Shameless self-promotion

February 1, 2016 • 12:00 pm

A YouTuber named Agatan FND has compiled a group of videos with the “best of” quotes of various nonbelievers (the channel is here). Reader “walkingmap” tells me that they added a collection of Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) clips, and I’ll put that up just because it’s there.

The ones with the big guy looming behind me come from the debate I had with Catholic theologian John Haught at Kentucky, and he was apparently so agitated that he walked back and forth during our exchange. (He later tried, and failed, to get the video taken down.)

But when I look at the clips from the other people (links below, some people have several collections), I realize how ineloquent I am compared to most of the others, especially (of course) Hitchens. I don’t want reassurance of eloquence here, for I have a realistic view of my own abilities. But Jebus, Hitchens once again stands out a the rhetorical giant among nonbelievers. In that, at least, he was irreplaceable. Click on the links below to go to some of the videos:

Christopher Hitchens
Dan Dennett
Penn Jillette
Richard Dawkins
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Sam Harris
Matt Dillahunty
A. C. Grayling

This list by no means exhausts the collection.

 

Mr. Deity, Reza Aslan, and “fundamentalist atheists”

February 1, 2016 • 10:45 am

In this episode of Mr. Deity, Brian Keith Dalton lauds Reza Aslan (remember, Dalton’s playing God), and then goes off on New Atheism, while Lucy (who, you’ll recall, is Satan), ties God in knots with a few judicious questions about “fundamentalist atheists.” (If you haven’t read Anthony Grayling’s nice essay “Can an atheist be a fundamentalist?“, I recommend it.)

The satire ends at 5:19, when Dalton imparts some bad news and also asks for donations to his Patreon site. 424 people have donated so far, and the amount is going up (it’s already quite respectable). He—as well as the Jesus and Mo artist—certainly deserve your pecuniary support more than do e-beggers who provide poorly made and ascerbic attacks on other atheists rather than thoughtful commentary or good satire of faith.

Guardian closes comments on three topics

February 1, 2016 • 9:45 am

In a post by the Guardian‘s “readers’ editor” Stephen Pritchard, it’s been announced that the website will no longer open articles to readers’ comments when they are about certain issues:

But more concerning is the ever-rising level of abuse, trolling and “astroturfing” (propaganda posting – an artificial version of a grassroots campaign) currently polluting what are often illuminating and stimulating discussions.

In response to this menace, some news sites, including Reuters, CNN and theChicago Sun-Times, have abandoned comments altogether or heavily restricted them; others, such as the New York Times, pre-moderate every post. That’s not going to happen here, but things are about to change.

The three topics are then named (I’m not naming them quite yet), and the new policy announced:

As a result, it had been decided that comments would not be opened on pieces on those three topics unless the moderators knew they had the capacity to support the conversation and that they believed a positive debate was possible.

Can you guess what the topics are? I bet you can get at least two out of the three. Think before scrolling down.

.

.

.

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Here they are (my emphasis):

Certain subjects – race, immigration and Islam in particular – attract an unacceptable level of toxic commentary, believes Mary Hamilton, our executive editor, audience. “The overwhelming majority of these comments tend towards racism, abuse of vulnerable subjects, author abuse and trolling, and the resulting conversations below the line bring very little value but cause consternation and concern among both our readers and our journalists,” she said last week.

Now I myself don’t like invective and name-calling on my site: in fact, people are banned for it after a warning. It doesn’t advance discussion to call other commenters names. But I wonder exactly what the Guardian means by “toxic commentary.” Hamilton’s explanation isn’t sufficient, since “racism” can mean “criticism of Islam” and “abuse of vulnerable subjects” could mean “criticism of authors’ views.” Given that the site has editorial positions to the left, it looks as if they’re trying to ban strong opinions that run counter to the site’s own narrative.

Given the Guardian‘s history, I don’t trust their explanation that they don’t have enough people to monitor the comments. That’s ridiculous. They can hold all comments for an hour or so; getting someone to then go through them to eliminate the TRULY toxic ones is a relatively quick process. Or, like some bloggers do, they can do a quick run through the published comments and delete the nasty ones. It dosn’t take long.

In fact, I suspect that the Guardian is trying to quash opinions counter to their own. Why does Islam get a benefit and Catholicism (or any other faith) not? Whether the answer to that is acceptable depends on what the Guardian means by “toxic commentary.”

