Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Thanks to all for sending in photos, and remember that I’m always looking for good new ones. The first one today, sent by reader Hempenstein, shows a brown inchworm from Vermont, the larva of a geometrid moth. The resemblance to a twig is stunning:
Perhaps Lou Jost in Ecuador can help with this one, but if you know the insect, please respond in the comments below.
Reader John Conoboy sent some photos from a Galápagos trip. His notes are indented:
These are from a trip we took to the Galapagos in 2012. Unlike many Galapagos visitors we did not take a cruise, as I get seasick easily unless I am able to be outside in the fresh air where I can see the horizon. If I go below deck and the is enough movement, I get sick. We took a land-based trip through a New Zealand company called Active Adventures. Our guides and contacts were actually all from a Galapagos based company called Galakiwi, run by New Zealand ex pats. Our naturalist guide was superb. His name was Pablo and he was a big Darwin fan, so how could I not like him. I have read that the Seventh Day Adventists are working hard to convert people in the Galapagos and that it is possible to find guides there who are creationists. The downside of the trip was that we only got to the four islands that had settlements.
The Galapagos tortoise (Chelonoidis sp.) picture was taken at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island. I did not take good notes, so I think this is either Lonesome George, who we saw shortly before he died, or, more likely, Super Diego who has had much more breeding success than George, thus his name. I tried comparing this photo to some online photos of George and Diego but didn’t have much luck.
We spent a couple of nights on Floreana Island, which has a fascinating human history, fewer tourists, and, of course, interesting wildlife. I include two photos from the island. We saw couple of endemic Lava Herons (Butorides sundevalli) who posed nicely on a cactus (Opuntia sp.).
Marine Iguanas(Amblyrhynchus cristatus) are, I have read, black when young and more colorful as adults as this one on Floreana. I know there are a number of subspecies of iguana, but don’t know which this is. For anyone who is interested in Galapagos history, there is a fascinating documentary called “Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden” It is a murder mystery involving the first European settlers, a German doctor (Ritter) and his mistress, the Wittmer family who moved there after reading Ritter’s writings about the island, and finally a self-styled baroness and her two lovers. It may still be available on Netflix. The hotel we stayed at on the island is owned by the Wittmer descendants.
We took a hike to a cove on San Cristobal where people and endemic Galapagos sea lions (Zalophus wollebaeki) were enjoying a lovely beach together. This little sea lion was so cute and he posed nicely for a portrait.
It is easy to resist the sophomoric “I Love Boobies” t-shirts that are sold in all the gift stores. The real birds are much more appealing. My attention was on a couple of Nazca boobies (Sula granti) and did not immediately notice the blue footed booby (Sula nebouxii) on the right. This was taken at Kicker Rock, a very popular snorkeling site.
Lava lizards (Microlophus sp.) are everywhere. Here is one earning his name on San Cristobal Island, which would probably make him Microlophus bivattatus.
The sea lions love the harbor on San Cristobal and are found lying around on the piers, beaches, and even most of the benches near the water. The problem, of course, is that you have to be exceedingly careful about not stepping in sea lion poop, as I learned when walking on the beach while concentrating on taking photos.
It’s Wednesday, August 16, 2017, and Finger Therapy Day. It’s also National Rum Day, and perhaps I should have a tiny tot of a touted tipple I bought in Guatemala several years ago: Ron Zacapa Cenenario, 23 years in the cask. That’s sipping rather than mixing rum. And in Kyoto, it’s Gozan no Okuribi, the day when spirits of your ancestors, who visiting the preceding few day, go back to wherever they came from.
Not much happened in this day in history, nor were many notables born. On the other hand, it was a good day for deaths—if you call that “good”. On August 16, 1896, three miners, Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie (yes, that’s his name, as he was an indigenous Tagish), discovered gold on Bonanza Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush. Although it drew 100,000 wealth-seekers, the rush lasted but three years before it went bust, and only a handful of people got rich. And, on this date in 1962, Pete Best was fired as the Beatles’s drummer, to be replaced two days later by Ringo Starr.
