More egregious excesses by offended students: demands for removing the name of “Lynch” from college building

December 9, 2015 • 1:30 pm

This tw**t, by FIRE’s director of speech-code research, alerted me to an article in PennLive.com news:

https://twitter.com/SamatFIRE/status/674597565430685696

According to the article, students at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania are objecting to a building named after Clyde Lynch, president of the college from 1932-1950.

Students at the private college in Annville have demanded administrators remove or modify Dr. Clyde A. Lynch’s last name, as it appears on a campus hall, due to the associated racial connotations.

The demand was made at a forum on campus equality issues held Friday, capping a week of demonstrations calling for changes at the predominantly white institution.

In that time, organizers, including members of a Black Student Union group, have been calling for policy changes they say are needed to address long-standing “institutional injustices” impacting a variety of groups on campus.

(Note: the students have expressed willingness to compromise if administrators add Lynch’s first name and middle initial to the building’s title.)

Well, deal with the real injustices, and stop picking on completely irrelevant issues. Don’t the students realize that a demand like this renaming acts to trivialize their whole cause? Think of all the buildings that would have to be renamed because their donors have names that are “triggering.”

There is, of course, pushback:

A commenter going by the screen name “10xchamps,” who identified himself as a recent graduate of the college, said “Anyone with half a brain would know that the name has nothing to do with racial connotations. It’s the last name of a very generous donor who probably helped fund many of these students.”

According to its website, Lynch led the college through the Great Depression and World War II, helping to raise $550,000 for a new physical education building which was named for him following his death.

The building, which housed the college’s basketball court for more than 50 years, was “revitalized” into an all-academic center in 2003, now known as Lynch Memorial Hall.

My only comment is “oy.”

Orangutan watches a magic trick

December 9, 2015 • 12:20 pm

by Matthew Cobb

This fantastic video shows a young orangutan being shown a ‘magic’ trick through the enclosure glass. Just watch:

The orangutan shows the same kind of response as you’d expect from a one year-old human infant. It knows that things don’t just disappear, so when something apparently does, the response is one of amazement and what looks like laughter.

D*gs can similarly be confused by a trick, although lacking the wit of an orangutan, they simply get cross:

You can guess what cats think of something as trivial as prestidigitation:

Learning the physical rules of the universe, in particular what the Swiss psychologist Piaget called the conservation of matter, is a tricky business. This neat video of a 4.5 year old child showing his understanding of the world is fascinating:

Finally, you may have noticed that the YouTube user who posted the orangutan video, Dan Zaleski, entitled it ‘Monkey sees a magic trick’. I sent the link to my daughter, who is studying Zoology, and she immediately replied ‘Monkey!’ Many of the commenters under the video have also complained that the orangutan is an ape, not a monkey, some of them not so nuanced (YouTube comments are not noted for their subtlety).

In fact, there’s a pedantic argument to be made on the basis of nested taxonomy that apes are indeed monkeys (see here and here). Whatever the pedantry (and I would not call an ape a monkey), the correct term  would surely have been ape, or even better, orangutan. That’s what was written on the poor animal’s cage.

h/t: @alisonatkin

David Brooks discusses how ISIS makes radicals without mentioning religion once

December 9, 2015 • 11:00 am

While I’m bashing the New York Times today, let me add this beef.

It amazes me how people can discuss the origins of ISIS-like brutality, and even allude to the influence of the “potent doctrine” that fuels and channels it, without mentioning religion itself. It’s part of the same mentality that makes Obama shy away from mentioning Islam as an influence on terrorism, or grudgingly recognize it by saying that ISIS is a “perversion of Islam.” The whole object is to avoid saying anything bad about any religion. To that my response is this: “If you say that religion can inspire good acts, why are you so reluctant to say that it can inspire bad ones?”

David Brooks is one of the stable of New York Times op-ed writers who refuses to mention the I- and M-words when discussing ISIS. In his new column “How ISIS makes radicals” (curiously, the original title was “How radicals are made”), Brooks manages to discuss the origins of violent Islamism while alluding to religion as a contributing factor, but avoiding all mention of religion except for one sentence in his thesis:

But the crucial issue, it seems to me, is what you might call the technology of persuasion — how is it that the Islamic State is able to radicalize a couple living in Redlands, Calif.?

