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.
WordPress has sent me the summary statistics for this year’s postings, and I thought I’d share some of them. First, the total views:
That “no conflict” post, sadly, does not reflect anything good I wrote; it’s this post that shows this sign:
As always, the most popular posts are those picked up by reddit, and involve stuff like leaf beetles, criticism of Mother Teresa, but never anything thoughtful I’ve written! So it goes.
Im not sure what the “posting pattern” graph below means, except there are twelve categories, probably denoting twelve months. Perhaps some reader can explain. But look at the “longest streak”!
Here are the posts that got the most views, two of which appeared in previous years. For some reason Mother Tersa continues to get lots of views, but it’s merely a notice that two French Canadians published a critique of her. The gynandromorph cardinal, which I posted about before it went viral just a few weeks ago, continues to puzzle me—why so popular?
I’m proud of having a worldwide readership. That’s reflected in this map showing readers in 234 countries:
For a better version, here’s the Wordprss map showing readership over the 365 days ending January 11. The only countries with no views were North Korea (though we had two views from there in 2013!) and South Sudan:
Here are the top 10 countries in terms of views:
And here are those countries whose inhabitants gave us ten views or fewer over the year:
Finally, those readers who commented the most. This will come as no surprise to anybody who reads here regularly. Diana and Ben should get some kind of prize for contributions above the call of duty.
If your blood pressure is sufficiently low and you’re sitting down, you might want to go to Real Clear Politics and see the video interview of Reza Aslan on the Charlie Hebdo killings. The critical parts are also transcribed on the site. And you can get idea of his theme right out of the gate, for when asked about the causes of the murders, Aslan begins by saying this:
REZA ASLAN: Europe is facing nothing short of an identity crisis. Look, the fact of the matter is there have been these seismic changes on the continent, culturally, racially, religiously, politically. And that’s resulted in this intense anti-immigrant and more specifically anti-Muslim backlash. In France, one of the largest parties, the party of Marine Le Pen, The National Front is a virulently anti-Muslim party and very well may win the next elections.You have the UKIP party in the UK, the Pegida party in Germany. This is a party whose sole platform seems to be let’s get rid of all Muslims. They have had for the last few months every week thousands and thousands of supporters marching in Germany in this notion that Muslims are some internal enemy. In Sweden we’ve had three mosque attacks over the last week. So this has created this sort of, intense, tension among the Muslim population in Europe and non-Muslim population.
It goes on and on in this vein, with Aslan seeing parity between European suspicion of Muslim immigrants and the Muslim killings of the Charlie Hebdo journalists (as well as two police, one a Muslim). The former, he implies, gave rise to the latter. Here’s Aslan’s “thoughtful” explanation of the violence:
ASLAN: Well, it’s not a justification by any means at all, but what Charlie Hebdorepresents for a lot of people in Europe is precisely this clash of civilizations. Look, the editors of Charlie Hebdo would unapologetically say they make fun of everybody, every religion, and they make fun of Muslims for a very specific reason to sort of show, or maybe demonstrate, that look if you maybe want to be in this country, if you want to be in France, then you have to deal with the French values, you have to rid yourself of your own values, ideals, norms, and you have to take on French values. And there have been a number of laws passed not only in France, with regard to prohibitions on Islamic dress, but throughout Europe about whether you can build mosques, about whether build minarets, et cetera. And this tension, this polarization I’m afraid has led to a lot of acts of violence. Not just the tragedy yesterday…
. . . And I think Charlie Hebdo was representative of this distinctly French value and an argument that unless you agree with that value well then you are not really French. That is an argument that a lot of young Muslims, and particularly young immigrants who come from different cultures, they just don’t buy into it and enough of them feel angry, perhaps, threatened, enough to actually take up violence.
. . . And particularly in France, an aggressively secularizing country that has never really tolerated multiculturalism or the kind of cultural religious diversity that is the hallmark of the United States, you can see how that would create the kinds of tensions that would bubble up occasionally into acts of violence on both sides.
As you might expect, Aslan does everything possible to avoid indicting the murderers of the French journalists. The farthest he goes in decrying the brutality of the killers is the statement above (and a call at the end of the interview for Muslim countries to condemn acts of violence).
