In memoriam: Anne Nicol Gaylor

June 17, 2015 • 9:45 am

JAC note:  I never met Anne Nicol Gaylor, but knew of her through the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), for she, along with her daughter Annie Laurie Gaylor, whom I do know, were the founders of that estimable organization. Anne Nicol was a long-time critic of religion and a fighter for women’s rights—especially reproductive rights—and it was clear how much of her toughness, tenacity, and liberal activism were instantiated in her daughter and then the FFRF. When Anne Gaylor died on June 14, I wanted to put up an “in memoriam” post, but when reader Diane G., another Wisconsin resident, wrote me informing me of the death (which I already knew about), it was clear that she knew a lot more about Anne Nicol than did I. I therefore asked her to write a post for me, and she kindly complied. Here it is:

*******

In memoriam: Anne Nicol Gaylor, 1926-2015

by Diane G.

Gaylor: Religion is Sexist

Religion a crutch, freethinker says

Gaylor attacks columnist’s claim that the Bible ‘limits vengeance’

Anne Gaylor (who else?) battles pregame prayer

Anne Gaylor’s ‘almost used to’ death threats

Godless woman: the Good Book’s hazardous to your health

Government says atheist’s idea to label the Scriptures just like cigarettes is ABSURD!

Anne Gaylor wages war on Boy Scouts

Gaylor draws wrath of Christians

Gaylor fights ‘Year of Bible’

Activist atheist fights hard, wins

Anne Nicol Gaylor, pioneering feminist, freethinking activist, and principal founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, died Sunday at the age of 88. The above are actual newspaper headlines representing a small fraction of the publicity this very driven woman elicited over the last five decades. Women, Wisconsonites, Americans and humanity as a whole have lost one of our true heroes.

a124
Anne, left, picketing the Wisconsin governer in the mid-90’s From http://ffrf.org/legacy/about/anne/tribute/tribute81.php (other photos also from this site)

Several WEIT readers are FFRF members and may already be aware of her death, which I hope will inspire many to learn more about her life. A born activist, Anne was advocating for issues of women’s rights and freethought when such topics were not mentioned in polite society. The FFRF’s website obituary here gives a brief synopsis of her passions and accomplishments. And I highly recommend to readers this slide tribute to Anne Nicol that was created for the occasion of her retirement as FFRF President, in 2004, by her daughter Annie Laurie Gaylor (who of course then became, with her husband, one of two co-Presidents of the FFRF). This tribute is full of pictures, more newspaper articles, and best of all some charming and wickedly humorous remembrances from Annie Laurie herself.

a116
“With Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, recipient of the premiere “Emperor Has No Clothes” award, in 1999.” This, of course, is the same award Jerry received in 2011.

I have both of Anne’s books, Abortion is a Blessing and Lead Us Not Into Penn Station. The former is an eye-opening account of her prodigious activism in the abortion controversy, including her founding of an abortion referral service three years before Roe v. Wade, and her establishment of a fund to finance abortions for indigent women two years later. Her from-the-trenches reports of the legal and mortal dangers women faced from the early days of her involvement in the movement sadly ring just as true today, as hard-won US abortion rights are whittled away legislatively, state by state. I’m happy to report that this book is now free online, and you won’t be surprised that I recommend it.

When I agreed to write this, it was because I’d planned on mining Penn Station for any number of Anne Nicol witticisms, which I’d then string together and call a post. Alas, the state of my house is such that a couple of desperate searches have yet to unearth it; nor is it handily online. In my defense, it’s a very small volume, a booklet, something easily buried by subsequent layers…so in lieu of those bon mots and beautifully clear statements about religion and feminism I could have cadged, I encourage you to consider purchasing the volume yourself from FFRF; here’s the enticing website blurb:

This handy publication with photographs throughout commemorates the 28-year tenure as president of FFRF’s founder, Anne Gaylor. A must-have for any freethinker, this gracefully readable book contains Gaylor’s classic writings. She succinctly demolishes the Ten Commandments (“What’s Wrong with the Ten Commandments”), the myth of a loving Jesus (“Was Jesus a Horse Thief?”), the bible’s sanction of slavery (“Slavery: ‘A Trust from God’ “), and documents “Hitler’s Religion.” Lead Us Not Into Penn Station offers affectionate profiles of freethinking pioneers such as Robert G. Ingersoll and Margaret Sanger, and goes after religious sacred cows, such as bible-belt journalism, Christian funerals, and the death penalty. A personal and appealing introduction to nonbelief, reason-based ethics and timely state/church issues by one of the nation’s leading freethought activists. A bonus: Anne’s memorable exposé of her experience on the “Phil Donahue Show” in the late 1970s (“Shrill! Abrasive! Acerbic! Inflammatory!”).

a133
“A serene moment on the road, visiting with a kitten.” (I received a vision from PCC telling me to use this picture.)

