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.
Matthew Cobb sent me this tw**t from Charlie Brooker:
I’m sad I won’t be able to watch, being a Yank and all, but someone will describe it. After all, her fans here must number in the high tens. I’m curious how much Philomena can garble the activities of the Howse of Commons.
Oh, what high expectations we had of Obama, and how little they’ve been fulfilled! Granted, he’s come through with healthcare, and the Republican Congress often stymies his good efforts; but lately Obama seems to be phoning in his performance. Yesterday the New York Times called him out on two accounts: his failure to fulfill his promises to work against the federal death penalty, and the administration’s waffling and ultimate lying about our engagement in Afghanistan. (Indented statements from the Times.)
On the federal death penalty:
Inside the Justice Department, some officials opposed a formal moratorium because it would eliminate the option for the death penalty in terrorism cases like the one against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who faces a possible death sentence for the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon. Others worried that eliminating the death penalty would make it harder to persuade Congress to move terrorist suspects from the island prison at Guantánamo Bay to the United States for trial.
Why should there be an option for the death penalty for terrorists? It’s clearly not a deterrent to terrorism; indeed, Muslim terrorist often seek death and martyrdom. The only valid reason is retribution, which I don’t see as justifiable, especially in light of my determinism. Further, killing someone costs more than putting them in jail for life without parole. Finally, if you make a mistake with conviction, you can’t bring back someone you’ve killed. It was in Attorney General Eric Holder who ordered federal prosecutors to request the death penalty for Tsarnaev, and you can bet he wouldn’t have done that without Obama’s approval.
There were also logistical hurdles. Advocates and administration officials asked what would happen to the roughly five dozen people on federal death row. Would Mr. Obama, who has said the death penalty was appropriate in some cases, commute the sentences of men who raped and murdered people? There were no clear answers.
Let him exercise some leadership and come out against the death penalty, then. Yes, commute the executions to long prison terms or life without parole. Why isn’t that a clear answer?
In the end, the question never made it to Mr. Obama’s desk. Last fall, Mr. Holder announced plans to resign, and officials said it would be inappropriate to recommend a major policy change on his way out of office, then leave it up to his successor to carry it out.
Hillary? Are you kidding?
Obama long ago promised that, after the U.S. ceased having any direct combat role in Afghanistan, the U.S. military left in the country would be limited to training and advising Afghan troops, and would slowly leave completely. Well, the NYT says that’s not true:
Rather than ending the American war in Afghanistan, the military is using its wide latitude to instead transform it into a continuing campaign of airstrikes — mostly drone missions — and Special Operations raids that have in practice stretched or broken the parameters publicly described by the White House.
Western and military officials said that American and NATO forces conducted 52 airstrikes in March, months after the official end of the combat mission. Many of these air assaults, which totaled 128 in the first three months of this year, targeted low- to midlevel Taliban commanders in the most remote reaches of Afghanistan.
As early as January, when officials in Washington were hailing the end of the combat mission, about 40 American Special Operations troops were deployed to Kunar Province to advise Afghan forces that were engaged with the Taliban over a handful of villages along the border with Pakistan.
With the troops on the ground, the command for the American-led coalition called in airstrikes under the authority of force protection, according to two Western military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details of the operation were not public.
“They are putting guys on the ground in places to justify the airstrikes,” one of the officials said. “It’s not force protection when they are going on the offensive.”
. . . Now, though, the distance seems to be widening between the administration’s public statements and what the military appears to be doing, whether at the behest of the White House or on its own, officials here said.
There’s more, but you can read it for yourself. All administrations dissimulate, but I didn’t think Obama would renege on his promise to draw down American troops, a withdrawal he slowed in March. The fact is that the Afghan army is unable beat the Taliban, and so we’re committed to an eternal presence in that country. The moment we leave the country the battle will resume in earnest, and the victors will not be our allies.
The only difference between this and Vietnam is that we had at least some justification for invading Afghanistan. Now, like Vietnam, it’s become a tarpit: an endless war of attrition.
Today Parents reports that a 4-year-old Colorado child was sent to school with some Oreo cookies in her packed lunch. She returned with this critical note from the Food Police at school, who had obviously been monitoring what the kids ate:
The parents are pissed, and rightly so—even some of their friends became Leisure Fascists™! (my emphasis):
But Leeza Pearson of Aurora, Colo. thinks the school needs to butt out and said her daughter is perfectly healthy.
“We noticed last minute that we ran out of fruit or we would have put that in there instead,” the 22-year-old mom told TODAY.com. “So we threw some Oreos in there.”
