The New York Times covers Dawkins’s deplatforming

July 24, 2017 • 11:00 am

As we all know, radio station KPFA in Berkeley decided to withdraw its sponsorship of a book talk by Richard Dawkins, cancelling the fundraising even; the reason, they said, was that Dawkins had insulted Islam (see my coverage here and here).  As they explained, “While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech.”

That’s ridiculous, for criticizing a faith is not “abusive”. KPFA’s de-platforming was an unconscionable breach of free speech, especially by a Left-wing station that has, over the years, broadcast a lot of what could be seen as much worse “hate speech.” As I’ve noted, this wasn’t an explicit violation of the First Amendment, as KPFA is not a government-run station nor has anything to do with the University of California, but free speech goes far deeper than the Constitution. It’s a tradition—a sine qua non—of progressivism, and to do what KPFA did violates that tradition and erodes an underlying principle of democracy.

And, of course, we all realize that it’s Islam that caused it all; as Dawkins said in his response,

I am known as a frequent critic of Christianity and have never been de-platformed for that. Why do you give Islam a free pass? Why is it fine to criticise Christianity but not Islam?

Well, we all know the reason for that, and I needn’t dwell on it here, except to say that it’s the racism of low expectations—at least that’s what I took from what a KPFA announcer said yesterday. And, of course, Muslims often threaten violence when their faith is publicly criticized, so fear of reprisal is also a factor.

Remember, too, that this was a talk about Richard’s new collection of essays, not Islam. KPFA, it seems, has deemed Dawkins un-hearable for eternity—for criticizing the Religion of Peace.

Today’s New York Times finally got wind of the issue, and published the article below (click on screenshot to go there).

It’s pretty much a straightforward account of the controversy, and adds that Dawkins was informed of his de-platforming only by a ticketholder who received the station’s ticket-cancellation email. KPFA didn’t even have the guts to tell Richard themselves, and have not, as far as I know, responded to his email. The station continues to waffle about this:

Bob Baldock, the events coordinator for the station, said in a phone interview on Saturday that he could not recall in his three decades at the station any other live event it hosted being canceled because of its content.

The decision was made by the station’s management, and Mr. Baldock said he lent his support, but he called the cancellation a “fraught decision.”

“I could probably do my best at defending Dawkins,” he said. “I’m very fond of him. I’ve liked his books.”

He added that Mr. Dawkins’s unscripted remarks and social media posts gave him pause. “He has said things that I know have hurt people,” Mr. Baldock said.

So? All meaningful speech about controversial issues “hurts people”. Is that the standard for de-platforming someone now? If so, KPFA shouldn’t give any air time to politicians, no matter which party they’re from, or anyone who takes a stand on issues like Israel, abortion, immigration, or religion.

And here come the Islamic exceptionalists:

Henry Norr, a former KPFA board member, criticized Mr. Dawkins in a July 17 email to the station. “Yes, he’s a rationalist, an atheist and an advocate of the science of evolution — great, so am I,” Mr. Norr wrote. “But he’s also an outspoken Islamophobe — have you done your homework about that?” [JAC: I have!]

Lara Kiswani, the executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which is based in San Francisco, also emailed the station last week. She said Mr. Dawkins’s comments give legitimacy to extremist views.

“KPFA is a progressive institution in the Bay Area, and an institution that reflects social justice,” she said in a phone interview on Saturday. “It isn’t required to give such anti-Islam rhetoric a platform.”

No, it’s not required to give criticism of Islam a platform. But is criticism of Islam now “extremist”? Are the tenets of Islam totally beyond questioning? Progressive have been criticizing Catholicism for years for its retrograde stands on women, gays, abortion, and its views on contraception that led to the death from AIDS of millions in Africa. Why, indeed, does Islam get a pass?

And finally we get the free-speech buttery:

Quincy McCoy, the station’s general manager, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. In a KPFA news broadcast on Friday, he said the station “emphatically supports free speech.”

He added, “We believe that it is our free speech right not to participate with anyone who uses hateful or hurtful language against a community that is already under attack.”

