Russian snow hare surfs avalanche – and survives

January 27, 2016 • 2:30 pm

by Matthew Cobb

As featured on the BBC Winterwatch programme, this video shows a Russian arctic hare getting caught up in an avalanche triggered by a snowboarder. The hare runs across the onrushing snow, and manages to escape – just. Put it on full screen – it is really rather impressive. RT notes that this was filmed on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

The music – included by the original poster – is by Flanagan and Allen, was a popular British hit in WW2, and was seen as a way of cocking a snook* at the Germans.

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*JAC: Matthew apparently doesn’t realize that this salaciously-sounding but innocuous phrase is unknown to many Americans. Here’s someone “cocking a snook” (usually only one hand is used):

Is religion a superstition?

January 27, 2016 • 1:30 pm

There are two things that theists always yell at me about: characterizing faith as “belief without evidence” (which in fact the Bible says it is!), and calling religion a “superstition.” I decided to look up “superstition” in the Oxford English Dictionary (University of Chicago online version) to see if religion fit the definition. In the section where it would fall (“senses relating to belief”), here are the definitions. If you’re myopic, click to enlarge (twice in succession with a pause between).

What religious belief isn’t either irrational, unfounded, or based on fear and ignorance?

As opposed to a “true” religion, of course! Onwards:

Even religion could fit (c) above since your good luck is the favor of god or chance of eternity in heaven.

Based on the above, I provisionally conclude that most religions (perhaps not things like Unitarian Universalism or Confucianism) can confidently be called “superstitions”. Certainly the Abrahamic religions can!

Oregon students weighed removing Martin Luther King quote from student union as being insufficiently inclusive

January 27, 2016 • 12:30 pm

I don’t know what to make of this except to scratch my head in incredulity at the “virtue signalling” of today’s college students. As reported by Mediaite and the University of Oregon student paper The Daily Emerald, the student union building has for some time had a quote by Martin Luther King Jr., one you’ll recognize from his famous “I have a dream” speech:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream…”

When the building was being renovated, there was discussion about maybe deep-sixing those words. As the Emerald reports:

However, this hasn’t always been the quote that filled the entrance of the EMU and there was talk of the quote changing again. The quote is not going to change, but that decision was not made without some hard thought by the Student Union Board.

Laurie Woodward, the Director of the Student Union said that when she approached the union with the question of if they wanted to keep the current MLK quote or supplement a new one, one of the students asked, “Does the MLK quote represent us today?”

“Diversity is so much more than race. Obviously race still plays a big role. But there are people who identify differently in gender and all sorts of things like that,” sophomore architecture major, Mia Ashley said.

Until 1985, that space was occupied by a quotation from a former dean that referred to “the good life for all men” and “man’s aspiration”; and I can see how, by using “man” instead of “people,” it could be considered offensive to women. But although one might argue that the King quote discriminates against people who are being marginalized for issues other than skin color, in reality it reflects the goal of inclusion of everyone: judging people not by superficialities but by character. Remember how that speech ends?:

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

So really, do we need quotes about the transgendered, about the Jews and Muslims, about the disabled, about every marginalized group in society? Can’t we use King’s stirring words to represent the goal of equality for everyone? No, because every snowflake must have their day (and their say).

Sadly, it doesn’t look that this is the end of it. The Emerald has a few ominous words:

Woodward says she has no idea if the quote will change again in the near future, but she’s merely excited that important discussions like this are being held on campus again. “What words are is important,” she says, “but what’s more important is that people think about what the words should be.”

If it were to happen, this would be a feat that would bring in the entire University of Oregon student population to some extent, which is a big reason she thinks the Student Union wasn’t ready to take it on.

Imagine what a dog’s breakfast it would be when the student body is ready to take it on! When that happens, I suspect that entire building will be covered with competing quotations.

NY Times science section again lean on science, fat on human welfare

January 27, 2016 • 11:30 am

On December 9 I beefed that the New York Times‘s science section, perhaps the only stand-alone science section left in a major newspaper, appeared to be going light on pure science and heavy on human health and welfare (global warming, etc.). Carl Zimmer, one of their crack reporters, made a comment to the effect that a single week’s survey might not be a statistically meaningful sample. He’s right, of course: I dissected just one week’s reportage and just gave my general impression on the way the paper seemed to be headed from reading it online.

Now we have a second data point, as I picked up the paper copy of yesterday’s Times (science day). And the results are still pretty dire, though of course still not statistically meaningful. (To get any idea about trends, you’d have to do this over weeks and years, and I don’t have the energy).

Here are the totals for the section, which includes two pages of the “Well” (health) section.

Total articles (big and small, and letters): 20

Articles related to human health and welfare: 14 (including one about Lucy Kalanithi, the widow of neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, who wrote a best-seller before dying at 37 from lung cancer).

