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.
Good morning on a tropical February 21 (2017) in Chicago, with a predicted high temperature of 64° F (18° C) today. It’s a triple-header food holiday, too: National Pancake Day, National Sticky Bun Day, and National Biscuits and Gravy Day. I can get behind all of those, and if you haven’t had good Southern biscuits and gravy for breakfast, well, you haven’t lived. Seriously.
On this day in 1804, the first completely self-propelled steam locomotive chugged out of the Pen-y-Darren Ironworks in Wales. Exactly 44 years later, Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto, and thirty years after that the world’s first telephone directory was published—in New Haven, Connecticut. On February 21, 1918, the very last Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis) died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo. The world’s northernmost known species of parrot, it lived as far north as New England, and there were millions of them. Deforestation and hunting (for feathers)0 helped knock the population down, but the final extinction may have been promoted by disease. Here’s a mounted specimen of one of these lovely creatures that, thanks to our own species, will never be seen again. (I doubt that even George Church could resurrect it.)
On this day in 1947, Edwin Land demonstrated the first “instant camera”: the P9laroid Land, now driven extinct by digital cameras. On Februay 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in New York, and exactly ten years later, John N. Mitchell H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman were sentenced to prison for their role in the Watergate coverup.
Notables born on this day include Anaïs Nin (1903), John Rawls (1921), Nina Simone (1933), Kelsey Grammer (1955), and David Foster Wallace (1962). Those who died on this day include Baruch Spinoza (1677), Eric Liddell (1945), author Mikhail Sholokhov (1984), and hockey great Tim Horton (1974)—the man who launched a million donuts; he died at only 44 in a car crash. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili looks very grumpy, but only because she has nothing to kvetch about. There is not satisfying this cat!
Hili: I’m outraged.
A: Why?
Hili: I have nothing to complain about today.
In Polish:
Hili: Jestm oburzona.
Ja: Na co?
Hili: Nie mam dziś na co narzekać.
And it’s a big day in Winnipeg: the Gusiversary III—the third year from when Gus is estimated to have been born (remember, he was live-trapped as an adolescent, which, because it was winter and the trap was not checked, made him lose his ears from frostbite). In honor of this special day, his staff (Taskin) made a special video. It shows Gus slowly destroying his Ikea box. Be sure to watch to the end:
Yesterday we had a video of every film that ever won an Oscar for Best Cinematography; now it’s time to see every film that won an Oscar for Best Picture up to last year (Spotlight won the award for 2016).
I have seen most of these; below are the winners I didn’t see:
Cimarron Cavalcade The Great Ziegfeld The Life of Emile Zola Gentleman’s Agreement The Greatest Show on Earth Tom Jones My Fair Lady Oliver Amadeus No Country for Old Men The Artist Birdman (I know, I’m remiss)
It was great to see two of my old favorites mentioned (both in black and white): Marty with Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair, and the movie that nobody watches any more: The Best Years of Our Lives, a fabulous film.
Jeff Tayler has lived and worked in Russia for many years, writing for The Atlantic as a correspondent and editor. (He also promotes atheism and criticizes religion at places like Slate and Quillette). This is to say that he has considerably more experience and knowledge about Russia than those of us who rely on the news secondhand. And Russia is a pressing subject these days, what with Putin making incursions into Syria, Crimea and Ukraine, Trump apparently cozying up to Putin and threatening to abandon NATO, and with both the US and Russia still having a huge armament of nuclear weapons. As I’ve said before, one of the things I fear about a Trump presidency is that he’s sufficiently clueless that he can’t play international politics, especially when the stakes are high, and both he and Putin have virtually unchecked power to destroy us all.