Yes, the only mention of religion is the name “Islamic State.”

Brooks’s analysis of its origins draws heavily on Eric Hoffer’s famous book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, which I read in college. Brooks’s response is in fact Hoffer’s thesis: that mass movements are often a response to a dysfunctional society that impels disaffected youth to turn to a greater cause. But at least Brooks recognizes that ISIS and similar movements aren’t just the result of Western oppression, and in general what he says is sensible. Here are some excerpts (my emphasis):

. . . The purpose of an organization like ISIS is to get people to negate themselves for a larger cause.

Mass movements, [Hoffer] argues, only arise in certain conditions, when a once sturdy social structure is in a state of decay or disintegration. This is a pretty good description of parts of the Arab world. To a lesser degree it is a good description of isolated pockets of our own segmenting, individualized society, where some people find themselves totally cut off. [JAC: note that, as I’ve discussed often, increased religiosity is recognized by sociologists as a ubiquitous response to social dysfunction.]

The people who serve mass movements are not revolting against oppression. They are driven primarily by frustration. Their personal ambitions are unfulfilled. They have lost faith in their own abilities to realize their dreams. They sometimes live with an unrelieved boredom. Freedom aggravates their sense of frustration because they have no one to blame but themselves for their perceived mediocrity. Fanatics, the French philosopher Ernest Renan argued, fear liberty more than they fear persecution.

And here’s where religion begins to creep in, at least as I see it:

The successful mass movement tells such people that the cause of their frustration is outside themselves, and that the only way to alter their personal situation is to transform the world in some radical way.

To nurture this self-sacrificing attitude, the successful mass movement first denigrates the present. Its doctrine celebrates a glorious past and describes a utopian future, but the present is just an uninspiring pit. The golden future begins to seem more vivid and real than the present, and in this way the true believer begins to dissociate herself from the everyday facts of her life. . .

. . . Next mass movements denigrate the individual self. Everything that is unique about an individual is either criticized, forbidden or diminished. The individual’s identity is defined by the collective group identity, and fortified by a cultivated hatred for other groups.

What better way to take advantage of these disaffected youth than to lure them with the golden promise of religion, perhaps even a Caliphate? That is a cause far beyond oneself.  And here Brooks ventures solidly onto religious ground, but still refuses to recognize the territory:

These movements generate a lot of hatred. But ultimately, Hoffer argues, they are driven by a wild hope. They believe an imminent perfect future can be realized if they proceed recklessly to destroy the present. The glorious end times are just around the corner.

Glorious end times? Could that possibly be the Final Showdown Against Unbelievers that, says ISIS, will occur in the Middle East when the expanding Caliphate provokes the West?

And then Brooks quotes Hoffer in service of this thesis:

Hoffer summarizes his thought this way, “For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leader or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.”

Well, what is that “potent doctrine” but Islam? Who is the “infallible leader “but Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (channeling Muhammed)? What is the “prospect of the future” except the Caliphate?

At the end Brooks suggests the way to get rid of ISIS is to ameliorate the social dysfunction of its adherents, defeat them militarily, and “offer positive inspiring causes to replace the suicidal ones.” That sounds good, though it’s a long row to hoe. But how can we replace the “suicidal cause” unless we recognize what it is? Surely the prospect of Paradise is in there somewhere.

I’m not sure any of the NYT op-ed writers, including conservatives like Douthat, have ever explicitly mentioned that Islamic doctrine is a prime motivating force for ISIS. What a breath of fresh air it would be to see that said out loud!

New York Times science section slashes science reporting unrelated to humans

December 9, 2015 • 9:20 am

Maybe I’m wrong, but over the years I’ve seen the Tuesday Science Times section of the New York Times become more human-centric—dealing with issues of health and other matters affecting our species, while cutting back on coverage of “pure” science: those wonders of nature that have no clear implications for the health and wealth of H. sapiens, but increase our appreciation of the diversity of life.