ASLAN: Well, it’s not a justification by any means at all, but what Charlie Hebdo represents for a lot of people in Europe is precisely this clash of civilizations. . .
The “but” is telling. Aslan is more concerned with giving us a reason why the murders happened. Unfortunately, I don’t agree with his reasoning.
But first, let’s admit that there is in fact a grain of truth in what Aslan says: there is an unacceptable bias against Muslims, and immigrants in general, among the French and other Europeans as well. Mosques have been torched, Muslims attacked for being Muslim. That, in fact, was decried by Charlie Hebo, as Matthew pointed out in the previous post. That xenophobia and its attendant violence is odious, bigoted, and reprehensible.
But does it have anything to do with the Charlie Hebdo killings? Very little, I think. What the terrorists appeared to be taking their revenge on was not the bias faced by Muslims in France. Rather, it was a combination of the magazine’s publication of images of Muhammad (proscribed by many interpretations of the Qur’an), a perception that the journal was a beacon of Islamophobia (it wasn’t; it shone its light on Islamic perfidy), and, most important, a general hatred of the West and its democratic (and perceived “anti-Islamic”) values.
What is wrong with “multiculturalism”? That depends on how you define it. If you mean “tolerating or celebrating the customs of people from another land,” it’s fine—and desirable. The U.S. would be bland and uniform without its many immigrants, their celebrations and holidays, their food, their politics, their philosophies, and so on. But when multiculturalism involves importing antidemocratic ideas into a democratic culture, then it becomes problematic. The kind of “multiculturalism” that Charlie Hebdo opposed, and wished to be dissolved by “French” values, was Islam’s veneration of sharia law, its institutionalization of the subjugation of women, its calls for the death of apostates, gays, and adulterers, its belief in corporal punishment for criminals, and the Muslim habit, in some places, of patrolling the streets, looking to find and admonish young Muslims partying, drinking, listening to music, dancing, and associating with members of the other sex. Fun is a no-no.
In other words, the more “enlightened” French are uncomfortable with those tenets of Islam that conflict with the values of the Enlightenment; and it’s just too bad if asking Muslims to conform to those values makes them uncomfortable. By all means keep your Ramadan, your delicious food, your clothing (except, perhaps, the veil), your prayers, your mosques, and so on. But don’t you dare try to quash freedom of speech, beat your wives, kill your daughters, or try to practice sharia law in France.
It surprises me that Aslan can’t fathom that multiculturalism can be seen in several different ways, some of which are commendable and others odious. Actually, I’m sure he can, but he’s so committed to Islamic apologetics that he won’t admit that anything about Muslim “culture” is inimical to democracy.
I’m pretty sure that even if all the unconscionable French bias against immigrants were to cease, it wouldn’t for a moment stop the drive of Islamic terrorism to wreck that society. The deep animus of extremist Muslims against Western values per se is just too strong. If you think otherwise, read the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book I constantly recommended: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright. You will find the animus right at the foundation of extemist Islam in the 1940s.
And even if you think (wrongly) that Charlie Hebdo was racist, sexist, and homophobic, it’s salubrious to listen once again to Christopher Hitchens’s most eloquent defense of free speech, whatever that speech contains:
In my conversations with Dr. Cobb today, he highlighted this video of a stingray saying “hello,” and I demanded that he find the gif. He did, and so this should be credited to him. Would you pet this guy?
From what I know about the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (CH), and from what I’ve recently read about it, it appears to be a left-wing, pro-immigrant publication that is not racist, anti-immigrant, or anti-Muslim. It takes the mickey out of everyone, and while people may find it offensive, its purpose is not, as some claim, to offend. It’s satirical, which means that there’s a point to their cartoons, even though some might find them in poor taste.
And yet we hear from many that CH was a bigoted “Islamophobic” publication. Indeed, that characterization has been used to “explain” (some might say “justify”) the Muslim terrorist attack on the magazine’s artists and journalists. For example, several bloggers (i.e., here, here, and here), have accused the magazine of promulgating “racism, sexism, and homophobia”, of being “racist” and “ugly,” of producing and distributing “vile, racist material in the guise of satire” as well as “hate speech and bullying of oppressed groups.”
