Readers’ wildlife photograph

December 12, 2014 • 4:20 am

I’m off for my last visit to the dentist this a.m., and since my readers’ wildlife photos are in an e-file at work, I have only one today that, fortuitously, reader Stephen “D*g-Lover” Barnard from Idaho sent last night. It is a great photo of a Tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor), and I haven’t the slightest idea how he managed to capture this speedy and acrobatic bird. (They catch insects on the wing.) His caption:

I don’t think I’ve sent you this before. It’s a remarkable photo. These birds are rockets.

Swallow

Below is a video showing some of their behavior, and there’s another nice clip (which I can’t embed) at Arkive.  And you can hear three different types of calls here.

Note that juveniles (there’s one in the video) are brown rather than iridescent turquoise; they get their sparkly plumage, shown above, after the first year.

Finally, these birds (like starlings) roost communally in the non-breeding season, and you can see videos of some of their massive aggregations here and here.

 

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

December 12, 2014 • 3:34 am

It’s Friday: which seat can you take?  Tomorrow I’m off for India, returning in early January, and for once I’m certain that posting will be light during that time.  I have asked co-writers Greg and Matthew to fill in as best they can, perhaps there will be some open threads, and I will post from the subcontinent when I can.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, editor-in-chief Hili has supervised the translation of my piece on Pope Francis and animal heaven into Polish at Listy, and she discusses the issue with Andrzej. The dialogue, as it occasionally does, has a title:

DIGESTING THE REVELATION

A: All mice go to Heaven.
Hili: Even the ones I ate?
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In Polish:
TRAWIENIE OBJAWIENIA

Ja: Wszystkie myszki idą do nieba.
Hili: Te, które ja zjadłam też?

 

Ceci n’est pas une spirale

December 11, 2014 • 2:59 pm

That’s right, this is not a spiral.  If you check this illusion (from Sean Michael Ragan at Make) with your finger or mouse, you’ll find that it’s a series of concentric circles.

not-a-spiral

Also, if you move the picture around on the screen, it will appear to spiral.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

The tuatara’s third eye

December 11, 2014 • 12:44 pm

by Greg Mayer

The tuatara has long been of interest to us here at WEIT, where we refer to it as Earth’s Only Extant Non-Squamate Lepidosaur*. We’ve been especially interested in the tuatara’s third, or parietal, eye, and our most recent post on it, which included a very nice color image of a longitudinal section of the eye, lamented the fact that we could not find any images of the eye from the outside, showing how the eye looks on the head of a tuatara. In that post I wondered whether my colleague Jon Losos, who had commiserated with us on the apparent absence of tuatara third eye photos, might not be able to help us out. Well, he’s come through– I give you the tuatara’s third eye:

The parietal eye of the tuatara, from Alison Cree's Tuatara (Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, NS, 2014).
The parietal eye of the tuatara, from Alison Cree’s Tuatara (Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, NZ, 2014).

The images (click to enlarge) are from Alison Cree’s Tuatara: Biology and Conservation of a Venerable Survivor (Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 2014).  It does not (at least from the photos) look very different from the parietal eye of lizards, many of which also have parietal eyes, though not as well developed internally as in the tuatara. As a refresher from our earlier discussions here on WEIT, the ancestors of tuatara and lizards did not have a “normal”, functional third eye in the middle of their heads. Read the captions in the photos above for more details on the external appearance of the eye.

Jon included the images in his review of the book at Anole Annals (the published version of the review, sans photos from the book, will be in The Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand). Some of the issues brought up in the book that Jon notes in his review are ones we’ve dealt with here at WEIT: the perennial confusion of tuatara with lizards (and even dinosaurs!)—Jon notes from the book someone who said tuatara were “ancestral to crocodiles and turtles”!; and the proper Maori plural of tuatara (it’s tuatara, as was explained to us by WEIT readers and Maori speakers Shuggy and Jax). The most interesting thing Jon notes about the book is that it rebuts the notion of the tuatara as a poorly adapted, barely-hanging-on, survivor, arguing, among other things, that the primitive diapsid skull structure of the tuatara is a reversal, not the retention of a primitive condition. This underscores a point made by the late Carl Gans in his essay “Is Sphenodon punctatus a maladapted relic?” (the answer is “No!”).

Jon summarized his review to me this way: “It’s a great book …everything tuatara!” And, it’s got tuatara eyes!

____________________________________________________________

Cree, A. 2014. Tuatara: Biology and Conservation of a Venerable Survivor. Canterbury University Press, Christchurch. Amazon

Gans, C. 1983. Is Sphenodon punctatus a maladpted relict? pp. 613-620 in A.G.J. Rhodin and K. Miyata, eds. Advances in Herpetology and Evolutionary Biology. Museum Of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. BHL

“The dark side of free will”

December 11, 2014 • 10:08 am

Gregg Caruso is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Corning Community College, as well as chief editor of the journal Science, Religion, and Culture.  In this ten-minute TEDx talk, he discusses what he calls the “dark side of free will”. Note that the “free will” he’s speaking of is contracausal (libertarian) free will (the idea that at any moment you could have made any of several choices), not “compatibilist” free will (the notion that your choices are determined beforehand by physical laws, but you still have some sort of “free will” anyway). So before you compatibilists start kvetching, remember that Dr. Caruso’s addressing the form of free will that I believe most people hold, and certainly the type that most religious believers hold. He’s lecturing to a general audience, so I have no doubt they know what kind of free will it at issue

And although I’m sometimes told I lack philosophical savvy/credentials to allow me to pronounce on this issue, Caruso certainly has: as his bio notes, he’s “the author of Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will (2012) and the editor of Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (2013) and Science and Religion: 5 Questions (2014).”