Now I know that the Times does cover stuff like physics and evolution, but I read the entirety of yesterday’s science section and was dispirited to discover a very heavy coverage of human-related material. In fact, of the 20 articles (long and short) in yesterday’s Science Times, only one was about science without any human implications. That was an interesting article—on the section’s last page—about the migration of North American eels, which make a long journey to breed in the Sargasso Sea. Another piece, a very short squib about feral Australian cats, was largely pure science (the putative European origin of those cats; Greg will post about that later), but was probably published because there are gazillions of those cats and Australia is considering extirpating them because they kill wild birds. The last article was Carl Zimmer’s long piece on epigenetics, but that one dealt largely with its implications for human health and welfare.

Now the Science Times also includes a two-page “Well” section, explicitly dealing with human health, but the entire section is six pages long. My conclusion is that there’s a woeful dearth of reporting about forms of science that have no direct implication for our own species. That’s a damn shame!

The upshot: of 20 article in the whole section, 13 (2/3 × 20) shouldn’t be dealing with human health. But there was only one, the eel piece, which had no relation to humans at all but simply told an absorbing tale. Counting the 30% of Zimmer’s piece detailing studies of epigenetic changes in nonhuman animals, and the 60% of the short article dealing with the genetic origin of Aussie feral cats, there are somewhat fewer than two pieces of nonhuman science in the whole section—less than a sixth of all non-health reporting.

I’ll keep reading the Science Times to see if this is a trend or a one-off, but other science journalists have told me that they’re often urged to put a “what’s in it for us” spin on science reporting. To me that’s too anthropocentric, for we’re one of only ten million or so species on this planet, every one of which has an interesting tale. So come on, Times, beef up the non-human stuff!

Here are the three lone pieces that incorporate non-human-centric science:

“Closing in on where eels mate“ by Rachel Nuwer, whose title changed in online edition to “Closing in on where eels go to connect” (was “mate” considered too salacious?).  Eels living in the rivers of North America spawn in the Sargasso Sea, thousands of miles from their river homes, and the baby eels (elvers) eventually make their way, over several years, back to their respective homes. One interesting part of the eel tale, not related by Nuwer is that two species of eels spawn in the Sargasso Sea (a gyre in the mid-Atlantic that collects seaweed): the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), and the American eel, Anguilla rostrata, They are separated not only geographically, by the homes of adults, but by six million years of evolution.

We have no idea how the adults find their way to the spawning grounds, or how juveniles of the two species find their way back to their proper homes (the Wikipedia article on eel life history is pretty good), but Nuwer’s piece describes new tagging studies showing that A. rostrata adults can move great distances when going to the spawning grounds. (A twist: the tagged eels were moved a large distance to keep them from being eaten, but headed toward the spawning grounds anyway.) It also suggests that adults use electromagnetism to find these areas. It’s a pity Nuwer didn’t even mention the similar story of the European eel, for there’s a big mystery about how these two close relatives, which live now on different continents and whose juveniles home to the right places, evolved from a common ancestor.

“Australia’s feral cats most likely European“ is a very short unattributed piece that Greg will describe soon.

“Changing up what’s passed down” by Carl Zimmer (title of online version changed to “Father’s may pass down more than just genes, study suggests”), describes recent research on environmental modifications of the genome: “epigenetic” changes that put methyl groups on DNA bases or prompt the production of “micro-RNAs” that can influence the gene expression of offspring. Zimmer recounts discoveries that things like obesity and stress in animals can alter the same traits in their offspring, and discusses some weaker evidence that this happens in humans, too. The main thrust of the piece, though, is the bearing of animal studies on human health.

Zimmer is one of our best science journalists, and writes more often about evolution and “pure” biology, so I can’t fault him for tackling this subject. But I wish he had mentioned that these epigenetic changes last at most two generations before they disappear, and so have no implication for human evolution. This would have at least been a corrective to the new book by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi suggesting humans can affect their evolution by changing their lifestyle—though Zimmer wisely refrained from mentioning that book.

Readers’ wildlife videos

December 9, 2015 • 7:45 am

Because I’m having trouble braining this morning (I haven’t yet made my latte with three shots of espresso), I’ll eschew the laborious process of making a readers’ wildlife post, and instead present you with two treat videos by reader Tara Tanaka from Florida. The first shows a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) making a cavity; Tara has a detailed explanation at the Vimeo site. Pileated woodpeckers are amazing; I describe some of their adaptations on pp. 114-115 of Why Evolution is True.