About her motivations and the paths her activism were to take she once remarked, “There were many groups working for women’s rights, but none of them dealt with the root cause of women’s oppression—religion.” Such a legacy that insight has produced!

Readers’ wildlife photographs

June 17, 2015 • 7:30 am

Reader Jacques Hausser in Switzerland sent some nice insect photos, one showing parental care.

Here are some pictures of Hemipterans [JAC: “true” bugs], showing a) some parental care and b) aposematic colorations.

Elasmucha grisea (Family Acanthosomatidae), the “parent bug”. Female protecting her eggs. Females not only protect the eggs, but also the young larvae through the first three stages (the first food of young larvae is their egg shell). Readers can find additional interesting details in Wikipedia [JAC: link above].

Hem-1
Fifth (and last) larval stage. The larvae still gather together on the leaf, although their mother is no longer around.

Hem-2
A nice example of aposematic coloration: Graphosoma italicum (Family Pentatomidae). They obviously didn’t read St Exupéry correctly (“love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction”).

Hem-3
The same species; the rostrum (formed by the labium and containing a syringe formed by the mandibles and the maxilla) is clearly visible. As in most of the Hemipterans, this species sucks sap from its host plants, and this menacing stare is just a bluff.

Hem-4
Another aposematic and well known species in continental Europe, the firebug, Pyrrhocoris apterus (Family Pyrrhocoridae). Contrary to the previous species, it is polyphagous, also sucking seeds (e.g., from lime trees) and even dead insects. And if you like curious facts, here is an extract from Wikipedia:

“P. apterus was the subject of an unexpected discovery in the 1960s when researchers who had for ten years been rearing the bugs in Prague, Czechoslovakia attempted to do the same at Harvard University in the United States. After the 5th larval instar, instead of developing into adults, the bugs either entered a 6th instar stage, or became adults with larval characteristics. All specimens died without reaching maturity.

The source of the problem was eventually proven to be the paper towels used in the rearing process. Furthermore, the researchers were able to replicate these results with American newspapers such as the New York Times, but not European ones like The Times. The specific cause was discovered to be hormones found in the native balsam fir tree (Abies balsamea) used to manufacture paper and related products in America. This hormone happened to have a profound effect on P. apterus, but not on other insect species, showing the diversification of hormone receptors in the insects.”

Hem-5

Reader Criss Ludin sent several photos of a black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax); two are below:

Here are a few pictures that I took recently near my home in Ottawa, Canada (Google co-ordinates45.342785, -75.839797). The locale is a wetland with some shallow ponds and streams that were incorporated into the landscaping of an old manufacturing facility. This wetland is ​​part of the green belt that surrounds Ottawa.

IMG_1007

IMG_1047

Finally, reader Julian Cattaneo sent a bird photo (anyone know the species?):

This pic of a nomming seagull was taken on June 10 on the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston in Washington.

R. Julian Cattaneo

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 17, 2015 • 5:32 am

It is Hump Day, and I have nothing except that I learned I am not supposed to refer to Canadians as “Americans,” although a reader once chewed me out for referring to US citizens as “Americans,” noting that that was exclusionary of other North Americans (like Canadians). Since then I’ve been careful about that, but now learn it was a postmodern ruse, and that USains, as they’re called, can properly be called “Americans” in Canada. Live and learn. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is among the blossoms, ignoring Andrzej’s Biblical warning that “blessed are those who have not touched but have believed” (modified from scripture).

A: There are no roses without thorns.
Hili: Are you sure?

P1020952

In Polish:
Ja: Nie ma róży bez kolców.
Hili: Czy jesteś tego pewien?

 

How many species of tropical trees are there?

June 16, 2015 • 2:19 pm

I’m not going to get into the long-debated issue of why the tropics are so much richer in species than the temperate zones (theories include physical disturbance, coevolutionary pressures, higher temperature that accelerates evolution, and so on). There is no consensus, but let me just present some data showing the huge difference, data collected in a new paper,”An estimate of the number of tropical tree species,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by J. W. Ferry Silk et al. (and the et. al., as you’ll see, has a gazillion authors). Here are the data from the “nontechnical” abstract (my emphasis)

People are fascinated by the amazing diversity of tropical forests and will be surprised to learn that robust estimates of the number of tropical tree species are lacking. We show that there are at least 40,000, but possibly more than 53,000, tree species in the tropics, in contrast to only 124 across temperate Europe. Almost all tropical tree species are restricted to their respective continents, and the Indo-Pacific region appears to be as species-rich as tropical America, with each of these two regions being almost five times as rich in tree species as African tropical forests. Our study shows that most tree species are extremely rare, meaning that they may be under serious risk of extinction at current deforestation rates.