Notables born on this day include T. E. Lawrence (1888), Menachim Begin (1913), Fess Parker (1924), Suzanne Farrell (1945) and Madonna (1958, it’s hard to believe she’s 59 today). Those who died on this day include Andrew Marvell (1678), Jacob Bernoulli (1705), Mathew Tindal (1733), Jean-Martin Charcot (1893; I’m reading about him now, as he was one of Freud’s early mentors), Babe Ruth (1948), Margaret Mitchell (1949), Elvis Presley (1977, but did he really die?), Abu Nidal (2002), Idi Amin (2003), and, one year ago, the irascible John McLaughlin (“bye-BYE”!). Here’s a photo I took in Dorset when, after a long time of searching, I found the site of the motorcycle crash that killed T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia). It was ironic, because right before we were there, another car crashed at the same place:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is trying out some Big Words:
Hili: I have a cognitive dissonance.
Cyrus: And that means?
Hili: I’m drawn in different directions.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam dysonans poznawczy.
Cyrus: To znaczy?
Hili: Ciągnie mnie w różne strony.
Up in the Polish mountains, Leon has found a girlfriend. And her name is Mawrula! If you lighten the photo below, you’ll she that she’s a lovely black cat. Leon is deeply smitten. (More romantic adventures tomorrow.)
Leon: Wait for me, baby. After they make breakfast, I’ll eat and come out.
A tw**t found by Matthew: Cats make the world go ’round:
Some people say love makes the world go round. Some people think it's gravity. But what if it's a massive extradimensional cat? pic.twitter.com/KpD2myiM1p
I try to not post too many Tweeticles, but couldn’t resist this one, particularly because C. J. W*rl*m*n’s ludicrous tweet of this morning was so effectively countered by Maryam Namazie, head of the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain. (Note: my posting a tweet by W*rl*m*n does not constitute my writing his name in full, which I’ve vowed never to do, as anyone who catches me doing it gets a free autographed book).
"Ex-Muslims" not only adopt the same tactics as Nazis, they're also supported by Nazis and white supremacists.https://t.co/7WVhMY9ShJ
Actually apostates and rights activists are the resistance, the Islamists are the Nazis and you are what is called 'a collaborator'. https://t.co/op8GrCvFIw
The article to which W*rl*m*n refers,”Gay Pride row between London mosque and ex-Muslims escalates“, is by Amandia Thomas-Johnson, and appears in the Middle East Eye, the magazine that employed W*rl*m*n after he was outed for multiple cases of plagiarism. The issue here is not violence, for there hasn’t been any any, but what is written on anti-Islamic placards held by participants in London’s Gay Pride March. The East London Mosque (ELM) objects to what’s on the placards, and are monitoring them to try to get the members of Namazie’s organization expelled for violating the Pride oversight committee’s code of conduct. As the Eye reports:
The Whitechapel-based mosque – one of Britain’s largest – has sent a formal complaint to Pride in London after pictures emerged of members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) parading with placards that said “East London Mosque incites murder of LGBT”, “F*** Islam(ophobic) Muslims” and “Islamophobia is an oxymoron”.
“Let there be no mistake: Islamophobia is real, hateful and often violent, as we tragically saw in the recent Finsbury Park terrorist attack,” ELM’s executive director Dilowar Khan said in a letter yesterday to Pride co-chairs Alison Camps and Michael Salter-Church.
“It is CEMB who deliberately conflates Islamophobia with criticism of Islam, as a way to excuse hatred directed at Muslims.”
It said that the placards were designed to “alienate all Muslims from Pride in London, including LGBT Muslims”.
“There can be no doubt that such a barrage of abusive placards has an adverse impact on Muslims, feeding anti-Muslim hysteria especially in the current climate of increasing attacks against Muslims,” the letter added.
The report adds that the ELM hosted a speaker 10 years ago whose presentation contained slides titled “Spot the Fag”, and, two years ago, hosted an American Muslim scholar—Yasir Qadhi—who said (not in his talk at the mosque) that Islam mandates death as a punishment for homosexuality.
To be sure, the view that homosexuality is immoral is widespread in Islam; here are the data from the 2013 Pew Report (excluding some Middle Eastern countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia) about the views of those in Muslim-majority countries on the morality of homosexuality:
Pride was only taking the complaints “seriously because of a cultural relativism and tone policing that is only applicable to critics of Islam and never [to] critics of Christianity”.