I suspected these hair-trigger cries about political incorrectness came from a failure to appreciate the real politics of Charlie Hebdo, and to understand the context of the cartoons. (I’ll show asome examples below.) Now I haven’t read Charlie Hebdo, nor have I seen every cartoon they’ve ever published, but several articles I’ve seen led me to believe that their cartoons have been misinterpreted by those eager to see racism and Islamophobia everywhere.
To inquire further, I contacted Matthew Cobb, who writes for this site, lived in France for many years, speaks French fluently, read Charlie Hebdo, and holds extreme leftist politics (I’d say he’s a hairsbreadth from Marxism, but I’ll let him speak for himself). I emailed Matthew asking if Charlie Hebdo really was racist and anti-Muslim. If anyone would detect and decry reactionary elements in the magazine, it would be Matthew.
I first asked him this: “You must know Charlie Hebdo. Those cartoons are making fun of racism as well as religion, no?” Matthew’s answers are indented below:
Yes. they make fun of everything. But be careful, which are ‘those’ cartoons? People are rolling up whatever provoked the killers (representations of Mohammed) and the total output of CH, which must amount to hundreds of thousands of cartoons.
I then asked him, “They’re not Le Pen-type reactionaries, right?” His response:
No of course not. They supported and fought for the rights of sans-papiers (illegal immigrants). One of the people killed, Oncle Bernard, was an economist who wrote about globalisation, etc etc. They are generally on the left, but are not part of any group and would be vicious about everyone. Indeed, the “survivors’ issue” is going to take aim at the JE SUIS CHARLIE business and all their new-found “friends” around the world. That is typical.
He added this:
Part of the problem is that this is a weekly paper, responding to the news. So they make comment on very immediate issues, relating to things happening in France. Things then get taken out of context, and are incomprehensible. Here’s an example, explained on a generally good post, I think. What looks like a racist cartoon is in fact taking the piss out of right-wing people who were saying that immigrants were having babies to get child benefits – so they drew a caricature of the Boko Haram ‘sex slaves’ with them saying ‘Hands off our welfare handouts!’. I don’t think it’s funny (and it’s certainly not pretty), but it makes a savage point.
Clearly people are cherry-picking Charlie Hebdo covers in an attempt to prove that it is a racist, anti-Islam publication, perhaps in some form of victim-blaming, when this assertion is absolutely preposterous to anyone who actually knows the newspaper.
Even so, one blogger at Patheosused this very cartoon (and others from the magazine) to accuse CH of promulgating “racism, sexism, and homophobia.” Maybe those folks should become more acquainted with Charlie Hebdo before initiating their customary bouts of rageblogging.
Matthew also notes that Charlie Hebdo has savaged the anti-immigrant views of French politician Marine Le Pen:
The ‘allocs’ cover was preceded and followed by anti-Le Pen front pages.
And just to show that Matthew isn’t whitewashing the magazine, he notes this:
They equally satirise all religions, but have been focusing more on islam. One thing they are AWFUL on is sexual politics. But that’s also because of the time most of the cartoonists (Woliniski, Cabu) grew up: they were both in their 70s, and became artists in the post-68 world.
Finally, Matthew added that CH is an equal-opportunity satirizer, going after Catholics as well:
Loads anti-catholic covers here (NB this [below] is a *Catholic* publication showing its solidarity with CH).
Matthew is referring to a new post in the French Jesuit publication Études that espouses solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, showing this graphic. .
The Études post then shows some Charlie Hebdo covers mocking Catholicism and the Pope:
Starting at upper left and going clockwise, the first cartoon says “Free at last” (and the meaning is clear). According to Matthew, the strip at upper right reads: “Vatican: Another fixed election. ‘Let me down I want to vote!’” Matthew adds: The bottom right one is not quite clear to me. The word balloons say ‘You are God and you don’t have any shampoo’ or ‘You are God, do you have any shampoo?’ (the former I think). ‘No but hello? What?’ ‘Helloooo?’ Not sure what all this is referring to. (An example of why context is needed!). Why does he have wings? This may be a spoof on an ad.”
