Pan: a small “ravioli moon” of Saturn

March 11, 2017 • 10:15 am

On September 15, the Cassini spacecraft, 13 years after launch and after helping scientists acquire tons of knowledge, will cease its orbiting of Saturn and plunge into the planet’s atmosphere, disintegrating in the process. This suicidal move was deliberate, as scientists didn’t want to contaminate any of Saturn’s moons in case they prove habitable.  Just four days ago, though, it took some amazing pictures of one of Saturn’s moon’s, Pan.

Wikipedia says this about Pan:

Pan. . .  is the second-innermost moon of Saturn. It is a small, walnut-shaped moon approximately 35 kilometres across and 23 km wide that orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn’s A Ring. Pan is a ring shepherd and is responsible for keeping the Encke Gap free of ring particles.

It was discovered by Mark R. Showalter in 1990 from analysis of old Voyager 2 probe photos and received the provisional designation S/1981 S 13 because the discovery images dated back to 1981.

But Pan is one of only many moons of Saturn:

Saturn has 62 moons with confirmed orbits, 53 of which have names and only 13 of which have diameters larger than 50 kilometers, as well as dense rings with complex orbital motions of their own.

Seven Saturnian moons are large enough to be ellipsoidal in shape, though only two of those, Titan and Rhea, are currently in hydrostatic equilibrium. Particularly notable among Saturn’s moons are Titan, the second-largest moon (after Jupiter’s Ganymede) in the Solar System, with a nitrogen-rich Earth-like atmosphere and a landscape including hydrocarbon lakes and dry river networks; and Enceladus, which is seemingly similar in chemical makeup to comets, emits jets of gas and dust and may harbor liquid water under its south pole region.

And Pan’s shape, well, as an Atlantic article said, “This moon orbiting Saturn looks a lot like ravioli“. Indeed it does:

(NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute)
(NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute)

It’s unusual for a moon to be so oddly shaped, but The Atlantic explains:

Pan gets its pasta-like shape from smooth bulges protruding on all sides from its center, known as equatorial ridges. The ridges lie in the same plane as Saturn’s rings. In 2007, researchers suggested that the ridge could be made up of particles from Saturn’s rings that got stuck on Pan when it was just an average moonlet. The same process may have occurred on Atlas, another moon, which orbits beyond the edge of Saturn’s A ring, one of the planet’s thickest bands of rings. Atlas has a distinct smooth ridge, too:

Atlas:

Two views of Atlas, Saturn’s moon (NASA)

Pan resides in a lane of its own making within the A ring. The moon maintains a 200-mile break in the ring, known as the Encke Gap, perpetually pushing on nearby ring particles and preventing them from filling in the space. It creates waves in the ring material as it goes, leading some of it to bunch up in certain spots. Pan is named for the Greek god of the wild and shepherds, a fitting moniker for a moon whose job is to keep the rings on either side of it in line.

Here’s a flyby gif showing Pan, and another gif closer up.

For more on some really lovely pictures of Saturn’s rings taken by recently by Cassini, see this post by Jason Davis at The Planetary Society.

Caturday felid trifecta: Simon’s cat on cats and water, Percy the Cat survives 400-mile journey in undercarriage of his owner’s truck, and the “ultimate cat lady”

March 11, 2017 • 9:00 am

Here’s a new “Simon’s Cat Logic,” featuring information about cats and water, all imparted by the incomparable Nicky Trevarrow of Cats Protection. The information, illustrated with Simon’s animation, is followed (at 3:37) by two water-related episodes of Simon’s Cat. Note Trevarrow’s advice about what kind of water bowl to give your cat, and how far apart to put the food and water bowls.

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From the Minneapolis Star Tribune we have the story of Percy, the beloved companion of trucker Paul Robertson of St. Paul. When Robertson was recovering from food poisoning at a rest stop, Percy stepped on the window’s power switch and escaped. Devastated at the lost of his companion, and after a long search, Robertson drove on, but put a notice about Percy’s loss on his Facebook page:

But then—mirabile dictu—the paper reports:

But then, the unthinkable happened. Shortly after arriving to his destination, Robertson saw a cat emerge from beneath his semi-truck. It was Percy. Robertson detailed the reunion through – what else – a Facebook update.