This is laughable. McCoy, who seems to be deeply confused, of course has a right to de-platform someone that he doesn’t agree with. And I suppose you could consider that “free counter-speech” in the form of action. But Dawkins is no provocateur or deliberate offense-giver: his views are considered, deeply passionate, and well worth discussing in today’s society. There’s a good case to be made that Islam is the world’s most oppressive and hurtful religion (as Richard said, its main victims are Muslims), and if we suppress people from expressing that view, and related critiques of other faiths, then we are truly lost.

The Muslim community has done well in painting themselves as victims whose faith cannot under any circumstances be criticized, and liberals, sad to say, have bought into this. But ideas are not people, and ideas have no rights. It’s time we stop being cowed, as was KPFA, by fear of offending people who adhere to harmful superstitions. We should speak up for our right to speak up.

What KPFA should do now is bring on Richard on for a radio discussion, and to answer listeners’ questions. I’m sure he’d do that, and there’s every reason for a good station to do that, but perhaps he’s so beyond redemption that even sending out his voice on KPFA’s airwaves is “abuse.”

h/t: Greg Mayer

Does admiration for white marble antiquities derive from racism?

July 24, 2017 • 9:30 am

There is seemingly no end to the number of trivial items that Regressive Leftists consider offensive, especially Regressive Leftists in academia, for academics need to somehow have their Offense advance their careers. And so we get academic papers on the patriarchy of glaciology, the racism of white pumpkins and pumpkin lattes, the cultural appropriation and racism of Pilates, the sexism and white privilege of yogurt, and the “othering” and “gender-shaming” of invasive squirrels in California. This stuff is useful for academics because the humanities, at least, are largely left-wing and Regressive to boot. So such papers, which would be laughed at by serious scholars, are gobbled up by journals.

Of course there’s still sexism and racism in American society, but this kind of trivial Pecksniffery endangers the legitimate social enterprise of instantiating equal rights and opportunities for all. But who cares when you have a paper to write and a career to make?

So onto this week’s Ridiculous Offense. This one’s not an academic paper, but an article in Hyperallergenic by an academic, Sarah E. Bond, an assistant professor of Classics at the University of Iowa. I don’t often see classicists turning out this kind of piffle, but I don’t read much in that field.

The title of her piece is “Why we need to start seeing the classical world in color,” and it’s about the Greco-Roman practice of polychromy–of painting their marble statues and buildings, so that what we see today is sometimes now how sculpture looked when it was made.

Bond’s title could be interpreted in two ways. The good way is that we need to realize that the ancients appreciated and saw their architecture and sculpture in color. (We’re only now starting to realize this as we find traces of color using various arcane technical methods.)  The Parthenon, for instance, which all visitors admire as a white marble temple, actually looked like this originally:

And here’s a Roman relief that still retains some color, reproduced in Bond’s article:

(From article): Large polychrome tauroctony relief of Mithras killing a bull, originally from the mithraeum of S. Stefano Rotonodo (end of 3rd century CE), now at the Baths of Diocletian Museum, Rome (photo by Carole Raddato/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Here’s a color reconstruction of an archer from the West Pediment of the Greek Temple of Aphaia as it looks now, with the color weathered off  the white marble, compared to a reconstruction:

(From article): The Archer from the western pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on Aigina, reconstruction, color variant A from the Gods of Color exhibit (photo by Marsyas/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 2.5)

Now I happen to like the colorless, weathered sculpture better, as, I think, do most people.  There’s something about the monochrome of the white marble that makes me appreciate the artistry more, as it does for the sculpture of Michelangelo, Bernini, and other Renaissance and Baroque artists.  The color seems to me both unnecessary and garish, but of course Greek and Roman statues were more than just art in their time: they were objects of veneration, and were meant to tell stories.

Bond’s job, and the second meaning of her title, though, is to tell me that my “aesthetic disgust” at colored ancient sculpture (I’m not disgusted by it, for crying out loud; I just don’t like it!), comes from my white supremacy, and that I’m privileging the white marble because I privilege my white skin.  I am not making this up:

Acceptance of polychromy by the public is another matter. A friend peering up at early-20th-century polychrome terra cottas of mythological figures at thePhiladelphia Museum of Art once remarked to me: “There is no way the Greeks were that gauche.” How did color become gauche? Where does this aesthetic disgust come from? To many, the pristine whiteness of marble statues is the expectation and thus the classical ideal. But the equation of white marble with beauty is not an inherent truth of the universe. Where this standard came from and how it continues to influence white supremacist ideas today are often ignored.