The strip at the bottom left is also pretty clear, with the header, “The Pope in Rio.” Matthew notes that the Pope is saying, “I’ll do anything to get people in.”
I clearly don’t like Catholicism, but it’s pretty big of those Jesuits to reprint satires of Catholicism and then express solidarity with those who produced those satires. On that page you’ll find the following statement from Études:
C’est un signe de force que de pouvoir rire de certains traits de l’institution à laquelle nous appartenons, car c’est une manière de dire que ce à quoi nous sommes attachés est au-delà des formes toujours transitoires et imparfaites. L’humour dans la foi est un bon antidote au fanatisme et à un esprit de sérieux ayant tendance à tout prendre au pied de la lettre.
While I can read French o.k., I asked Matthew for a good translation, and here’s what he said:
It’s a sign of strength to be able to laugh at some aspects of the institution we belong to, because it’s a way of saying that which we are attached to is beyond forms, which are always transitory and imperfect. Humour in faith is a good antidote to fanaticism and to an over-serious way of thinking that tends to take everything literally.
These aren’t Bill Donohues, the odious Catholic who more or less said that Charlie Hebdo had it coming because of its “bigotry.” Now if some Catholics can accept and even embrace this mockery—and you have to admit that the satires above have real points far beyond merely trying to insult Catholics—then why can’t Muslims do the same?
And if there is one thing that everyone in the West frets about, it’s Islam; it’s Islamism; it’s our countries’ relationship with Islam; and it’s our fear of what the future holds in a world where Islam – once our neighbour, once our enemy – is now part of us.
Cabu and the others knew this, and their reaction was to say: well if you’re part of us, then think like us, be like us. Understand that there is a difference between mockery and persecution; that words and pictures are only just that; and that part of the deal is that we rise above offence – yes, even when its towards our religion.
As I’ll note in my next piece about Reza Aslan, the “be like us” bit means “embrace our democratic values,” not “stop going to the mosque and refraining from pork.” Schofield ends his piece like this:
I miss the world of the anarchic 70s when the worst that could happen when you showed a copulating Christ figure was a letter in Le Figaro from “outraged” from Aix-les-Bains. Now you die.
Well, you don’t just die, you also get excoriated by keyboard warriors who don’t even understand what you’re saying. And even if they do understand, they will somehow find a difference between mocking Christianity and mocking Islam. The former, in the argot of keyboard warriors, is okay because it’s “punching up,” while the latter is not okay because it’s “punching down“. After all, Muslims are an oppressed minority, so isn’t it understandable that, when provoked, they kill the perceived oppressor?
Nobody save extremist Muslims have said that CH’s staff really deserved to be killed, though some people, like Bill Donohue and Reza Aslan, have come pretty close, offering excuses for the murders. But of course even if CH was racist, sexist, and homophobic, that doesn’t excuse what happened. But before we trot out the excuses and explanations for the brutality of last week, let’s be clear on what Charlie Hebdo was really about.
One of the downsides of doing grocery shopping at 7 a.m. on Sunday is that, if you’re listening to National Public Radio (NPR), as I’m wont to do, you’ll probably have to hear the unctuous Krista Tippett and her “On Being” show. The American version of a less scholarly Karen Armstrong, Tippett never met a religion she didn’t like, often making a warm and fuzzy conflation of religion and spirituality. In other words, Tippett is in love with the numinous, particularly if it’s expressed in deepities that make the listener feel smart. On today’s show, God help me, I heard her say something like this, quoting someone whose name I can’t recall:
“____________ once said ‘The soul is composed of attentiveness.’ I think we need to make a space for that.”
Jebus in a chicken basket! What does that mean? If ever there was a deepity, that is one. And Tippett makes a good living from deepities: her show, formerly called “Speaking of Faith” (I suspect the name change reflects her realization that many Americans are turning away from faith), is quite popular, and she’s even garnered a National Humanities Medal and a Peabody Award for broadcasting. Such are the accolades that accrue to those who coddle faith, defanging it for public petting.