Anyway, here Caruso argues that rejecting libertarian free will is actually a beneficial act, and that accepting it has, as I’ve long asserted, bad consequences for our system of rewards and (especially) punishments.

And, just to get you riled up, I don’t see what advantages there are in accepting compatibilist free will as opposed to being a pure, incompatibilist determinist. The usefulness of compatibilism seems limited to its keeping philosophers employed and the Little People convinced that they do have some sort of “free will” after all, even if it’s not the kind of free will they think they have. The whole area of compatibilism appears to involve redefining terms that we thought we understood all along, much as Sophisticated Theologians™ do all the time with the term “God.”

I will maintain until my last breath that philosophers who are compatibilists should, if they really wanted to improve society, spend their time teaching about the consequences of the determinism they accept rather than engaging in a never-ending argument about semantics. I see nothing to be gained by promoting compatibilism. The only reason I bring that view up, in fact, is because I think it distracts us from the important issue of physical determinism, and because I think that some compatibilists are motivated by the Little People argument (they say so explicitly) as well as confusing people with their tortuous arguments.

Note: you’re not allowed to comment until you’ve listened to the whole video, for I want people to discuss Caruso’s points.

Kentucky comes to its senses, nixes tax incentives for Ark Park

December 11, 2014 • 8:25 am

Like its subject, Ken Ham’s Ark Park (“Ark Encounter”)—a project of his creationist organization Answers in Genesis—has had a tumultuous ride. First it had trouble getting financial support from backers (something that seems to have reversed after Bill Nye’s ill-advised debate with Ham), then went back and forth about whether it would get tax breaks (that came to nothing) and then finally seemed poised to get those take breaks from the state of Kentucky.  It looked like the damn thing would be built after all, and with government support of a palpably religious project. It would be a theme park designed to purvey lies to children.

But, to my surprise, the state of Kentucky finally came to its senses, realizing that it’s a violation of the First Amendment to give tax breaks to such a project. (It’s similar to the illegal practice of the U.S. government giving ministers tax breaks on their housing allowances.) As the Louisville Courier-Journal reports (complete with a superfluous apostrophe):

A proposed Noah’s ark theme park in Northern Kentucky has been turned down for around $18 million in state tax incentives amid concerns that it will promote religion and violate the separation of church and state.

But the group behind the project — Answers in Genesis — says it is considering legal action in federal court.

The state Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet said in a letter Wednesday that the Ark Encounter theme park has changed it’s [sic; doesn’t the paper have a proofreader?] position on hiring policies since it originally filed for incentives in 2010 and now intends to discriminate in hiring based on religion.

It also said the park has evolved from a tourist attraction into an extension of the ministry activities undertaken by Answers in Genesis, which promotes a literal interpretation of the Bible’s old testament and argues that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

“State tourism tax incentives cannot be used to fund religious indoctrination or otherwise be used to advance religion,” Tourism Secretary Bob Stewart wrote in the letter. “The use of state incentives in this way violates the separation of church and state provisions of the Constitution and is therefore impermissible.”

DUH!  Didn’t they realize that in the first place? It didn’t “evolve” from anything; that was the park’s purpose from the outset.  After all, AIG’s Creation Museum in Kentucky is the same thing: an extension of ministry activities promoting a Biblical view of creation. Were state tourism tax incentives used for that, too? If so, that was just as illegal as the Ark Park.

And Answers in Genesis (AIG) isn’t making it any easier on themselves with a statement put up just yesterday on the Ark Encounter blog, which, after discussing the possibility that the remains of the Ark might still rest on Turkey’s Mount Ararat (at least they have the decency to say the evidence is “not conclusive”), AIG adds (my emphasis):

Nevertheless, the Ark Encounter will show the feasibility of this famous vessel, and we will use the biblical account of Noah, the Ark, and the Flood to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.

How much clearer can that be,  O citizens of Kentucky?

The Lexington Herald-Leader quotes further from Stewart’s letter:

In a letter dated Dec. 10, Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet Secretary Bob Stewart told a lawyer for Answers in Genesis that the state could not support projects with hiring practices that discriminated based on religion.

“As you know … we have strongly supported this project, believing it to be a tourism attraction based on biblical themes that would create significant jobs for the community,” Stewart wrote to James Parsons, a Covington attorney. “However … it is readily apparent that the project has evolved from a tourist attraction to an extension of AIG’s ministry that will no longer permit the commonwealth to grant the project tourism development incentives.”