Tayler’s new piece in Quillette, “The deal Trump should strike with Putin“, should be mandatory reading for both leaders, but especially Trump. It avoids name-calling and is simply a sober assessment of the dangers we face and the opportunities that are within our grasp for detente. It’s a long piece, but well worth reading. I’ll give just one excerpt dealing with the issue of Russian “imperialism”:
How would Ukraine figure into the deal Trump should strike with Putin? Trump would renounce NATO’s promise of eventual NATO membership to Ukraine (and Georgia) in return for Russia’s recognition that both countries, while remaining neutral, would be free to join whatever political and economic blocs they choose. This is essentially what both Kissinger and Brzezinski have already proposed. Full implementation of the stalled Minsk Accords, reached in February 2015 and foreseeing autonomy for the Donbas, would end the conflict in Ukraine’s east. This might prompt a violent reaction against the Ukrainian government from the far-right militias fighting on Kiev’s side in the region. Ultimately, though, that would be an issue for the Ukrainian government, not the United States, to deal with.
Additionally, NATO and Russia would withdraw their militaries to pre-2014 postures. NATO would halt and reverse the deployment of approximately four thousand troops to the Baltic states and Poland. (Stationed on a rotating basis so as not to violate the alliance’s Founding Act with Russia, the troops are intended as a “trip wire” and could not, in any case, halt a Russian invasion of the Baltic countries, which would take as little as sixty hours.) Russia would redeploy forces it has moved close to the Baltic frontier, and take out the short-range, nuclear-capable Iskander missiles it has sent to Kaliningrad, on the Polish border. Both sides would cease conducting provocative military exercises, and Russia would stop sending its fighter jets to violate European airspace and buzz U.S. warships.
The status of Crimea presents a significant hurdle to be overcome. The peninsula officially became part of Russia in 2014. A great majority of both ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in Crimea favor remaining within the Russian Federation. To settle the matter, Russia could agree to hold another referendum, but this time under the auspices of the United Nations. If the results show that Crimea’s population wishes to stay within Russia, as is highly likely, the United States should recognize this, and, of course, the White House should drop the Crimea-related sanctions implemented by executive order. If Crimeans choose to return to Ukraine, Russia should honor their wishes.
There’s a lot more, and I haven’t seen anything this informative about the issue of Russia and the U.S.
There’s a great to-do in Canada about a motion (“M-103”, which is not a law but a recommendation) about discrimination, one that singles out “Islamophobia” as deserving special mention. The bill was introduced last December by the Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, a Pakistani-Canadian, and is being discussed now in the House of Commons. Here it is:
Systemic racism and religious discrimination
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should: (a) recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear; (b) condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and take note of House of Commons’ petition e-411 and the issues raised by it; and (c) request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage undertake a study on how the government could (i) develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination including Islamophobia, in Canada, while ensuring a community-centered focus with a holistic response through evidence-based policy-making, (ii) collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities, and that the Committee should present its findings and recommendations to the House no later than 240 calendar days from the adoption of this motion, provided that in its report, the Committee should make recommendations that the government may use to better reflect the enshrined rights and freedoms in the Constitution Acts, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This bill has been criticized for three reasons, with most of the criticism coming from Conservatives. (For a spectrum of opinion, go here, here, here, and here.) Do remember, though, that this is a motion and doesn’t have the force of law.
1.) It doesn’t define “Islamophobia,” and thus leaves open the possibility that criticism of religion itself might be criminalized.
I think this criticism is valid, for, as always, the term “Islamophobia” conflates bigotry against Muslims with dislike of the faith itself. I fall into the latter class but not, I hope, the former. But the latter form is not systemic racism and religious discrimination. Further, Muslims are not under any classification a “race”, so it’s not racism. Even in the nefarious construal, it is bigotry against believers, not members of a race or even an ethnic group. If you construe “Islamophobia” as “criticism of Islam” or even “fear of Islam” (which I possess as well), then the motion could be seen as an attempt to quash criticism of Islam as a whole. Even if I thought it was worthwhile singling out bigotry and discrimination against Muslims in particular, while not mentioning other faiths (see point #2), it would be better to either define “Islamophobia” or, better yet, replace it with a more accurate term. So far, though, Khalid has resisted any changes to her motion.
2.) While mentioning other religions in general, M-103 singles out Islam twice while not identifying other faiths.