Most museums and art history textbooks contain a predominantly neon white display of skin tone when it comes to classical statues and sarcophagi. This has an impact on the way we view the antique world. The assemblage of neon whiteness serves to create a false idea of homogeneity — everyone was very white! — across the Mediterranean region. The Romans, in fact, did not define people as “white”; where, then, did this notion of race come from?

She then goes into a long disquisition on the racism of scholars beginning in the 18th century, and, although the idea of white superiority was indeed ubiquitous among European academics then, she doesn’t connect it in any meaningful way with our aesthetic preference for white marble. She simply asserts that our aesthetics somehow derive from the racism of people like Joachim Winckelmann, Pieter Camper, and others—including biological white supremacists who measured skulls and brains to arrive at their preconceived notions that whites were superior to all other “races.”

And indeed, she’s correct, but trivially true, when she says this:

Too often today, we fail to acknowledge and confront the incredible amount of racism that has shaped the ideas of scholars we cite in the field of ancient history. For example, I recently, came across Tenney Frank’s disturbing article “Race Mixture in the Roman Empire” while looking through an edited volume. First published in The American Historical Review in July 1916, the article sees Frank attempting to count extant inscriptions (mostly epitaphs) in order to gauge whether “race mixing” contributed to the decline of the Roman empire. It was then reprinted without comment in Greek historian Donald Kagan’s1962 collection of articles on the fall of Rome.

But we all know such things now; evolutionary biologists are especially aware of the racism that permeated evolutionary theory right down through the mid-20th century.  But, adds Bond, this racism still affects people’s attitudes towards art (and the accessibility of art to people of color):

How can we address the problem of the lily white antiquity that persists in the public imagination? What can classicists learn from the debate over whiteness and ancient sculpture?

First, we must consider why we are such a homogenous field. According to the Society for Classical Studies, the leading association for Classics in the United States, in 2014, just 9% of all undergraduate Classics majors were minorities. This number decreases the higher into academia you go. Just 2% of tenured full-time Classics faculty were minorities, according to the study.

Do we make it easy for people of color who want to study the ancient world? Do they see themselves in the ancient landscape that we present to them? The dearth of people of color in modern media depicting the ancient world is a pivotal issue here. Movies and video games, in particular, perpetuate the notion that the classical world was white. This is an issue when 70% of my students tell me that games such as Ryse: Son of Rome (which uses white statues to decorate the city of Rome and white Roman soldiers as lead characters), as well as films like Gladiator (which has a man from New Zealand playing the Spaniard Maximus) and the 300 (which has xenophobic depictions of Persians) led them to take my courses.

As far as I know, apart from African slaves, the classical world was “white” in the sense of comprising Europeans, who had various skin tones depending on their origin. You can see that variety of skin tones in any recent movie about the Greeks or Romans (see “Gladiator” again). Seriously, are Spaniards not considered “white”? If the classical world mostly comprised races usually lumped as Caucasians, what on earth is she talking about?

But of course Bond’s goal is not to enlighten us about art, but to chastise us for racism, and so we “have to change the narrative”:

If we want to see more diversity in Classics, we have to work harder as public historians to change the narrative — by talking to filmmakers, writing mainstream articles, annotating our academic writing and making it open access, and doing more outreach that emphasizes the vast palette of skin tones in the ancient Mediterranean.

I’m still puzzled about how apprehending the “vast palette of skin tones” among mostly Caucasian people is somehow going to get rid of racism. After all, are dark-skinned Spaniards, Greeks, and southern Italians the object of racism? Not to the scholars that Bond cites, who were all concerned with whites versus blacks. Seeing painted Roman and Greek sculpture won’t dispel that kind of racism.

But what Bond fails to consider is that aesthetic preference for non-painted sculptures—and they’re not just white—may be innate or even derived from cultural norms that have nothing to do with racism. Did Renaissance architects and sculptors use white marble because they were racists? If so, was Shah Jahan, a Mughal, a racist because he built the Taj Mahal in white marble? If so, why did the Mughals also build many forts and palaces in red? Why do we admire the Red Fort, the Red City of Petra, or the originally non-polychromed Sphinx of Giza? Many South Indian temples and sculptures are black, and are much admired by art lovers. When some South Indian Temples are painted, many of us see thm as garish and not as appealing. Here it’s not the white we admire, but the purity of any uniform color, which doesn’t distract us from the artistry of the sculptors. After all, that’s why we appreciate classical bronze sculpture, which is definitely not white. Finally, I have a suspicion that white marble was used because it’s plentiful and easy to work, not because sculptors were looking for any rock.