Shocked by the letter, which stated that students need to have a “nutritious lunch” and snacks that don’t include Lunchables, chips or fruit snacks, Pearson vented online, and said she was surprised to see the fury it generated on social media.
Critics called the letter “ridiculous” and Pearson said she’s especially annoyed because the school recently asked parents to provide candy for a class party.
“I just got a bunch of outrage from friends I hadn’t heard from in years,” she said.
Here are the miscreants:
Those meddling people need to butt out! I remember that on the day that my mother died, I bought a pack of cigarettes. I used to smoke a bit in college, but hadn’t bought cigarettes in decades. I was so distraught that, I thought, the only thing that would calm me down was a pack of smokes. As I stood in line to buy them, some buttinski behind me proceeded to lecture me, saying, “You do know those things can give you lung cancer, don’t you?” And so on. I’ve never forgotten that jerk.
By all means crusade for healthier diets if you want. Lord knows Americans are way too overweight and many of them eat horribly on a regular basis. But do not single out people and lecture them for what they’re eating, smoking, or drinking. Chances are they already know the risks, and those lectures are the purview of one’s doctor, not strangers. This also goes for when I post photos of my meals on trips.
About a week ago, six writers who are members of PEN, an organization that promotes and supports freedom of literary expression, refused to attend and be “table hosts” at a PEN banquet. This was a protest against PEN’s giving a “freedom of expression award” to Charlie Hebdo after the brutal murders of its outspoken writers and artists. Now, according to the New York Times, the Shameful Six have been joined by 139 other writers who are equally misguided.
The Intercept gives the text of the letter and a list of the 145 signers. Here’s an excerpt from the letter. I’ve highlighted the inevitable “however,” which alway tells us in such matters that the writers have paid lip service to the principle but then will argue that in this case the principle doesn’t really apply:
It is clear and inarguable that the murder of a dozen people in the Charlie Hebdo offices is sickening and tragic.
. . . However, there is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were characterized as satire and “equal opportunity offense,” and the magazine seems to be entirely sincere in its anarchic expressions of principled disdain toward organized religion. But in an unequal society, equal opportunity offence does not have an equal effect.
Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire. The inequities between the person holding the pen and the subject fixed on paper by that pen cannot, and must not, be ignored.
To the section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized, a population that is shaped by the legacy of France’s various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering.
Our concern is that, by bestowing the Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award on Charlie Hebdo, PEN is not simply conveying support for freedom of expression, but also valorizing selectively offensive material: material that intensifies the anti-Islamic, anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world.
. . . We the undersigned, as writers, thinkers, and members of PEN, therefore respectfully wish to disassociate ourselves from PEN America’s decision to give the 2015 Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo.
This letter proves three things: that the writers either can’t read French or don’t understand France, that they don’t fathom what Charlie Hebdo was all about, and that their notion of “punching down” doesn’t make sense. Charlie Hebdo not only satirized Catholicism (isn’t that punching up?), but also the French government and the many racist elements in French politics, particularly the odious Le Pens. Isn’t that punching up? And really, how “marginalized” are two angry Muslims with an arsenal? With their recourse to weapons and willingness to use them, I’d hardly consider jihadists “marginalized” or “powerless.” Finally, as I’ve said many times, Charlie Hebdo was on the Left insofar as it combatted racism and fought for the rights of immigrants and foreign minorities. They just didn’t like bigotry or religion, and mocked them mercilessly.
These signers are, pardon my French, useful idiots. Their criticism of the magazine’s “valorizing selectively offensive material” is a euphemism for “Charlie Hebdo said stuff that offended people”—and that’s precisely what a freedom-of-expression award is for. What do they want: a recipient that had the courage to offend nobody??
I don’t recognize most of the signers (perhaps that exposes my ignorance of the humanities), but here are ones I do know: Eve Ensler, Michael Cunningham, Kathyrn Harrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Danzy Senna, and Wallace Shawn. You can see the full list at the letter link, and shame on them all.