This criticism also has some validity. While “hate crimes” against Muslims, like the murder of 6 people in a Quebec mosque, are on the rise, and are reprehensible, if they’re going to condemn hate crimes against races and religion, they should just say that, and not specify particular faiths?
It’s telling that Islam is singled out for special mention, for while it may be a well-intentioned way to reassure frightened Muslims, some of the support of this motion comes from Muslims who want, I think, to inoculate their faith itself against criticism. And that intention leads to what happened with the Danish cartoons and Charlie Hebdo.
Further, most of the “hate crimes” against believers in Canada are not anti-Muslim, but anti-Semitic. Below are the latest data on “hate crimes” in Canada from a 2013 report by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, a government operation:
Now the number of hate crimes against Muslims in those two years was 45, and against Jews 242. But that disparity is even greater if you take into account that there are about 1,044,000 Muslims in Canada and only 385,000 Jews. That means that in those years the per capita hate crime rate against Muslims was 0.0043%, and against Jews 0.063%—a rate of anti-Semitic hate crimes fifteen times higher. Were there motions singling out anti-Semitism? I have no idea. Nor do I really care. I object to the idea of “hate crimes” in general, because what should be punished is the action, not the biases behind it, and determining whether bias is involved is often tricky. Note the case of Craig Hicks, who killed three young Muslims in North Carolina two years ago. The police found no evidence that Hicks had an animus against Muslims in general, or these Muslims because of their faith; nevertheless, the Muslim community and many others continue to insist that it was a hate crime driven by “Islamophobia”.
If you’re going to condemn bigotry against members of all religions, ethnicities, genders, and sexes, then just say that without singling out any particular group. For such singling out gives succor to members of that group without, in this case, providing any solace to Jews or other believers.
I recognize that the statistics may be different now, and Canada can and certainly should collect them to monitor what’s happening in their country, but I still don’t think that the concept of a “hate crime” has much valid use in a democracy.
3.) While the motion is couched in terms of discrimination and bigotry, it could act to chill freedom of speech.
This is possible, but I don’t see it as likely. It is not, after all, a law, and Canada’s freedom of speech laws will remain the same.
But I must add that Canada still has a “blasphemous libel law” on the books, one that lacks a very definition of what that libel is! It also has laws against “hate speech” and “hate propaganda”, which have been used by those who have, for instance, either denied or justified the Holocaust. Those would not have been crimes in the U.S., nor, I think, should they be. If you censor or intimidate those who deny or justify the Holocaust, then there can be no public discussion that will give evidence for the existence of the Holocaust or the reasons why Jews should not be murdered en masse.
So I’m not too worried about the effect of this motion on freedom of speech in Canada. What Canada needs to do, though, is clean up its “hate speech” laws, get rid of its law against blasphemous libel, and ditch the special category of “hate crimes”. As for singling out Islam for special protection, I don’t favor that, for it plays into the hands of Islamists whose goal is to immunize their own faith while leaving others open to criticism.
I read the twice-weekly University of Chicago student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, and have noticed over the past few years a clear movement towards identity politics and Regressive Leftism. There is pretty much a unanimity of opinion among its writers, with little attempt to present alternative viewpoints, and many of the op-ed pieces are written by privileged students bewailing their marginalization. I think this reflects the views, by and large, of the student body itself.
Case in point: the headline piece in Friday’s issue, which described a discussion between Robert Costa of the Washington Post and Corey Lewandowski, the former campaign manager (until June of last year) of Donald Trump. Highlighting Lewandowski, it was sponsored by the University’s nonpartisan Institute of Politics (IOP), and was held at the Quadrangle Club, the University’s faculty club that has small rooms for talks. The press wasn’t invited, but that’s protocol for all IOP talks.
The students protested, as is their right, gathering across the street, chanting, and holding signs. It’s the nature of their protest that I want to discuss here.