And Tara sent notes on this one, called called “Thanksgiving Morning Bunnies”:

Part of this one is featured in the Windland Awards video that is now on display in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History for the next year. Look for the cottontails in the background.

Her notes on Vimeo add that this was filmed Thanksgiving morning at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico:

This was shot with a GH4 and Nikon 105mm lens + a GH4 mounted on a Swarovski STX85 spotting scope. The bunnies appear in the background and you can see them out of focus at a distance until I get the scope on them and capture them with 1000mm.

I’m thankful for many things today, but right now I can’t stop smiling after witnessing two bunnies playing a game whose goal, after watching them in slow motion over and over, must be to touch noses while in they are both in mid-air.

I was sitting on the ground and had set up one video camera with a 105mm lens to video Gamble’s Quail in more of a wide-angle shot than my digiscoping gear would allow, and was digiscoping photos with my scope. I looked up from the viewfinder to see two Desert Cottontails playing in the background. I was going to take photos but decided it really needed to be captured on video, so I switched to video and started recording them through the scope. They were not in the focused area of the wide angle camera, but at least the whole scene was captured.

Are they fighting? Trying to mate? Or just playing? Readers with lagomorph expertise should weigh in below.

 

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 9, 2015 • 5:13 am

It’s Hump Day, and predicted to be cloudy but warm in Chicago, with a high of 51°F (11°C)—unseasonably warm for mid-December. And once again I slept fitfully, impeding my ability to brain; but I’ll do my best. I just realized, too, while looking up events in history on December 9, that I believe I posted today’s events yesterday. So I’ll just add that on this day in 1608, John Milton was born. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s been reading Jack London:

A: Hili, are you coming back home with us?
Hili: No, I feel the call of the wild.

P1030621 (1)In Polish:

Ja: Hili, wracasz z nami do domu?
Hili: Nie, ciągnie mnie do lasu.

 

You won’t believe how old this bird is!

December 8, 2015 • 1:45 pm

LOL, I did another clickbait headline! Watch out for “10 facts about seahorses you didn’t know”!

But the big news is that a Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis), named Wisdom by her banders, has just laid an egg—64 years after she was presumed to have been born. This is the oldest banded bird ever recorded, and she’s still going strong.

As the Guardian reports, in a post amusingly called “When I’m sixty-four: world’s oldest tracked bird returns to refuge with mate” (get the reference?), Wisdom has made a nest on Midway Atoll and has laid a single egg. That’s the brood size for all members of this species, which, being long-lived and producing small broods, are called “K-strategists” as opposed to the “r-strategists” who are short lived and produce bunches of offspring at once (for an evolutionary/ecological explanation of why these two strategies supposedly evolve, go here.)

Laysan albatrosses usually start breeding no earlier than the age of five, so Wisdom could be even older than that. Here, in a video from last year, is the matriarch in all her glory:

She doesn’t look a day over 30, does she?

Wisdom even has her own Wikipedia page, which says this:

Wisdom hatched in or around 1951. In 1956, at the estimated age of five, she was tagged by scientists at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge for study, but then returned to the wild rather than being kept in captivity. The person to attach the first tag was Chandler Robbins, a now retired senior scientist at the United States Geological Survey. Birds are banded so that they can be studied, including their locations, flight patterns, longevity, and a myriad of other data that can be collected.

On December 3, 2014, Wisdom made headlines when she laid an egg at the Midway Atoll. Her mate had arrived at the atoll on November 19 and Wisdom was first spotted by the refuge staff November 22. The egg was estimated to be number 36 for Wisdom over her lifetime. [JAC: she’s lost about five or six of her eggs, including one last year, with an estimate number of 30 successful offspring.] Albatrosses lay one egg per year and have monogamous mates for life. Out of the last nine years, Wisdom has laid an egg for eight of them. Smithsonian has speculated that since Wisdom is so unusually old for her species, she may have had to find another mate to keep breeding.

The USGS have tracked Wisdom since she was tagged, and they have logged that Wisdom has flown over three million miles since 1956. To accommodate her increasing longevity, the USGS has replaced her tag a total of six times.

wizdomx-large
Wisdom and one of her chicks