Articles (big and small) unrelated to human health and welfare: 6 (includes one on fossil humans and two small letters to the editor).

Substantial articles (more than a few paragraphs): 11

Substantial articles unrelated to human health and welfare: 2.5 (two articles on conservation [one on turtles, the other on restoring ecosystems], and one line-column on the new chemical elements).

I still see this as a pretty lean section for pure science. 70% of all the pieces are on stuff relating to human welfare, and of the remaining 30% on “pure science”, one piece was on fossil humans and two were letters to the editor. Among substantial articles, 23% were on pure science.

Again, this is not a systematic survey, just a random assessment looking at the Tuesday science section when I manage to get one on paper. But really, just 30% of all pieces on pure science, and 23% of “big” pieces on pure science?

Maybe I just got unlucky, and Carl is right that I’m not characterizing the section accurately over time. Still, in the two weeks I’ve looked, pure science has been thin on the ground. I just can’t believe that both of those weeks were slow ones for nonhuman science! My working hypothesis is that the public is more interesting in things related to Homo sapiens than to other species, especially when it involves your health. And the NYT is following that interest rather than leading by publishing stuff on non-human pieces.

The man who mistook his cat for another cat

January 27, 2016 • 10:30 am

By Matthew Cobb

This is a rather sad story, although it does have a happy ending. A paper by Ryan Darby and David Caplan from Harvard Medical School [reference below] describes an unusual case of Capgras syndrome – in this unpleasant condition a patient is convinced that someone close to them, such as a family member or friend, has been replaced by an impostor. This is one of many kinds of delusion known as delusional misidentification syndromes (DMS). (I note in passing the tendency for psychiatry to fall victim to the nominal fallacy – the suggestion that if you give something a name, you have in some way explained it. Our ignorance of the brain and the mind, and even more so of the misfunctioning brain and mind, is profound.)

A variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders can cause Capgras syndrome, but the impostor delusion is virtually always focused on a human. In the case described by Darby and Caplan, a 71 year old man who suffered from a range of conditions (bipolar disorder amongst others) became convinced that his cat had been replaced by an imposter. Hence the tasteless pun in the title of the paper: ‘ “cat-gras” delusion’.

According to Darby and Caplan, the poor man

became obsessed with the idea that his pet cat had been replaced by an imposter cat that was involved in the conspiracy against him. He knew that the current cat resembled his pet cat physically, but that the personality or psychic core of his cat had been replaced.

A series of psychological and physical tests revealed the patient had a number of problems – perhaps caused by repeated head injuries incurred when he was a professional hockey player. Many of these were linked to memory retrieval, and Darby and Caplan suggest that one source of Capgras syndrome may be to do with retrieving recognition memories, and they come up with an elaborate hypothesis to explain the underlying processes that may be involved:

We, therefore, propose a model where the delusional belief content in DMS results from dysfunctional linking between externally perceived objects and appropriately retrieved internal autobiographical memories associated with an object, leading to an erroneous learned belief that a familiar external object is a new, distinct entity (explaining the reduplication of physical bodies by the creation of duplicate, imposter identities), or that an internally generated memory is erroneously linked to an unfamiliar external object (leading to the reduplication of identities by the creation of new, disguised persons.

Strikingly, they do not propose any experiments that could test their theory.

This is not the first reported case of Capgras syndrome focused on a cat – there have been two others, and there have also been reports involving a d*g and two birds. However, the authors claim their study is novel as the patient clearly had neurological defects as well as psychiatric problems.

The good news, however, is that

‘His symptoms improved with medications and he has had no further delusions of imposters replacing his cat.’

JAC: You can read more at Discover Magazine, though Matthew read the original paper.

h/t @neuroskeptic

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Darby, R., & Caplan, D. (2016). “Cat-gras” delusion: a unique misidentification syndrome and a novel explanation Neurocase, 1-. You can find it here ($$$). [JAC: I have a pdf which I’ll provide IF you really need it.]

Ammon Bundy and several thugs arrested, one killed; more thugs remain at wildlife refuge

January 27, 2016 • 9:30 am

I feel compelled by the laws of physics to report this since I’ve mentioned it a few times before. As CNN reports, libertarian Ammon Bundy and several of his loony minions were captured and arrested by police yesterday in Oregon. As you may recall, they’d been occupying the federal Malheur Wildlife Refuge in protest at the arrest of two men for setting fire to federal lands (also in Oregon) to facilitate grazing.

Bundy made the mistake of driving out of the property, which exposed him to arrest, for there’s no way the feds are going to assault the 20-odd men still holed up in the refuge’s buildings. On the road, however, they’re fair game.