First, there’s the photo accompanying the article; here’s the caption from the paper:
Outside the Quad Club on Wednesday afternoon, a crowd of protestors gathered where Donald Tump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was giving a talk. Many of the demonstrators were associated with campus organizations including UofC Resists, Fascism Now, and Graduate Students United. In this picture, a child takes aim at a piñata effigy of Donald Trump that was roped over a tree.
Photo: Feng Ye
That image disturbs me, for it explicitly endorses violence, and the hitting is being done by a child, presumably with the approbation of the crowd. Was the kid urged to do it? Most likely, since somebody had the idea of bringing a Trump piñata. And, of course, it was not Trump who was speaking across the street. The whole scenario is disturbingly reminiscent of a lynching.
As I said, I have no beef with peaceful protests that don’t interrupt the speaker, but in this case the demonstrators couldn’t restrict themselves to just having a protest across the street. As The Maroon reported:
Seven students entered the event with concealed posters, and were asked to leave after holding up the signs minutes into the talk. Third-year Ryn Seidewitz held a pink poster that read “Hate Speech ≠ Free Speech,” and was asked to leave after holding up the sign. After she came out, she spoke to the crowd, saying that the people in the event could hear the protesters outside. “They keep patting themselves on the back for how great they are at free and open discourse, but they just kicked us out of the meeting,” she said.
Umm. . . free and open discourse doesn’t include interrupting a speaker. Has Ms. Seidwitz not absorbed the University’s Statement on Principles of Free Expression, which includes this:
Although faculty, students and staff are free to criticize, contest and condemn the views expressed on campus, they may not obstruct, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.
And of course there’s her poster: “Hate Speech ≠ Free Speech,” which is not only wrong (even true hate speech is free speech so long as it’s not intended to incite immediate violence), but erroneous, for, according to the paper’s report, Lewandowski didn’t emit anything close to “hate speech.” (That term, of course, really means “speech with which I disagree.”) Finally, it disturbs me that students so explicitly endorse violating the First Amendment.
Seidewitz went on:
“This kind of event makes it clear where the University stands on Trump, and we wanted to show them that they can’t hide behind this idea of free and open discourse and neutrality, because in times like these there’s no such thing as neutrality,” Seidewitz told The Maroon.
Again we see a common misconception: a university’s providing a venue for a speaker does not imply endorsement of that speaker. And in times like these there is—and should be—such a thing as neutrality, at least on campuses. Regardless of the personal feelings of faculty and the administration, they simply cannot say, “We will host only speakers who endorse a liberal and progressive viewpoint.”
Seidewitz isn’t the only student with misconceptions about freedom of expression. Here are two more:
Other students also expressed frustration with the IOP’s platform of nonpartisan neutrality.
“It’s time that the University get rid of its neutral bullshit dedication to free speech and neutrality, when in reality there’s nothing neutral about inviting a speaker to your campus that represents hate,” second-year Mary Blair said.
“It’s a dangerous normalization of Trump and his ideas to extend an official platform to someone like this,” first-year Philip O’Sullivan said.
Remember that while Lewandowski was indeed Trump’s campaign manager, and is pretty much a diehard conservative, he is not Trump, and in fact was fired by Trump last year. As for what both students said, including the dismissal of free expression as a “neutral bullshit dedication to free speech and neutrality,” I have no words. This is the censorious attitude of young people that I often worry about, for these students will take those attitudes with them when they leave, and may someday be in a position to enforce them.
Finally, some of the views expressed in the peaceful part of the protest were pretty extreme, in line with the Left’s tendency to characterize all its opponents as Nazis and racists. As the paper reported:
The demonstrators chanted slogans including “No CPD [Chicago Police Department], no KKK, no fascist USA,” “Fuck Corey Lewandowski, fuck white supremacy, fuck the bourgeoisie,” and “Shame on U of C, sold out for publicity.”
Shortly after the event began, second-year JT Johnson encouraged the crowd to enter the building and stop the event. Demonstrators approached the entrance of the building en masse, but Chicago Police Department (CPD) and University of Chicago police blocked the doors.
