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.
Here’s a video from Smarter Every Day that shows coordinated movement in a group of Amazonian caterpillars. They all start and stop at the same time, which is cool, though the video doesn’t test whether this might be due to the larvae’s having detected the photographer! Regardless, the wave of movement and stasis starts not from the front (as in birds or fish), but from the back. Can you think why this makes sense?
The filmmaker also demonstrates, using Legos, why a heaped-up group of caterpillars might move faster than a singleton, but his theory makes several assumptions that he hasn’t confirmed empirically. Anyway, here’s the video, and, since I’m off to the Khajuraho Temples, I’ll let readers chew it over.
This is a nice phenomenon that demands explanation, but the video suffers from a lack of a more thorough explanation and a test of the filmmaker’s theory. A bit more observation and explanation is in order.
I must have about 150 pictures of the temples and their sculptures at this World Heritage Site, one of the most stunning examples of architectural artistry I’ve ever seen. Because the internet is so slow here, I’ll present just a handful, but will show a profusion of gorgeous 10th- and 11th-century art when I return. The temples, are of course, famous for their erotic sculptures, and I’ll give an example below.
A Shiva temple, the largest of the complex:
A small part of the decoration:
Two sculptures:
OMG, what’s happening?
I’m quite fond of this photo:
An absolutely typical scene in a small Indian town:
This piece of news is from—where else?—the benighted state of Alabama (yes, I know some of you freethinkers live there). As the Torygraph reports, Jack Hawkins, chancellor of Alabama’s Troy University, a public school, was so impressed by the pro-religion video shown below that he sent it to all the faculty and staff.
But let’s deal with the video first.
The 90-second clip was put up by the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, a Mormon college in Provo Utah. In it, Clayton Christianson, a professor at Harvard’s School of Business (and someone who should know better), plumps for religion, using as an example his colleague from China, a Marxist economist who was surprised at how pervasive religion was in the US, and how important it seems for democracy. Christianson warns of the dangers of unbelief:
What will happen to our democracy? Where are the institutions that are going to teach the next generation of Americans that they too need to voluntarily obey the laws? Because if you take away religion, you can’t hire enough police.”
But watch for yourself:
Well, if nothing else, this video debunks the notion that Harvard Professors are savvy. For Christiansen’s argument is completely refuted by the existence of peaceful and largely godless societies like those of northern Europe. As far as I know, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, though largely godless, do have enough police. In fact, those societies are more lawful than those of the U.S. If Christianson was right, as religion waned in Europe over the last centuries, crime and immorality would have grown. I suspect, based on Steve Pinker’s book Better Angels of our Nature, that that isn’t the case.
At any rate, the Torygraph reports how the Troy University chancellor sent the clip around:
Jack Hawkins, the chancellor of Troy University, a public college based in Troy, Alabama sent the 90-second video as a “reminder” of what he called the “blessings” of American democracy – and its vulnerability to secularisation.
This, of course, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution mandating separation of church and state. Troy University is an arm of Alabama’s government, and its chancellor has no business promulgating religion and denigrating secularism in an official university email. So he’s not only as clueless as Harvard’s Christianson, but is in fact lawless himself. His love of God has led Hawkins to break the law.
Predictably and fortunately, atheists have objected. Citing Phil Zuckerman’s research on Denmark and Sweden, The American Atheists (AA) objected on both Constitutional and factual grounds. (You can see their letter to Hawkins here.) As the Torygraph reports:
“We demand an apology from you for using the public university email system and your publicly funded position to disparage atheists and minority religious groups as well as perpetuating the discrimination and anti-patriotic sentiment against atheists in the United States,” wrote David Silverman, the group’s president.
Some Alabama atheists (said by the AA to constitute 11% of the state’s population) have also objected (see this blogger). And just to be sure, I’ve informed the Freedom from Religion Foundation, though I suspect they already know about this. One way or another, Chancellor Hawkins will have to apologize. And when he does so, is it too much to hope that he’ll mention that, looking at Europe, you don’t find that godlessness equals lawlessness?
[JAC note: Thanks to Grania, who has been putting up nearly all the Hili dialogues, and writing the introductions, while I’m in India.]
Good morning, and happy Friday to everyone, especially if you are one of those people who has had to work through the holiday season.
Today Hili is concerned with Best Practice procedures for computer peripherals, or perhaps just Best Practice for Hili-related affairs.
Hili: My best pictures are on this Flash Drive.
A: I know, I put them there myself.
Hili: But I put it under the desk for safe-keeping and now it’s in the mess on top of your desk.
In Polish:
Hili: Na tym pendrivie są moje najlepsze zdjęcia.
Ja: Wiem, bo sam je tam przenosiłem.
Hili: Ale ja go schowałam pod biurkiem, a ty znowu masz go w tym bałaganie na twoim biurku.
It’s past bedtime in India, and Professor Ceiling Cat thought that it might be a good time for another open thread.
As the song says: No more champagne and the fireworks are through. I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions as I never have any intention of keeping any, but for 2015 I’ll say my ambition is to win the lottery, which is a lot harder than you’d think because I never purchase tickets.
It’s also that time of year when the usual suspects announce their suspiciously vague and ambiguous “predictions” for the year, so I thought it was good opportunity to talk about resolutions and predictions (sane or insane) and of course, prepare for the day when we reach Singularity.
My west coast correspondent sends the following picture of the “Bad Kitty” (who looks a little bit like Jerry Coyne the Cat).
Grumman F7F Tigercat, the “Bad Kitty”, at the Historic Flight Foundation, Mukilteo, WA, December 2014.
The plane is a Grumman F7F Tigercat, one of a series of “cat” named fighters made by Grumman; the most well known is probably the F14 Tomcat, made famous by the movie Top Gun. The plane is at the Historic Flight Foundation, an air museum at Paine Field in Mukilteo, Washington. Although designed to be a carrier-based fighter plane, they did not get much use, and this particular plane wound up being used by an Oregon forestry service.
Upon first seeing the picture, and not knowing the type of plane it was, I inquired if it was British, given the Union Jack on the wall behind. In reply, my correspondent sent along some pictures of a Spitfire at the museum.
Spitfire at Historic Flight Foundation, Mukilteo, WA, December 2014.
This plane was from one of the Czech squadrons formed within the Royal Air Force and flown by Czech pilots-in-exile during World War II. The red, white, and blue roundel on the plane’s tail is a Czech Air Force insignia of today; I’m not sure if it was used during WW II.
Update. Reader Graham provides below a link to the very interesting history of this particular plane– besides a Czech squadron in the RAF, this plane, built in 1945, was at different times in the Czechslovak, Israeli, and Burmese air forces, and finally was restored in England before coming to the museum in the US.
Over at Evolving Perspectives, reader Pliny the In Between made a cartoon inspired by the discussion we had (which was, in turn, inspired by a Jesus and Mo cartoon) about the Stupid Ontological Argument for God. Pliny has his own version that is much improved over the old one:
Studying the philosophy of religion, I’ve always said—and here I agree with John Loftus and Peter Boghossian—is a worthless endeavor. If you disagree, and think that there’s something worth divining from thousands of years of made-up stuff and confirmation bias, please weigh in below.