Now this turns on words and meanings, and I’d be a bit wary of holding a placard accusing the mosque of inciting murder if it’s not their policy, as it appears not to be. That said, freedom of speech in the U.S. would have permitted those placards, though the March’s organizers apparently can ban them if they want.
But read above what the Mosque said about those words: that they fuel hatred and lead to anti-Muslim violence. This is exactly the same thing that the “punch-Nazi” crowd say when they want to ban the marches, speeches, and flags of bigots, neo-Nazis, and anti-Semites. And what this means is that if Muslims were in charge in England, such placards—and criticism of Islam for homophobia—would be banned as “hate speech”. After all, that’s the basis of W*rl*m*n’s equating of ex-Muslims and Nazis. Do we want that kind of ban? Remember, too, that such placards are not only illegal in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan, but could get you killed if you carried one.
One person’s free speech is another person’s “hate speech that should be banned.”
It’s time to buy more frozen corn, as I now have two ducks to feed, and I have to keep them apart. It’s tsouris to help foster ducks! Here are Honey (rear) and Daisy (front) at teatime yesterday afternoon. Note the goldfish clustered around Honey, waiting to eat any bits of corn she misses. Sometimes I have to move away from the turtles and fish who have learned to gather around the ducks, as fish and turtles can’t move to a new feeding location nearly as fast as the ducks. (Honey will follow me anywhere.)
This morning Daisy was gone and I fed Honey in peace; I have no telling whether Daisy has gone for good or will be back.
On the sidewalk nearby, a crawfish (they also live in the pond) makes a threat display, waving its claws menacingly. When I went behind it, the claws were moved backwards. I took a short video, which is below the photo:
Just as I oppose all bans on free speech as it’s been construed by the courts, so I oppose all forms of violence against those whose views we abhor—except in self-defense. Never in my life would I go to a demonstration carrying a weapon, just as the brave African-Americans who marched in the streets of the Sixties South didn’t carry weapons, for they were practitioners of civil disobedience. Dogs, clubs, fire hoses: they did not fight back, and never initiated violence. And make no mistake about it: segregation back then was far more of a threat than white supremacy is now: we don’t have much to fear from the neo-Nazis, but blacks were regularly killed by Southern racists. And not just blacks, either: remember Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner?
In my last post I wrote this:
Well, what happened in Charlottesville was not a violation of the First Amendment, and the violence arose not because the right-wingers called for people to attack blacks, Jews, or immigrants. It happened because both sides came looking for a confrontation, carried guns or clubs, and the police, unprepared, did a lousy job of planning and keeping the groups apart. Had the bigots and Nazi sympathizers just marched, and not said a word, the same thing would have happened. Would you object to the mere presence of such people as a provocation?
Someone questioned that, and I noted that yes, the idea there would have been violence without white supremacist speech was just my opinion, but one based on the observation of things like the rioting by Antifa and their supporters in Berkeley before Milo Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak—and he never spoke. The mere presence of one’s opponents, I aver, is sufficient to make some call for the banning of not just their speech, but of their appearance in public.
It is a mistake to think that violence is solely the recourse of the Right. In fact, I’m starting to realize that one thing that distinguishes the Regressive or Control-Left from the Progressive Left is the former’s willingness to engage in violence that’s not self defense. Think of Antifa—or the thuggish packs of students who roamed around The Evergreen State College brandishing baseball bats.
Case in point: this Twitter exchange. Arel and Snider would simply ban the presence of “neo Nazis”. Now that would solve the problem!
This is an easy issue. The Neo Nazis are themselves an explicit threat of violent genocide. Their presence is violence.
I have to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed the past few days with those readers who have said that Nazi and white supremacist speech should be banned, and that the U.S. should enact “hate speech” laws, similar to those in Canada and some European countries, making certain sentiments simply illegal to express in public. Likewise with symbols like Nazi flags with swastikas. The reasons offered were that such “hate speech” is likely to cause violence, either now or in the future. These people were, in effect, asking for a reinterpretation of the First Amendment, which allows all public speech save that that constitutes personal harassment in the workplace, is defamatory, or is a direct instigation of violence on the spot: “fighting words”.
How quickly liberals become authoritarians and opponents of free speech when they hear speech that they consider vile!