Bundy and several fellow occupiers were pulled over Tuesday on Highway 395, a law enforcement official said. According to The Oregonian, they were headed to the city of John Day, where they planned to participate in a community meeting set up by local residents.

Everyone obeyed orders to surrender except two people: LaVoy Finicum and Bundy’s brother, Ryan Bundy, the official told CNN.

Shots were fired, but it’s unclear who fired first, the source said. Ryan Bundy was wounded, and Finicum died.

Well, I feel sorry for Finicum’s wife and family, but if ever a man brought his death on himself, it was LaVoy Finicum, for he declared that they’d never take him alive:

Earlier this month, the father of 11 told CNN he doesn’t want to die — but would never go behind bars.

“I’m just not going to prison,” Finicum said. “Look at the stars. There’s no way I’m going to sit in a concrete cell where I can’t see the stars and roll out my bedroll on the ground. That’s just not going to happen. I want to be able to get up in the morning and throw my saddle on my horse and go check on my cows. It’s OK. I’ve lived a good life. God’s been gracious to me.”

Finicum has eleven children. Although the Bundy Ranch Facebook page says this. . .

. . . I wonder if his kids feel the same way. They lost a dad over a stupid demonstration of petulance about arson. Some “patriot”!

Five people were arrested on the road, and another three elsewhere: two in Arizona and one in the nearby town of Burns.

Now there are conflicting reports about whether Finicum fired on the police or (as the protestors claim) had his hands up when he was shot. If the latter is the case, it’s reprehensible, and I’ll report on that when I find out. But I’d guess, given his statement, that he was armed and “made a move.”

160106-oregon-standoff-rd-205a_3d736df4f3175258ad2c55363b686a51.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000 — LaVoy Finicum at Malheur, Jan. 5. Photo by Rick Bowmer / AP

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Pancake Earth

January 27, 2016 • 8:30 am

You’ve probably heard that flat-Earthism is in the news: flat-Earth-believing rapper B.o.B is having a Twi**er duel with Neil deGrasse Tyson about the shape of our planet. (Tyson also created a 3-minute rap, “Flat to Fact”.) I was also astounded to hear that there are still flat-Earthers around, and they have their own society. It’s not a joke!

Today’s Jesus and Mo, called “flat,” is a good one. Remember that 64% of Americans (according to a 2006 Time Magazine/Roper poll) would discard a scientific fact if it contradicted one of the tenets of their religious beliefs. The same goes for 41% of British Christians.

As one commenter said, “Superb again Author, the last panel is the most concise description of religious belief I have ever read.”

Birds of Stone: Avian Fossils from the Age of Dinosaurs

January 27, 2016 • 8:00 am

by Greg Mayer

This coming Monday, February 1, at 7 PM in the Student Union Cinema, the University of Wisconsin-Parkisde will present Luis Chiappe, Director of the Dinosaur Institute of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, will speak on “Birds of Stone: Avian Fossils from the Age of Dinosaurs”.

Many of the features commonly associated with birds (feather, wings, hollow bones, wishbones) were inherited from their dinosaurian ancestors, and these features arose at various times during the birds’ long Mesozoic history. New fossils have laid out this evolutionary saga in great detail, allowing us to trace the changes from the earliest birds, such as Archaeopteryx, to the dawn of modern birds. The talk, part of UW-Parkside’s Science Night series, is intended for the general public.

At noon on Monday, in Molinaro Hall D 139, Dr. Chiappe will present a more technical talk at the Biological Sciences Colloquium entitled “Birding in the Mesozoic: Recent Insights on the Early Evolution of Birds”. There’s also a small exhibit in the UWP Library, “Dinosaurs and Birds: The Art of Science”, that you can stop in and see.

Both talks are free and open to the public. For the evening talk, parking in the Student Union lot is free after 6:30 PM. For the noon talk, there are metered spots, but if any WEIT readers are planning to come, email and I’ll see what we can do. The talks are presented in conjunction with the exhibit “Dinosaurs Take Flight: The Art of Archaeopteryx”, by Silver Plume Exhibitions in conjunction with the Yale Peabody Museum, at the Kenosha Public Museum, on display now through March 27th.

This is a very well done exhibit, combining fine reproductions of almost all of the eleven known Archaeopteryx specimens (the real ones almost never travel!), with an exploration of how several distinguished paleo-artists create their works, including Julius Cstonyi, whose work we’ve highlighted here at WEIT before.

Anyone from Chicago to Milwaukee is within range, and you can make a day of it– the exhibit at the KPM, two talks, and a stop in UWP’s Library. Even if you can’t make it Monday, the exhibit at KPM is well worth a trip on some other day. Here’s a tidbit– a realistic sculpture– from Dinosaurs Take Flight; I hope to post a fuller report later.

Archaeopteryx at its nest. — *Archaeopteryx* at its nest.

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