I suggest, then, that Bond has rejected alternative and better supported hypotheses for our aesthetics in favor of her own Regressive-Left confirmation bias, which is to see racism behind art appreciation. But she has not convinced me that I’m a racist because I prefer my Elgin Marbles sans pigment.

h/t: Barry

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 24, 2017 • 7:30 am

Reader Don McCrady sent some astronomy pictures; his notes are indented:

I’ve been collecting some astrophotos this summer, and even an astro-video.  To start with, here’s a couple of recent images taken with my astro-rig.

This is the Iris Nebula, part of a vast complex of dust in the constellation of Cepheus.  The central portion shines with the bright blue reflection of the star SAO 19158, the rest of the nebula fading to a dim brown.  This image represents a total of 7 hours of exposure through separate red, green, and blue filters.

Here we have Sharpless 2-132, a very faint nebula in Cepheus, interesting because of the uneven distribution of gases which is evident by the clean separation of colours.  The blue areas are rich in Oxygen-III, while the red areas are rich in Hydrogen-alpha.  This was taken through Hydrogen-alpha and Oxygen-III filters for a total of 8 hours exposure.

For something a bit different, I’ve been experimenting with wide-field astrophotography, which is quite different from the pure technical telescope stuff.  These were all taken with an unmodified Canon 6D and tracked using a Vixen Polarie.

Here is a wide-shot of the Milky way stretching from Cygnus on the left to Sagittarius on the right, taken with a 16mm lens.  It’s difficult to find the bright constellation stars with all the smaller ones that pop out in a long exposure, but the Summer Triangle (Vega, Altair, Deneb) is clearly encompassed in this shot.

Here, Sagittarius and the center of the Milky Way rise above the mountains east of Rattlesnake Lake, Washington.  Several prominent objects are visible around the most prominent object in the center, the M24 star cloud.  Below it and to the right are the Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula.  Almost directly above M24 are the Swan Nebula and the Eagle Nebula.

The familiar teapot-shaped constellation of Sagittarius will never fully rise above the mountains.

Scorpius rises over the mountains near Rattlesnake Lake, WA.  Rho Ophiuchus and its colourful nebula complex are visible, as is the faint smear of globular cluster M4 right beside Antares, and the vast molecular clouds of the Sagittarius Milky Way are on the left edge of the image.

Finally, here’s a timelapse video consisting of 312 individual images of the Milky Way over Rattlesnake Lake.

I (mis)used the Vixen Polarie (lying flat, not polar aligned) to slowly rotate the camera from east to south at 1/2 the sidereal rate in order to give the timelapse some foreground motion.  I obviously didn’t level it since the end shot ended up crooked.  You can see that at some point while I slept, somebody blithely walked into my shot, totally oblivious with his lights.

Turn the sound on to hear “Lost Frontier”.

Monday: Hili dialogue

July 24, 2017 • 6:30 am

It’s Monday, July 24, 2017, it’s early, I have a crooked finger and a slowly healing but still aching shoulder and there’s but a single duck left in my pond. First World problems! Perhaps I’ll drown my sorrows, as it’s National Tequila Day!  In Poland it’s Police Day, Święto Policji, established in 1995. Perhaps the Polish cops will be busy, for the country is awash in protest after what the autocratic government did to bring the judiciary under political control. Poland is quickly turning into a dictatorship, and it’s very sad.