The technical abstract says the same thing more verbosely (why do scientists feel they have to write in turgid, third-person prose?), and adds this:

Contrary to common assumption, the Indo-Pacific region was found to be as species-rich as the Neotropics, with both regions having a minimum of ∼19,000–25,000 tree species. Continental Africa is relatively depauperate with a minimum of ∼4,500–6,000 tree species. Very few species are shared among the African, American, and the Indo-Pacific regions.

This pattern holds for most taxa, and knowledgeable readers can discuss the theories below. I just wanted to show you the huge difference, one that has now been well quantified for tropical trees, which are often hard to identify.

And here are the authors:

Screen Shot 2015-06-16 at 2.18.12 PMWell, someone had to count all those species!

More college triggering

June 16, 2015 • 11:45 am

As reader Lenny wrote when he emailed me this link to an Economist article, “Trigger-unhapy: student safety has become a real threat to free speech on campus”, a piece about the spread of calls for “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” at U.S. colleges:

I don’t think there is anything particularly insightful.  Relevant only because the issue has made it to the general business community through The Economist.​

I suppose Lenny’s right, but the article also contains some other chilling cases of censorship of which I wasn’t aware. Here’s one:

FOR an hour or two on a foggy morning last December, some students at the University of Iowa (UI) mistook one of their professors, Serhat Tanyolacar, for a fan of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr Tanyolacar had placed a canvas effigy based on Klan robes, screen-printed with news cuttings about racial violence, on the Pentacrest, the university’s historic heart. The effigy had a camera in its hood to record public reactions.

The reaction among some black students was to fear for their safety, and that is not surprising. What is more of a puzzle—for anyone outside American academia, at least—is that students and UI bosses continued denouncing Mr Tanyolacar for threatening campus safety even after the misunderstanding was cleared up. In vain did the Turkish-born academic explain that he is a “social-political artist”, using Klan imagery to provoke debate about racism. Under pressure from angry students, university chiefs issued two separate apologies. The first expressed regret that students had been exposed to a “deeply offensive” artwork, adding that there is no room for “divisive” speech at UI. The second apologised for taking too long to remove a display which had “terrorised” black students and locals, thereby failing to ensure that all students, faculty, staff and visitors felt “respected and safe”. An unhappy Mr Tanyolacar feels abandoned by the university. He left Iowa earlier this month, when his visiting fellowship came to an end, and has suspended his teaching career.

Here’s the triggering image:

AR-141209860

The article adds this:

. . . Mr Tanyolacar’s troubles point to something new and alarming. A generation ago campus rows turned on what should be taught. Leftish students decried lessons about dead white men as acts of racist and sexist oppression. UI witnessed its own censorship battle, after a conservative student complained about gay sex scenes in a German film shown in class. But what Mr Tanyolacar was saying was not the problem: his work is explicitly anti-racist. His problem turned on who now has the authority to declare his art harmful, regardless of his intent.

And right there you have the problem: if we are to censor “hate speech,” who is the arbiter of what constitutes hate?

The only problem with this artwork is that it was erected without permission. But seriously, look at it! It’s the epitome of what should inspire dialogue, along the lines of Andres Serrano’s famous “Piss Christ” (a crucifix immersed in a beaker of the artist’s urine). Now I accept that black students might have felt uneasy at seeing that, but look at the headlines about racial violence that bedeck the figure. It’s pretty clear that this is not a racist image. What bothers me most about this is the college’s subsequent insistence that it has no truck with “divisive speech.” What speech that has promoted social progress, or political or religious discussion, isn’t divisive? Is all speech at the University of Iowa to be harmonious, loving, and accommodating—designed to make students feel “safe”?

These repeated calls for assurance of “safety” irritate me. It’s as if students want to walk through college swaddled in cotton and surrounded by armed guards who will ensure that their tender feelings remain unbruised. Where did this come from? “Safety” should refer to physical safety, not lack of offense, and “respect” should be afforded to people, not their ideas. Let us hope that this tide of snowflakery will melt soon—but I’m not holding my breath.

h/t: Lenny