But there are also two eloquent and spirited reactions to these misguided writers. One is by the ever-admirable Nick Cohen in the Spectator, “Charlie Hebdo: The literary indulgence of murder.” Cohen (whom I’m going to award, along with Jeffrey Taylor, the PCC Award for Rationality) is particularly incensed with writer Francine Prose’s critique in the Guardian of the PEN award, but also levels a strong attack on the hypocrisy of “liberal” writers who, cowering before Islamic thugs, abandon the very Enlightenment principles butressing traditional Leftism (my emphasis):
Prose, [Peter] Carey, the London Review of Books and so many others agree with Islamists first demand that the world should have a de facto blasphemy law enforced at gunpoint. Break it and you have only yourself to blame if the assassins you provoked kill you
They not only go along with the terrorists from the religious ultra-right but with every state that uses Islam to maintain its power. They can show no solidarity with gays in Iran, bloggers in Saudi Arabia and persecuted women and religious minorities across the Middle East, who must fight theocracy. They have no understanding that enemies of Charlie Hebdo are also the enemies of liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims in the West. In the battle between the two, they have in their stupidity and malice allied with the wrong side.
Most glaringly they have failed to understand power. It is not fixed but fluid. It depends on where you stand. The unemployed terrorist with the gun is more powerful than the Parisian cartoonist cowering underneath his desk. The marginal cleric may well face racism and hatred – as my most liberal British Muslim friends do – but when he sits in a Sharia court imposing misogynist rules on Muslim women in the West, he is no longer a victim or potential victim but a man to be feared.
When I read the literary attacks on PEN’s award to Hebdo, I wondered whether it was worth staying on the middle-class left. Prose’s piece on its own was enough to make me leave in disgust. It seems a corrupted, cowardly, lying and selfish movement bereft on any spirit of camaraderie; and dishonest to its bones.
But then I recollected that PEN stood firm. It politely thanked its various luminaries for their protests and then said it would ignore them.
I, too, am deeply embarrassed at the reaction of much of the middle-class Left, particularly writers and cartoonists, like Garry Trudeau, who appeal to that moiety. But I reserve my right to be a Leftist and also decry the hypocrisy and cowardice of those who are supposedly on my side.
Finally, although I consider Adam Gopnik too soft on religion (we’re having a friendly discussion of this issue at the moment), I admire his supporting the right to mock faith in his New Yorker piece, “PEN has every right to honor Charlie Hebdo.” Unlike his thick-headed literary confrères, Gopnik clearly distinguishes making fun of faith from demonizing faith’s adherents. One would think that would be a no-brainer, but for 145 writers it’s clearly not. Gopnik:
It is not merely that an assault on an ideology is different from a threat made to a person; it is that it is the opposite of a threat made to a person. The whole end of liberal civilization is to substitute the criticism of ideas for assaults on people. The idea that we should be free to do our work and offer our views without extending a frightened veto to those who threaten to harm us isn’t just part of what we mean by free expression. It’s what free expression is. The Charlie Hebdostaff kept working in the face of death threats, and scorning an effort to honor that courage gives too much authority to those who want that veto. The killers were not speaking for an offended community and explaining why, after all, someone might easily miss the point of the cartoons. They were responding to an insult with murder. The honored cartoonists, in turn, are not markers in an abstract game of sensitivities. They were elderly artists whose last view in life was of a masked man with a machine gun. If that is not horror, then nothing is horror. If that is not wrong, then nothing is wrong. If writers won’t honor their courage, then what courage can we honor?
. . . How can we tell insults to ideology from threats to people? Well, as I’ve written before, that is why we have critics, courts, and laws. Hell, it’s why we have writers. It’s the work they do. And it’s the reason why they gather at galas, where they can argue.
I hold those truths to be self-evident, but apparently they can’t be emphasized too often in today’s climate of identity politics.
Here are have three long-billed curlews (Numenius americanus) from reader Stephen Barnard, who notes: “This is a new bird for me, #83 on the Aubrey Spring Ranch species list.”
Reader Randy from Iowa sent three photos of a bird I don’t think we’ve had here before:
This is the first day I have seen the Baltimore Oriole, Icterus galbula, back for the summer. The first is a photo of the typical nest and then a couple of the bird. Very striking bird, even from the back. If you put the sliced orange out, they will find you.
And from Colin Franks (Facebook here, website here), two more photos.
Swan (Cygnus; species unidentified)
Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris):
Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis):
The Dodo has a heartbreaking but also heartwarming piece on research animals that, after years in cages, were finally released into homes or zoos. (The organization that does this is called The Beagle Project). There are d*gs, cats, rabbits, and chimps, and all have videos, gifs, or photos. It will surely make you tear up. I’ll show just the cats, but have a look at the others, for it’s beautiful when an animal encounters freedom for the first time.
Here are Shira and Jax, who, according to the piece, were released from a research lab in New York. Shira is the light one, and the article notes, “Sadly, Shira passed away from a seizure a few months later. It’s unknown whether it was caused by the research that was performed on her. Thankfully, [Jax] is still enjoying life as a house kitty.