That speaks for itself. Such signs may express opposition and rage, but do they accomplish anything? They are, for one thing, inaccurate (do they really want to do away with the CPD? Is Lewandowski a member of the almost-extinct KKK?), but they also express the kind of distortion that makes the demonstrators seem unhinged.
Reader Divy F., a new contributor who hails from Florida, sent some marine photos—and two kitties. Her notes are indented:
My husband, Ivan, was recently in the Indonesian isles of Waigeo and Misool, and took photos of many different species of animals in the wild, both ocean and land. Here are just a few, for you to enjoy.
These were freshwater jellyfish (non-stinging) in a land locked crater-like lake, on one of the islands of Misool archipelago in Papua, Indonesia.
I don’t have the proper name for the Jellyfish, but they were freshwater, of the non-stinging variety.
The first pic turtle is a Loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta); the second is a Hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata ). [JAC: Hawksbills are critically endangered.]
The little mammal in the tree is a cuscus, who was also fed a banana by one of the natives of the island. That was in the island of Waigeo.
The little bird is a Black-capped or black-capped lory (Lorius lory), or so Ivan was told. A Wikipedia check seemed to confirm it.
Beautiful scenery:
And the two precious moggies are Boba and Jango Fett. Boba is the medium haired cat with more white. Jango is the short haired one.
Good morning on another balmy winter day in Chicago: it’s February 20, 2017, and National Muffin Day. It’s also Presidents’ Day, formerly George Washington’s Birthday, and a federal and state holiday. Though Washington was born on February 22, 1732, the day is celebrated on the third Monday of February, i.e., today. Other Presidents can be celebrated on this day, like Jefferson or Lincoln, but those don’t include Trump. It’s also, as proclaimed by the United Nations, World Day of Social Justice, a day for bloggers to flaunt their moral purity. (Only kidding! It is a day for social justice, but one that recognizes the need to do something about it.)
On this day in 1792, George Washington signed the act establishing the U.S. Post Office. In 1816, Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville premiered in Rome, spawning a million parodies of the Figaro song. Here’s one of them, starring Tom and Jerry:
In 1835, the Concepciòn Earthquake took place in Chile; Darwin, on his Beagle voyage, was in the area and wrote about the damage. On February 20, 1877, Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake opened at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. And on this day in 1942, Edward “Butch” O’Hare shot down several Japanese bombers to become the first “ace” in World War II. He was later killed in combat, but gave his name to Chicago’s largest airport. Below is a photo of him; note in the caption that his insignia was censored out of the picture, probably so the Japanese couldn’t identify him. (The Japanese flags on the plane represent the number of enemy aircraft he shot down.)
LT Edward Butch O’Hare in a Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat The wartime censor has blanked out the famous “Felix the Cat” squadron insignia on this photo
But. . . here he is with Felix. Note that the cat is carrying a bomb with a lit fuse:
Notables born on this day include Ludwig Boltzmann (1844), Louis Kahn (1901), Ansel Adams (1902), Robert Altman (1925), Sidney Poitier (1927; he’s 90 today), Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941), Ivana Trump (1949, abandoned by The Donald for Marla Maples), Walter Becker of Steely Dan (1950), and Kurt Cobain (1967). Those who died on this day include Frederick Douglass (1895), Gene Siskel (1999), and Hunter Thompson and Sandra Dee (both 2005). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is hunting from the windowsill:
A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I’m waiting to see whether this is a stone or a mouse pretending to be a grey stone.
In Polish:
Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Patrzę, czy to jest kamień, czy mysz, która udaje szary kamień.
Lagniappe: A LOL submitted by reader Glenda, who says this:
The photos were taken June 2016. If you can’t use them at least you might get a chuckle.
The black carved cat is a treasured gift from a son who has since died. He loved cats too. My cats are Kofi – in honour of Kofi Annan -and Minky (aka Badass and Ditzy) . They are Devon Rex half sisters who are going on nine years old now. The scene takes place on their observation tower (the fridge) where they monitor most household activities – especially food preparation, of course.