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Finally, a 13-minute Buzfeed video about the Cat House on the Kings (and its staff), described as “California’s largest no-cage, no-kill, lifetime cat sanctuary and adoption center.” It harbors a thousand cats, many of which run free in the staff’s former house (which she gave up to the cats).

h/t: Emma, Richard M.

Readers’ atheist photos

March 11, 2017 • 7:45 am

I’m running low on readers’ wildlife photos, and though I have a few dollops left, I’ll save them for tomorrow through Tuesday when people actually read this site. (I leave for New Zealand on Wednesday.) If you have photos, send them by Tuesday, please.

Instead, enjoy this pair of photos submitted by a reader in Canada who, for obvious reasons, will remain anonymous. He teaches at a Catholic school in a province where such schools are publicly funded, and a “prayer corner” was put in the classroom by mandate of the principal and the parents’ council.

Our intrepid reader simply swapped out the Bible for a true book:

BEFORE

AFTER

Saturday: Hili dialogue

March 11, 2017 • 6:30 am

Good morning on a very cold Chicago Saturday (20° F, -7° C); it is March 11, 2017, and I’m proud to announce that it is this day, too:

So eat them, as the proclamation assumes that you already have noodles! It’s also Johnny Appleseed Day, which is strange because it corresponds to neither his birthday nor his deathday; but it’s apple planting season. (He was famous for planting apple nurseries all over the eastern U.S., and for loving all of Ceiling Cat’s creatures). If you’re not American and don’t know about Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), read about him here.

The News of the Day is, of course, Trump’s firing (via his minion Dana Boente) of 46 federal prosecutors appointed by Obama. Those included the much admired Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, whom Trump had earlier said he’d retain.  That leaves in office exactly zero prosecutors appointed by Obama: a real house-cleaning. While such mass purging is not unprecedented, it leaves the prosecution of important federal cases in the hands of attorneys with less experience. Trump has been in office 50 days, and has done nothing good, but the upside is that he’s also failed to keep many of his campaign promises. His “TrumpCare” medical plan is dead in the water.

So it goes. On this day in 1818. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was published. In 1851, Verdi’s opera Rigoletto premiered in Venice, and in 1867 the same composer opened his opera Don Carlos in Paris. On this day in 1918, the first case of Spanish Flu was reported in Kansas, the start of a pandemic that ultimately killed 50-100 million people: 3-5% of the population of the world. Among the victims was my paternal grandmother, who died when my father was only weeks old. As Wikipedia notes:

The site of the very first confirmed outbreak was at Camp Funston, within Fort Riley in Kansas, USA at a military training facility preparing American troops for involvement in World War I. The first victim diagnosed with the new strain of flu on Monday, March 11, 1918, was mess cook Private Albert Gitchell. Historian Alfred W. Crosby recorded that the flu originated in Kansas and  popular writer John Barry echoed Crosby in describing Haskell County, Kansas, as the point of origin.

Gitchell reported to the doctor in the morning; by noon 107 men in his camp had acquired the same illness. Here’s a sign from a naval aircraft factory in Philadelphia, courtesy of the U.S. Naval Historical Center:

Finally, on March 11, 1993, Janet Reno was confirmed by the Senate as the first female Attorney General of the U.S.; she was sworn in on March 12.