On this day in 1304, in the Wars of Scottish Independence, King Edward I of England and his troops brought about the Fall of Stirling Castle using a giant catapult (or “trebuchet”) called the Warwolf. It was 300-400 feet long, its parts filled 30 wagons, and it was the biggest catapult ever made. Here’s a reconstruction:

On July 24, 1847, Brigham Young and his band of 148 Mormons reached their destination: Salt Lake Valley, soon to be the site of the Mormon town of  Salt Lake City. On this day in 1911, archaeologist Hiram Bingham III re-discovered Machu Picchu, “the Lost City of the Incas”. It’s one of the three most beautiful places I’ve ever visited. Finally, on this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 mission safely returned to Earth after landing on the Moon, with splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

Notables born on this day include Simón Bolívar (1783), Alexandre Dumas (1802), Robert Graves (1895), Amelia Earhart (1897), Zelda Fitzgerald (1900), Bella Abzug (1920), and Lynda Carter (1951). Those who died on this day include Martin Van Buren (1862), Peter Sellers (1980), and Isaac Bashevis Singer (1991).  Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s bad news about the cherries, but Hili’s staff has picked the ripe ones, individually, to ensure that there will be enough fruit for my pies on my September visit:

Hili: Almost all the fruit was destroyed by frost.
A: There will be enough for a cherry pie for Jerry.
Hili: I will not eat any, just in case.
 Oh Hili, you don’t normally eat cherrries!
In Polish:
Hili: Prawie wszystkie owoce wymarzły.
Ja: Na placek z wiśniami dla Jerrego wystarczy.
Hili: Na wszelki wypadek nie będę ich jadła.

In Winnipeg, Gus is having an al fresco snooze:

And Heather Hastie sent a cat tweet:

As did Matthew Cobb (there’s a video):

 

One duck left

July 23, 2017 • 3:15 pm

Several days ago, two of the three drakes in my brood of four left the pond for good, and yesterday the mother and other drake flew the coop. That leaves me with one duck—the lonely (and lately bullied) hen. The good news is that I can feed her without worrying about the others beating her up or chasing her away. But she seems wary and, I suspect, is lonely and bereft. Sometimes she emits a mournful quack that breaks my heart.

I sort of hope she’ll fly away soon and find some friends, but I’ll miss her. After all, she’s made largely of the oatmeal, peas, corn, mealworms, and Cheerios I gave her since she was a yellow fluffball at the end of May. I’m glad, though, that all four ducklings have made it.

Here she is, alone except for the ubiquitous red-eared sliders, who have learned to follow her around to nab the food that sinks too deep for her to dabble:

The evolution of the Strandbeest

July 23, 2017 • 2:15 pm

Six years ago I put up a video of a walking sculpture called a “Strandbeest” (“beach creature”), built by a physicist turned sculptor named Theo Jansen, who’s been building these for 17 years.

I urge you to peruse his website, as they’re getting increasingly more complicated. There’s no motor involved; they’re all propelled by the wind. And he’s designed a method to store the wind with a bicycle pump, creating a “stomach” that can be used to move the Beest when it’s calm. The main struts are plastic tubes.

Reader Bruce sent me this amazing video with a comment, “Very clever engineer and builder makes these beach wind machines that look like marine polychaetes and other inverts. These are much larger than those he did several years ago.”

This video shows a panoply of Strandbeests; they’re all fantastic.

Britain’s National Health Service about to ban homeopathy

July 23, 2017 • 1:15 pm

Reader Barrie called my attention to an article in The Independent  that offers some good news: Britan’s NHS, based on a 48-page document about items that shouldn’t be prescribed in primary care medicine, seems set to stop prescribing Magic Water, otherwise known as homeopathic medicine.

The motivation for the whole document was to eliminate, as a cost-cutting measure, those prescribed items that were of low clinical effectiveness. So there are many drugs listed, but on page 14 you’ll find this:

Actually, given Prince Charles’s fondness for this quackery (he even uses it own his own farm animals), I’m surprised the expenditure by the NHS is less than £100,000 per year, but it sends an important signal to people that the government health agency sees homeopathy as ineffective. Now I’m sure that patients who want Magic Water can still buy it themselves, but at least doctors can’t prescribe it.

Here’s a tw**t from Simon Enright, the Director of Communications for NHS Britain, laying out some of the conclusions and problems with eliminating homeopathy.

I’m not sure where his seven points come from (they’re not in the big document), but one struck me: “As well as primary care prescribing, there are two homeopathic hospitals affiliated to NHS Trusts in Bristol and at University College London Hospitals (UCLH).”

Seriously—government-funded homeopathic hospitals? I have no idea what they are, but perhaps a British reader can describe them. What kind of treatment do they offer? Is there anything besides Magic Water on tap?