Well, what happened in Charlottesville was not a violation of the First Amendment, and the violence arose not because the right-wingers called for people to attack blacks, Jews, or immigrants. It happened because both sides came looking for a confrontation, carried guns or clubs, and the police, unprepared, did a lousy job of planning and keeping the groups apart. Had the bigots and Nazi sympathizers just marched, and not said a word, the same thing would have happened. Would you object to the mere presence of such people as a provocation?
And if you say that pro-Nazi speech or Holocaust denialism should be banned because it will lead to a revival of Nazi Germany, that’s simply not a credible view since the threat isn’t even remotely there, and, more imporant, what stifles the threat is free speech against Nazi speech. If you ban white supremacist and bigoted speech, it does not get rid of pro-white, anti-Jewish and anti-black sentiments; it merely drives them underground where they fester. Remember, some of the first acts the Nazis did when they got power was to prevent speech criticizing the government, and to persecute and kill people who spoke out against them.
This clip shows how foolish white supremacists look when they’re allowed to air their views. This is an interview by Christopher Hitchens of white supremacist and head of the White Aryan Resistance John Metzger (and his more notorious father Tom, who calls in). Can anybody worry about the country becoming ruled by these people when they’re allowed to speak freely and be criticized freely?
And if you say, well, Trump could put these “Nazis” in power, so we’ll become like National Socialist Germany, then the best remedy against that is to allow Americans to speak freely against the government. Thanks to the First Amendment, the Trump regime cannot simply ban speech to criticizing a fascist or authoritarian regime.
Others say, “Well, hate-speech laws have worked well in Europe and Canada, so let’s have them here.” But how do you know they’ve “worked”? Have they eliminated hatred and bigotry? Where are the data? Have the absence of such laws in the U.S. led to more violence in our country, or is any increased violence the result of other factors like less restrictive gun laws? Where are your data showing that the First Amendment is an inferior alternative to “hate speech” laws?
This raises the problem, one that Hitchens often emphasized (see video below), that if YOU decide that some speech is so vile it must be banned, you are establishing a principle that those in power can do the same thing; and that raises the possibility that speech that you favor can be banned. After all, one person’s hate speech is another person’s free speech. Speech that criticizes Islam, or even cartoons like Jesus and Mo, are seen by some Muslims as “hate speech” just as vile as people see white supremacist or pro-Nazi speech. Those Muslims see “our” free criticism of Islam as verbal violence, likely to instigate attacks on Muslims in Western countries. Do not doubt that; we’ve heard these sentiments repeatedly. Do you think that if Linda Sarsour were (Ceiling Cat help us) President of the United States, she wouldn’t try to ban anti-Islam “hate speech”? Should we then ban Jesus and Mo or any criticism of Islam? No! If you give an authority the right to be The Decider, then don’t be surprised when that Decider finds some speech you favor to be “hateful” and therefore worthy of banning.
Even before the bigots and Right-wingers showed up in Charlottesville, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was in court defending the right of the white supremacists to assemble in Emancipation Park, where the statue of Robert E. Lee was to be removed (the city wanted to sequester the demonstrators a mile away). And although the supremacists hadn’t uttered a word, the ACLU was already being criticized for defending these people, as it had been severely criticized a while back for defending Milo Yiannopoulos because ads for his new book had been banned on public transit.
It’s a sad day when censorship-favoring readers need to be schooled by Glenn Greenwald about the reasons why we permit Nazis to speak in America, but here’s part of what he says:
The flaws and dangers in this anti-free speech mindset are manifest, but nonetheless always worth highlighting, especially when horrific violence causes people to want to abridge civil liberties in the name of stopping it. In sum, purporting to oppose fascism by allowing the state to ban views it opposes is like purporting to oppose human rights abuses by mandating the torture of all prisoners.
One of the defining attributes of fascism is forcible suppression of views(“For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason,” wrote Umberto Eco); recall that one of Trump’s first proposals after winning the 2016 election was to criminalize flag desecration. You can’t fight that ideology by employing and championing one of its defining traits: viewpoint-based state censorship. Even if this position could be morally justified, those who favor free speech suppression, or who oppose the ACLU’s universal defense of speech rights, will create results that are the exact opposite of those they claim to want. It’s an indescribably misguided strategy that will inevitably victimize themselves and their own views.