Notables born on this day include Vannevar Bush (1890), Lawrence Welk (1903), Rupert Murdoch (1931), Antonin Scalia (1936), and Douglas Adams (1952). Those who died on this day include Alexander Fleming (1955), Roy Chapman Andrews (1960; the man who introduced me to fossils through his books), Erle Stanley Gardner (1970), and Slobodan Milošević (2006). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is so desperate to get out that she’ll tolerate a bit of rain:

A: You will get wet.
Hili: Never mind, it’s only a spring rain.
(Photo: Sarah Lawson)
In Polish:
Ja: Zmokniesz tam.
Hili: Nie szkodzi, to jest wiosenny deszcz.
(Foto: Sarah Lawson)
And a cartoon from The New Yorker, expressing a profound truth:
Finally, how to get your cat to the vet:
h/t: Stash Krod, Nicole Reggia

Awww: formerly blind d*g sees its family after surgery (with hamster lagniappe)

March 10, 2017 • 2:30 pm

by Matthew Cobb

I have special permission from PCC(E) to post this cute video of Duffy, a recuse Irish Terrier, Back in June 2014, Duffy was operated on to cure him of his blindness. This is the scene when he was reunited with the family. Warning: includes lots of human excitability.

Duffy’s owner, Benjamin May, wrote on the original post, which has now been seen over 13,203,038 times:

This is my Irish Terrier Duffy. He’s a rescue dog and he’s had a lot of struggles with his health. He developed diabetes and lost his eyesight. With medication we got his diabetes stable and he qualified for eye surgery to give him back his sight. Here he is seeing my parents for the first time in months.

Also, I should mention that Duffy’s surgery and treatments took place at the Veterinary Referral Center in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Special thanks to Dr. Kevin Kumrow who regulated Duffy’s diabetes so that Dr. Brady Beale could operate on him.

JAC: I wondered what the evidence was, in this video, that the dog can actually see? Readers?  And I’ll just add this cute tweet below to finish up the work week on a high note:

Peter Singer’s talk censored in Canada as shouting students accuse him of “euthanasia”

March 10, 2017 • 1:00 pm

I’m a a big admirer of philosopher Peter Singer, for he deals with philosophical problems affecting the real world, not with arcane stuff like compatibilism; and he really lives his philosophy, donating a substantial portion of his income to charity, not eating meat, and not wearing leather. His work on practical ethics, altruism, and animal rights has been immensely influential. And he’s just a nice guy, as I discovered from a brief correspondence with him.

But some people don’t think so because of Singer’s views on “euthanasia” of newborns, which is that it might be moral behavior to euthanize some hopelessly ill or deformed babies even after they were born—but soon after birth. This has led, as I have noted, to his de-platforming in several places, and even calls for his resignation from Princeton (see also here and here),  The protestors, who accuse Singer of “ableism” and calling for the killing of the disabled, almost always misunderstand or distort his position. Here are two interviews in which he’s clarified his position (see first and second links above):

Q. You have been quoted as saying: “Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.” Is that quote accurate?

A. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term “person” to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future.  As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.  That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do.  It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.

Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment.  That will often ensure that the baby dies.  My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection – but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.

Q. What about a normal baby? Doesn’t your theory of personhood imply that parents can kill a healthy, normal baby that they do not want, because it has no sense of the future?

A. Most parents, fortunately, love their children and would be horrified by the idea of killing it.  And that’s a good thing, of course.  We want to encourage parents to care for their children, and help them to do so. Moreover, although a normal newborn baby has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person, that does not mean that it is all right to kill such a baby.  It only means that the wrong done to the infant is not as great as the wrong that would be done to a person who was killed. But in our society there are many couples who would be very happy to love and care for that child.  Hence even if the parents do not want their own child, it would be wrong to kill it.

or this (NZZ is the Neue Zürcher Zeitung):

NZZ: Next week, you are due to receive an award for the reduction of animal suffering. This has provoked protests because you, allegedly, want to have disabled children killed. Is that true?

PS: There are circumstances where I would consider that to be justified, yes. For instance, when an extremely premature baby suffers from a cerebral hemorrhage so massive that it will never recognize its mother and smile at her. If such a child requires artificial respiration, almost all doctors would advise to switch the device off and let the child die. The artificial respiration is terminated because they do not want the baby to live. But if the child is already capable of breathing on its own, killing it requires a lethal injection. Why should it be morally relevant whether I switch off a device or give the child an injection? In both cases, I decide over the child’s life. [JAC: People often make a distinction here between a direct action that terminates life and an indirect action that allows life to end, but I consider that a distinction without a difference.]