Jax sees his first bird!:
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Here’s a good idea reported by the BBC’s Newsbeat. A company has modified a robotic device that allows you to play with cats remotely while you’re online. It’s being used by shelters that hope to get cats adopted (and to give some fun to those who are disabled or allergic to cats), and it’s working. As the BBC reports:
The company [inReach]now has devices installed in more than a dozen animal sanctuaries throughout the US, with users from around the world queuing up online to play with the cats for two minutes. The wait can take several hours but people don’t seem put off.
And of course, bonds eventually form: “We actually had a lady in New York play with a kitten in South Carolina and after playing with the kitten through the website, she called the shelter and said ‘don’t adopt that cat’. She then jumped on a plane, flew over seven states, and adopted that animal the next day,” Scott told Newsbeat.
Now, try it for yourself. Go to this site, which has 13 shelters using iPlay. Find one that’s available, and see if you can play with the cats. You choose a toy and manipulate it with the keys on your computer. I never quite got the hang of it, but I’d be very curious to see if any readers can make it work. Here’s a demonstration video:
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Finally, I’ve put up cat tattoos before, but here’s a new batch, also from The Dodo: “14 tattoos that perfectly capture catitude.” Here are my favorites:
A reader has her cat on the arm—and, for some reason, pizza! (From reddit):
Another reader has his late Siamese tattooed on his chest (from reddit):
Jackson Galaxy, the “Cat Whisperer” put on his Facebook page a tattoo from one of his friends with a pawprint from each cat that she rescued. “”My new ink. One paw for each of my furbaby rescues. Three boys and one girl. I love them all!”– Kim”:
Stylish and classy (from reddit):
Another simple but lovely one, also from reddit:
Finally, a mother and daughter from California got matching tattoos of a pair of calicos (from reddit):
The Dodo site has eight more; go see.
Which readers have cat tattoos? ‘Fess up—I know some of you have them. (Send photos if you do!)
h/t: Su, Diane G
Good news on several fronts: my back is much better (though still sore), and spring has arrived at last, with temperatures predicted to be in the mid 70s (23º-24ºC) today and tomorrow. The time draws nigh for the Albatross to take wing, and of course I’m nervous, for any criticism of religion is considered blasphemous in the U.S. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Princess is annoyed at the paparazzi, though the cherries are blooming well (a good harbinger for my pie future!):
Hili: You are taking pictures again! Not a moment of privacy.A: Just one, OK?
Hili: Znowu robisz zdjęcia, ani chwili prywatności.
Ja: Tylko jedno, dobrze?
Flowers at the top open last. The blooming orchard, day 6.
I’ve officially become a Senior Jew because I can say the following words with great feeling: “OY! MY BACK!” (All I need to complete my transition is a few gold chains and a condo in Miami.) Yes, dear readers, I have badly re-injured my back, but in a good cause: trying to open the heavy lab window in my excitement after I spied a juvenile squirrel on the sill who looked hungry. I was in a hurry to give it a cracked walnut, and I paid the price. Now I’m sitting in my office with an ice pack on my back, trying to write a talk, and every small move feels like someone applied a firebrand about six inches above my waist. I suppose I’ll live, though.
All this is by way of saying that there will be no more substantive posts today, even though I intended to write about the new letter in which 145 PEN members protested the organization’s freedom-of-expression award to Charlie Hebdo. That must wait until tomorrow. For now I leave you, on this first day of the lusty month of May, with three cat videos:
The first one truly merits the title of “awesome”: a sartorially splendid “Pavlov’s Skinner’s cat,” who’s been taught to ring a bell when he wants a treat. That owner is well advised to put the bell away except at treat time.
Second, a fearless kitten versus a Doberman. The dog is amazingly indulgent. When I thought about this, and realized that most kittens are pretty fearless, it struck me that they shouldn’t be. They should, in fact, be more fearful than Mom, for their ancestors were solitary, Mom wasn’t always at home, and so they should be fearful of anything that could be a potential predator. I understand kittens are taught to be fearful, which does make sense, but why aren’t they instinctively fearful?
Finally, a determined cat crams itself into a fishbowl. Maru couldn’t do better! Reader Su, who sent this, noted that “A lesser cat would have given up.”
h/t; Melissa, Su
p.s. Maybe you want to give Kickstarter some money to fund what will be a great movie on Japan’s “Cat Island”?