At any rate, the latest three commenters had takes on the issue that I consider more sensible than the paper’s:

Screen Shot 2016-02-01 at 9.38.37 AM

Religiosity versus happiness: among nations, the first doesn’t bring the second

February 1, 2016 • 8:30 am

About two weeks ago I wrote about the negative correlation among countries between religiosity and happiness: the happiest countries in the world are the least religious, and the unhappiest the most religious. I needn’t discuss this further now, but wanted to put up a new plot made by reader “Gluon Spring” to demonstrate this relationship. Taking data from the UN’s 2013 World Happiness Report and the 2013 Pew Survey of Religious Importance, Gluon made this plot, this time naming the countries as well as giving the 95% confidence interval for the regression line.

When I posted this here and elsewhere, some people argued that a correlation of -0.52 wasn’t impressive. They’re wrong. With the 52 countries plotted here, the probability that this correlation would arise by chance is less than 0.0001. In other words, it’s highly significant. Note as well the narrow confidence interval for the regression line.

We can debate the meaning of this relationship in the comments below, but I wanted to show a plot that other people can use. At the very least it demonstrates that the most religious countries don’t contain the happiest people. Click to embiggen:

Screen Shot 2016-02-01 at 7.36.36 AM

Readers’ wildlife photographs

February 1, 2016 • 7:30 am

Reader Fred Dyer sent a variety of photos (and remember to send me yours!).

I am responding to your recent request for wildlife photos.  These were mostly taken in La Jolla in the fall of 2014, along the beach in the Torrey Pines Reserve. The species ids are informal, although I think they are right.
First, two showing groups of Marbled Godwits (Limosa fedoa):

#1

#2

Next, Royal Terns (Thalasseus maximus). [JAC: I thought the picture was distorted, but other photos of this species make it look dorsoventrally compressed as well. Lovely birds.]

#3

Next, an interaction between some kind of gull that I didn’t identify and a Western Grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis) that had washed onto the beach and couldn’t get back to sea.  The gull seemed intent on eating the grebe. Grebes are pathetically poor at walking on land.

#5

Next, an invertebrate related to the Portuguese Man O’ War.  This is Velella vela, and it is a colonial hydroid.  This one was about 1.5 cm across.  They were all over the beach and I didn’t know what I was looking at until I found news stories reporting that lots of them had been washing up on the beaches of San Diego that fall.

#6

Next, not wildlife per se, but rocks:

#7

Finally, an image not from California from Maine.  This was taken in Goose Rocks Beach (part of Kennebunkport). A fungus, I presume:

#8

Richard Bond made this comment on yesterday’s post on zebra stripes:

The stripes on young zebras (at least on Plains zebras; I have not seen either of the others) are brown, and I have photographs to prove it. I would find an explanation for stripes more credible if it could account for this.

And sent this photo (from Nairobi National Park) to prove it. Richard notes that the stripes get darker when the animals age, but are still discernibly brown in near-adult zebras:

Young_zebra_2

Finally, since today’s the start of International Squirrel-Feeding Month, I’ll show some photos of what you should be doing for these animals. These come from Anne-Marie Cournoyer of Montreal, who delights in photographing the local squirrels. She points out that the squirrel’s tongue is visible in the last photo.

A hard climb:

DSCN0923

Made it!

DSCN0927

Yum—suet!DSCN0928

Monday: Hili dialogue plus optical lagniappe

February 1, 2016 • 6:30 am

It’s not only the beginning of the week, but also the first day of February, with Spring creeping up slowly upon us. No snow is predicted in Chicago this week, so we’ve had a very warm winter— thanks to China and the Koch brothers. On this day in history, Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, the first sit-in by black students took place in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, the Beatles had their first U.S. number one hit (“I Want to Hold your Hand”) in 1964, a song I well remember when it came out, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, and, in 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry, killing all seven astronauts, but leaving alive a culture dish full of Caenorhabditis elegans.  On February 1, 1937, both Don Everly and Garrett Morris were born; and, on this day Mary Shelley died in 1851, Piet Mondrian in 1944, and Buster Keaton in 1966. It is the beginning of Black History Month, LGBT History Month, and National Bird-Feeding Month (can we add squirrels there?). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, someone should tell Hili that the next step is a doozy:

A: What are you thinking about?
Hili: About my next step.

P1030840

In Polish:
Ja: Nad czym myślisz?
Hili: Nad następnym krokiem.

A treat, courtesy of reader Don B.  Shake your head from side to side while looking at this, and, with luck you’ll see a ____. I have no idea why it works.

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No f*cks are given by corvids. . .

January 31, 2016 • 2:30 pm

Corvids are the honey badgers of the bird world.

Laura was formerly the science and health editor of Slate, but is now director of digital news at National Geographic.

You can see a gallery of insouciant corvids at imgur: here are a few shots and a gif:

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9UaMOAN

1LLSdsc

This, of course, is the best one:

GFsNnJp