NZZ: Would you also kill a new-born child with a mild disability?

PS: If the disability is compatible with a good quality of life, it should be possible to find a couple willing to adopt the child if the parents do not want it. Why should it be killed then?

In fact I agree with Singer here for cases in which a child is so horribly deformed or diseased that it will either die very soon or will be an intolerable burden on its parents—as with a baby in a vegetative state, or incurably demented. But people with, say, cerebral palsy or other handicaps, who can live decent lives and enjoy those lives, think—or deliberately misrepresent—that Singer is calling for the euthanasia of people like them.

He’s not. All you have to do is read what he’s written or said. It’s one of those moral positions that at first sounds repugnant but actually makes considerable sense. You can argue about it, of course, but what you shouldn’t do is demonize Singer for a well thought out view—or no-platform or censor him.

But that is exactly what happened to Singer on March 1 at an “Effective Altruism” Club at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where a presentation of his TED talk was scheduled, followed by Singer answering questions via Skype. The topic wasn’t euthanasia, but effective altruism: how to do the best for humanity you can with your limited resources.

As martlet reports, a group of students interrupted the presentation, standing in front of the stage, making noise, and accusing Singer of ableism. Ultimately, it sounds as if the talk was simply inaudible. As martlet noted:

Prior to the event, a candlelight vigil was set up in the main SUB hallway in honour of the the Disability Community Day of Mourning, which was coincidentally on the same day. A chalkboard with the names of disabled victims of filicide — murder by one’s caregiver or family member — stood on display for passersby to see.

As people slowly entered the auditorium, a small group of students stood on stage with a microphone and read out a list of names of disabled people killed throughout 2016 and 2017.

“People who were their caregivers, who were meant to provide stability and care and love, decided these people weren’t worthy of life,” said Tareem Sangha, one of the students on stage.

Effective Altruism attempted to begin the TED Talk at 3:30 p.m., but were temporarily deterred by the resounding vocal response from the protesters. After a few minutes, they proceeded anyway, with the video’s captions on and sound amplified to compensate.

. . . What began as two conflicting defenses of free speech soon hindered discussion of any kind, as the Effective Altruists and protesters battled with the volume to deafening proportions. Protesters used a megaphone to read prepared text to the audience, and numerous audience members shouted back at them to leave.

One protester even temporarily unplugged the adapter connecting Effective Altruism’s computer to the projector before fleeing out the side door of Cinecenta. The club was able to quickly start the video back up with a replacement adapter.

All the while, Singer’s TED Talk and Q&A continued, and the room grew cacophonous. Shouts of support for Singer’s free speech were met with chants of “eugenics is hate” and “disabled lives matter,” and neither side showed any signs of backing down.

“It’s a trainwreck,” said one student in the audience. “I wanna leave, but if I leave now, [the protesters] get their way.”

. . .Despite the stated focus on the effective altruism movement, Singer was in fact asked to address his views on euthanasia, but his answer was inaudible over the din of the auditorium. Though the club did record a portion of the event, the recording of Singer’s answer has not been made publicly available as of yet.

You can see a video of the disruption by clicking on the screenshot below. What you’ll see is a bunch of entitled whiners trying to censor Singer’s speech. It’s reprehensible:

 

There was also a change.org petition calling for the de-platforming of Singer because he was advocating “the killing of people with disabilities.” That is a disingenuous summary of his views. (The petition got only 89 signers.)

Will the University of Victoria do anything about this, like disciplining the protestors, or even issuing a statement in favor of free speech? I haven’t found such a statement.

I am sick to death of students trying to censor those whose views offend them, and in this case Singer’s views should most certainly be heard. There was a time when such protests would arise over assisted suicide, an act now legal in several U.S. states and other countries. Society has progressed. We need to consider whether infants of the kind Singer discusses might also constitute an intolerable and unnecessary burden on society, so that they should be allowed to die. It’s surely worth discussing.

h/t: Jiten, Barry