But does any reader actually like this show? I can’t imagine why. It’s like a mental massage: you may feel good as your mind is soothed by Tippett’s warm and oily lucubrations, but an hour later the effects have worn off.
I would love for National Public Radio to have a show focusing on rationalism and secularism. But that’s unlikely given that some of its funds come from the U.S. government, and NPR has already been accused of extreme liberalism by members of Congress. I fear that it will be a cold day in hell when you hear an NPR show called “On Rationality.”
I was going to have a contest asking readers to explain why the soul is made of attentiveness, but that’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Reader Rodger in Thailand sent a picture from his garden, showing the chrysalis (cocoon) of either a moth or butterfly on one of his plants. Can you spot it? Pretty cryptic, no? It’s clearly evolved (in both morphology and position) to resemble a leaf in this most vulnerable of life stages. If anyone can identify it, please do so.
Reader Tony Eales sent these way back in October, which shows you that I have a reserve (but please top up the tank by sending me your good wildlife photos NOW):
Just came back from a trip to World Heritage Fraser Island National Park. The sandy soil, wetland, heath, known in the local indigenous language as the Wallum, dominates the island and it’s my favourite ecosystem in the world. The plants of the Wallum heath fascinate me with beautiful carnivorous plants like sundews (Drosera spatulatapictured) and bladderworts (Utricularia lateriflora pictured…I think).
While I photographed plenty of birds it was the other wildlife that really caught my eye. I saw large Peacock Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa bombylans) feeding on Melastoma affine. And I finally got a decent photo of the striking Tiger Moth (Amata sp.).
Again, can anyone identify the species?
There were quite a few reptiles. I photographed a small lace monitor (Varanus varius) in the rain forest and played “spot the…” with Major Skinks (Bellatorias frerei).
And I also got to see the most famous charismatic megafauna of the region, Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae):
It would be the Lord’s Day if there were a Lord, but there’s no church for Hili today. In fact, she can’t even go outside, but still shows little gratitude for having been kept dry and warm. And yes, she looks a bit . . . fluffy:
A: You look like one of those well-fed persons who were outraged at Wall Street.
Hili: It’s raining.
A: You are indoors.
Hili: But it would rain on me if I were to go out.
In Polish:
Ja: Wyglądasz na jedną z sytych i oburzonych z Wall Street.
Hili: Deszcz pada.
Ja: Jesteś w domu.
Hili: Ale padałby na mnie gdybym wyszła.
Here’s a heartwarming story about how people banded together to help Australia’s emblematic animal, and one of the world’s five cutest mammals. I refer, of course, to the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus). It turns out that, according to both the Guardian and the Times of London, the bushfires that have ravaged parts of south Australia have also killed or injured many koalas. Many of the injured animals have burnt paws, acquired while trying to hang on to blazing trees or to run across burning grass.
Here’s injured Jeremy getting preliminary treatment:
Jeremy the koala receives treatment for burnt paws. Photograph: Amwrro.org.au
To save the beasts, their paws first need to be soaked and then, like burnt human hands, slathered with ointments and dressed, with the dressings changed daily to prevent infection. And that means that people had to make mittens for these marsupials. A call went out for custom mittens. And people responded, producing two types: a cotton mitten that looks like this:
Photograph: John Paolini/International Fund for Animal Welfare.
. . . and knitted mittens that look like this:
Photo by Bernard Lagan, Sydney
So Aussie knitters went to work producing the specialized paw-wear. I was going to issue a call to readers for koala mittens and donations, which both newspapers said were badly needed, but, checking the website of the International Fund for Animal welfare, which coordinated the Koala Mitten Initiative, I see that there’s now a sufficient supply of these items. At the link you’ll see this adorable headline and the information below it:
Our Australia team’s call for koala mittens has been incredibly successful and we are now being inundated with mittens from thoughtful people all over Australia and as far afield as Europe, Canada and the US! Thank you to everyone who has dedicated their time to help we are incredibly grateful.
We’ve seen the rotten side of humanity this week, but there’s a good side, too. And these animals thank us for it.