Stewart was responding to a Dec. 8 letter from Parsons that threatened a lawsuit if state officials imposed hiring conditions, which AIG officials contend were added late in the process.

What might have made the difference was a secularist organization pointing out that the Ark Encounter intended to proceed with preferential hiring based on religion:

The current problems started during the summer, when the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority gave preliminary approval to an incentive package which allows a 25 percent sales tax rebate for approved tourism sites.

But state officials paused after Americans for the Separation of Church and State pointed out language in job postings for the park requiring “salvation testimony” and a “Creation belief statement.”

State officials agreed that the language would violate state rules that prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion.

A series of meetings and letters followed, including Parsons’ lengthy letter threatening a federal lawsuit because of “unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

It seems to me that whether or not hiring was based on religious belief, the project itself violates the First Amendment because the government was giving a tax advantage not just to religion (as it does with ministers’ housing exemptions), but to the promotion of Christianity. And that violates the Constitution.

What surprised me even more was that the governor of Kentucky backed his cabinet secretary by issuing a statement, and he didn’t have to do that. The statement, below, will surely anger the many religionists that populate that state—the only state where posters for my evolution talks were defaced and removed. But the governor of course qualified his statement with a quasi-endorsement of the park:

Gov. Steve Beshear said he supported Stewart’s decision.

“We expect any entity that accepts state incentives not to discriminate on any basis in hiring,” Beshear said in a statement. “While the leaders of Ark Encounter had previously agreed not to discriminate in hiring based on religion, they now refuse to make that commitment, and it has become apparent that they do intend to use religious beliefs as a litmus test for hiring decisions. For that reason, we cannot proceed with the tourism incentive application for the Ark Encounter project.”

Beshear said he thought the project would move ahead.

“Ark Encounter has said publicly that the project will be built regardless of availability of state incentives,” Beshear said. “I have no doubt that the Ark Encounter will be a successful attraction, drawing visitors and creating jobs, much like the Creation Museum.”

I’m pretty sure that Ark Encounter will still be built, for we should never underestimate the zeal of literalist Christians. Still, the funding is nowhere near where it need to be, even though ground has been broken. At the Ark Encounter FAQ page, you can see a funding line that puts AIG only about halfway to its goal:
Screen Shot 2014-12-11 at 7.17.03 AM
LOL! Noah didn’t have a crane!

Google celebrates Annie Jump Cannon

December 11, 2014 • 6:53 am

No, I hadn’t heard of her either, and probably only astronomy buffs know much about her. But I became aware of Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) when I saw this doodle on Google this morning (click on the screenshot to go to her Wikipedia biography). You can read yourself about how instrumental Cannon was in classifying stars (she herself classified more than half a million!) while working at the Harvard Observatory. Her work was pivotal in leading to the modern classification of stars based on their light spectra, which in turn tells us about their surface temperature and something about their age.  In fact, some of classes she devised are still used today: see here for a list.

The Doodle celebrates Cannon’s 151st birthday:

Screen Shot 2014-12-11 at 7.37.39 AM

 

Two notes from Wikipedia; the first on her proficiency:

She classified more stars in a lifetime than anyone else, with a total of around 500,000 stars. She also discovered 300 variable stars, five novas, and one spectroscopic binary, creating a bibliography that included about 200,000 references.Cannon could classify three stars a minute just by looking at their spectral patterns and, if using a magnifying glass, could classify stars down to the ninth magnitude, around 16 times fainter than the human eye can see.

And the second reflecting the position of women in science at that time:

Cannon and the other women at the Observatory were criticized at first for being “out of their place” and not being housewives. In fact, women could only get as high as assistants in this line of work and were only paid 25 cents an hour for seven hours a day, six days a week. Cannon dominated this field because of her “tidiness” and patience for the tedious work, and even helped the men in the observatory gain popularity. . . Annie Jump Cannon’s career in astronomy lasted for more than 40 years, until her retirement in 1940. During this time, Cannon helped women gain acceptance and respect within the scientific community. Her calm, hardworking attitude and demeanor helped her gain respect throughout her lifetime and paved the path for future women astronomers.

No comment is needed.  Finally, here’s a photo of Cannon at her desk at the Harvard Observatory:

1024px-Annie_Jump_Cannon_sitting_at_desk

 

 

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 11, 2014 • 5:47 am

Reader Tom Hennessy sent some nice macro photos of plants and butterflies. No IDs were provided, so if you can identify either the plants or the lepidopterans, please do so below.

. . . Since my oldest daughter lives in Chicago, I get the chance to visit occasionally. (I live near Richmond, VA)  I try to get time in the Chicago Botanic Gardens when I can, and I am attaching a few butterfly and flower photos I took there and in Lewis Ginter Botanic Gardens.  Since my wife and I are members of the Lewis Ginter Botanic Gardens in Richmond, we get reciprocal admission to the Chicago Gardens.  Both are very nice venues and I take a lot of macro photos at both gardens.  I hope you like them.

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CBG-13

CBG