide at this point. The surface of large parts of the lake is formed by precipitated sodium sesquicarbonate, within which the “wildlife” comprises vast numbers of several species of archaea. Some of these cause the pink colour. The sectors of clear water are centred on two of the hot springs that feed the lake along its margins.

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In the first photo of the lions, the markings on the back of their ears show that the cubs on the right do not belong to the lioness on the left. The next photo shows the same markings on their actual mother. Apparently these markings are very variable between families and are inherited, so that they are useful to people studying lions.

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Photos 5 & 6 were taken as the sun was setting. The excellent camouflage that this light provides makes it a little difficult to see that the lioness with her legs in the air is suckling three very small cubs.

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The two cheetah cubs (probably male and female from their relative sizes) have been left while their mother goes hunting. They are lightly screened by knee-high grass and continually looking around as a precaution against lions, which would regard cheetah cubs as tasty snackettes.

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My distant shot of the leopard is barely worth submitting. Unfortunately I entrusted the zoomed-in followup to an insistent and excited 11-year specimen of Homo sapiens, but did not realise until I saw it on a big screen that it was slightly blurred.

Can you spot the leopard? No, because it’s already spotted! (I’ll be here all week, folks. . .)

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Given your interest a few years ago in flying in the copilot’s seat of a light aircraft, I have included a photo of the aforementioned H. sapiens specimen as he helped to take us back to the coast.

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