Let’s begin with one critical fact: the ACLU has always defended, and still does defend, the free speech rights of the most marginalized left-wing activists, from communists and atheists, to hardcore war opponents and pacifists, and has taken up numerous free speech causes supported by many on the left and loathed by the right, including defending the rights of Muslim extremists and even NAMBLA. That’s true of any consistent civil liberties advocate: we defend the rights of those with views we hate in order to strengthen our defense of the rights of those who are most marginalized and vulnerable in society.
The ACLU is primarily a legal organization. That means they defend people’s rights in court, under principles of law. One of the governing tools of courts is precedent: the application of prior rulings to current cases. If the ACLU allows the state to suppress the free speech rights of white nationalists or neo-Nazi groups — by refusing to defend such groups when the state tries to censor them or by allowing them to have inadequate representation — then the ACLU’s ability to defend the free speech rights of groups and people that you like will be severely compromised.
It’s easy to be dismissive of this serious aspect of the debate if you’re some white American or non-Muslim American whose free speech is very unlikely to be depicted as “material support for terrorism” or otherwise criminalized. But if you’re someone who cares about the free speech attacks on radical leftists, Muslims, and other marginalized groups, and tries to defend those rights in court, then you’re going to be genuinely afraid of allowing anti-free speech precedents to become entrenched that will then be used against you when it’s time to defend free speech rights. The ACLU is not defending white supremacist groups but instead is defending a principle — one that it must defend if it is going to be successful in defending free speech rights for people you support.
. . . Beyond that, the contradiction embedded in this anti-free speech advocacy is so glaring. For many of those attacking the ACLU here, it is a staple of their worldview that the U.S. is a racist and fascist country and that those who control the government are right-wing authoritarians. There is substantial validity to that view.
Why, then, would people who believe that simultaneously want to vest in these same fascism-supporting authorities the power to ban and outlaw ideas they dislike? Why would you possibly think that the List of Prohibited Ideas will end up including the views you hate rather than the views you support? Most levers of state power are now controlled by the Republican Party, while many Democrats have also advocated the criminalization of left-wing views. Why would you trust those officials to suppress free speech in ways that you find just and noble, rather than oppressive?
As I wrote in my comprehensive 2013 defense of free speech in The Guardian, this overflowing naïveté is what I’ve always found most confounding about the left-wing case against universal free speech: this belief that state authorities will exercise this power of censorship magnanimously and responsibly: “At any given point, any speech that subverts state authority can be deemed — legitimately so — to be hateful and even tending to incite violence.”
Greenwald reproduces a tweet from Trump that shows the dangers of allowing someone to be The Decider:
Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!
Then, finally, there’s the argument about efficacy. How can anyone believe that neo-Nazism or white supremacy will disappear in the U.S., or even be weakened, if it’s forcibly suppressed by the state? Is it not glaringly apparent that the exact opposite will happen: by turning them into free speech martyrs, you will do nothing but strengthen them and make them more sympathetic? Literally nothing has helped Yiannopoulos become a national cult figure more than the well-intentioned (but failed) efforts to deny him a platform. Nothing could be better designed to aid their cause than converting a fringe, tiny group of overt neo-Nazis into some sort of poster child for free speech rights.
The need to fight neo-Nazism and white supremacy wherever it appears is compelling. The least effective tactic is to try to empower the state to suppress the expression of their views. That will backfire in all sorts of ways: strengthening that movement and ensuring that those who advocate state censorship today are its defenseless targets tomorrow. And whatever else is true, the impulse to react to terrorist attacks by demanding the curtailment of core civil liberties is always irrational, dangerous, and self-destructive, no matter how tempting that impulse might be.
If you think that your own left-wing sentiments are immune to speech bans, have a look at this piece in yesterday’s New York Timesby a black woman whose Leftist speech has been disrupted or banned, and who gives instances of other progressives who have been subjects of calls for censorship.
Finally, if you’re still not convinced that the way the U.S. has defined and enforced freedom of speech has been salubrious, either read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, or, if you don’t have the time, listen to this very eloquent defense of free speech by Christopher Hitchens. It’s only 21 minutes long, and I’ve posted it before, but apparently some readers could stand to see it again:
It strikes at the camera as I get closer: