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.
. . . like Buster the raccoon, who doesn’t want to get up to go out. I don’t know much about this procyonid except for what it says in the YouTube video, but he clearly wants to sleep in.
Buster the Raccoon aka “Butter Brownie” (because he is so soft and sweet) doesn’t like the cold weather…. We had to motivate him to get up…..with treats! https://www.facebook.com/bustercoon
All I know is that since I started the Albatross a few years ago, I’m up at 4:30 seven days a week, and my body is so attuned to that schedule that I can’t sleep any later. Maybe now I can get back to a life that resembles that of normal people!
Another week! I’m off to Truman State in Missouri today to talk about evolution, religious and other stuff. That means that posting may be light until Thursday. As always, I do my best. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Furry Princess of Poland is getting her subjects to carry her about. Malgorzata explains:
Hili, since she was a tiny kitten, had a trick demanding/begging to be picked up. She would run to you, stand on her hind paws in front of you and put her forepaws high on your legs. She doesn’t do it very often now but sometimes on the walks, when it is wet or cold, she does it. I find it irresistible and always pick her up. After a few moments she wants to be put down again.
Malgorzata: Hili, what are you doing?
Hili: I’m observing biodiversity.
Save your fork—there’s pie! Or at least there was yesterday, when I attended the yearly South Side Pie Challenge held as a fundraiser for the local Ray School. The pies were at least as good as last year’s, and I bought four pieces ($3 slice/ four for $10: a bargain), consuming two on the spot (caramel whipped-cream pie and a luscious blueberry pie) and saved two for later (lemon meringue pie with candied lemon peel and a peanut-butter cream pie).
O! Ye! of other nations who have not sampled one of America’s great contributions to world gastronomy*, gnash your teeth and see below!:
The welcoming sign:
The tables of entries laid out. Chocolate pies and pumpkin/sweet potato pies:
Fruit pies and more cream pies:
More cream pies and fruit pies:
And some lovely items, first a “forget the election” cashew cream pie (Hyde Parkers are liberals):
A “mustikkapiirakka” pie, which tasted like blueberry to me (it was good!):
A “pie-rat” chocolate pie, emblazoned with the appropriate skull and crossbones:
A lovely apple-raisin pie (each contestant baked two pies, one for the judges to sample and the other for general purchase and consumption):
A dulce de leche pie:
What I thought was the prettiest item, a “devilish pie”:
A real killer: a salted caramel chocolate cream pie. I much regret that my stomach, swelled by two pieces already, didn’t permit me to try this one:
Finally, one of the adorable Ray School students (who assisted in the vending of comestibles) inspecting her wares in the pecan/nut/squash pie section:
Which pie would you take?
________
*We’re not talking about savory pies here, like pork pies, so we don’t need to hear from the UK Pie Police.
Now here’s an interesting idea. Take a fundamentalist (and creationist) preacher from the southern U.S. and put him in various Scandinavian countries. Then sit back and enjoy the fun while the pastor becomes horrified at not only the degree of unbelief, but the fact that these countries seem to function normally. Even the religious people he meets are, in the American’s book, bound for Hell.
Of course, it’s silly to argue that you need God for morality, or that a country can’t function without a strong religious orientation, but Pastor McLain from Georgia learned this the hard way. And one can imagine the feelings the Scandinavian heathens themselves when they encounter an American who believes in creation, Heaven, Hell, the Garden of Eden, the sinfulness of homosexuality—the whole fetid ball of wax.
The YouTube notes say this:
Excerpt from the [Finnish] documentary series “The Norden”. American pastor Marty McLain visits the secular Nordic countries. What role does religion have in the Nordic society? How do the Nordic people relate to God, faith and spirituality? How does it differ from the US? Host: Joakim Rundt.
While interviewing several members of a church in Copenhagen, McLain makes the mistake of assuming that, given their faith, they must be homophobes like he is. After he laments the fact that the oppressive government made Denmark’s churches perform same-sex marriages, the Reverend had to awkwardly tell him that neither he nor anyone else at the church had a problem with gay people. McLain’s pained expression is priceless.
He runs into a man on the street who (finally!) says he believes in God. Excited, McLain asks if he is a Christian. The man tells him, no, a Muslim. McLain: “A Muslim!”
An excruciating discussion with a humanist over coffee ends with the humanist telling McLain, “In short, I have no need of a god. To put it bluntly.” McLain stares off into space, his mind melting.
As you’ll see it’s a land full of Laplaces: person after person basically tells McLain, “We don’t need that hypothesis.”I’d love to see the whole thing, but all we have is this 5½-minute clip:
This news is a bit old, but I’m still catching up, and more details are emerging. Last Tuesday, a Pakistani Christian couple, Sajjad Maseeh, his wife Shama Bibi, aged 24 respectively, were brutally beaten and then burned alive in an industrial kiln. Shama was four months pregnant at the time. Here they are, and their four children are now orphans:
From NBC news site, undcredited
Apparently the murders resulted from a rumor that the couple had burned a Qur’an in the kiln. This was untrue (there is one story that Sham unknowingly burnt some Qur’anic verses left behind by her recently deceased father.) The real story appears to be that the couple were indentured laborers and had failed to pay the factory owner, who then spread the rumor about the Qur’an-burning, knowing what would happen.
Accompanied by a dozen people, factory owner Yousaf Gujjar allegedly went to the couple’s home last weekend and locked them in an office so they couldn’t leave. By Tuesday, loudspeaker announcements from local mosques were branding Sajjad and Shama as “blasphemous” and saying they should be “wajib-ul-qatal,” which translates as “necessarily murdered,” according to the family’s account.
Unable to break down the office door, the swelling crowd ripped open the building’s thatched roof. “They first threw bricks at them,” said Javed Maseeh, who is Sajjad’s cousin. “Then they dragged them out” and burned them.
The crowd is now estimated to have included 1200 people. And the murder was horribly brutal:
Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday. Their legs were also broken so they couldn’t run away.
“They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire,” he said. “And then they threw them inside the furnace.”
Bibi, a mother of four who was four months pregnant, was wearing an outfit that initially didn’t burn, according to Javed Maseeh. The mob removed her from over the kiln and wrapped her up in cotton to make sure the garments would be set alight.
Pakistani Christians have protested, and the Pakistani government has arrested four, promising a thorough investigation, and will book 50 more people for the murder. But that’s not going to bring the couple back or give solace to their children. And Pakistan’s blasphemy law still criminalizes the dissing of Islam or any religion (read: “Islam”), and can carry the death penalty. Wikipedia gives the salient provisions:
§ 298 states:
Whoever, with the deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of any person, utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person or makes any gesture in the sight of that person or places any object in the sight of that person, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.
§ 298-A prohibits the use of any derogatory remark or representation in respect of Muslim holy personages. § 298-B and § 298-C prohibit the Ahmadiyya from behaving as Muslims behave, calling themselves Muslims, proselytising, or “in any manner whatsoever” outraging the religious feelings of Muslims. Violation of any part of § 298 makes the violator liable to imprisonment for up to three years and liable also to a fine.
In the decade before between 2006 and 2010, 1247 people were prosecuted under this law, half of them non-Muslims, which comprise only 3% of the population. While there have been no judicial executions, 20 of these people were killed by vigilantes.
In the meantime, Pakistan and other Muslim states continue to press the United Nations to pass an anti-“defamation” provisions. It’s already passed as a “non-binding provision,” and, fortunately, the U.S. and other countries have opposed its passage. Below is a CNN video from 2009 reporting the initiative, which is still in the works. The late Christopher Hitchens appears at 4:18, eloquently decrying such laws. Oh, I miss that man!
Pakistan is supposedly an advanced nation, but remains mired in medieval barbarism. The government deserves mockery and contempt for this law. In the meantime, two more lives were lost needlessly, and four children orphaned, for the supposed incineration of some pieces of paper.
Tell us, Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan, and Robert Pape, are you going to impute this violence to “colonialism”? Give me a break. Some day people will realize that religious people, and especially extremist Muslims, often really do believe what they say they believe. Apologists may ascribe what happened to this couple to other issues (people disaffected by poverty, etc.), but I can’t imagine that this would happen without religion, or without Islam’s ridiculous strictures against blasphemy.
I well remember visiting Berlin when Germany was divided: the huge, imposing wall dividing the city, the strip of cleared ground (containing land mines) on the East German side, and the drabness of East Berlin when my father and I visited after passing through Checkpoint Charlie. (As an American Army officer, my father was allowed to travel around the city for one day, so long as he remained in uniform.)
One of the eye-moistening, throat-swelling moments of my life was when the Berlin Wall came down after an abrupt announcement from Günter Schabowski, the head of the Party in East Berlin. That took place exactly 25 years ago today. Schabowski was told to announce there would be free movement between East and West Berlin, and, proclaiming that in a press conference, was taken by surprise when a reporter asked him when, exactly, the provision would take effect. Confused, Schabowski said, “Immediately”, even though it wasn’t supposed to happen for another day.
So, at 10:45 on Nov. 9, 1989, the East Germans rushed to the wall, overwhelmed the confused border guards, and crossed to the West. West Berliners, crossed into the East as well. People took pickaxes to the Wall and drank champagne on top of it. What a time!
It was earlier in the day in the U.S., of course, and I well remember staying up to watch the celebrations, old enough to know what this meant. It was the end for Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe, and a testament to the human aspiration for freedom.
Google Doodle celebrates this day, and if you click on the screenshot below you’ll go to the special 1:17 movie Google made for the occasion. It’s deeply moving, at least to those of us who saw it happen:
I don’t recall Google actually making its own movie before for a Doodle, though it’s had plenty of animated cartoons. Here’s their explanation along with a reminiscence from the person who composed the music:
Determined to share this experience on the doodle and others like it around the world, we enlisted several folks and are grateful for their help. Our friends at veed.me arranged 17 international film crews to gather footage. The German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) provided powerful archival photographs by Klaus Lehnartz and Heiko Specht to set context for the video. Googlers from around the world translated more than 50 international versions. Morgan Stiff edited it all together.
We’re especially indebted to Nils Frahm, who composed the video’s beautiful music. Nils grew up in Germany and had this reflection of the event:
“I was 7 years old when thousands of East German signature cars arrived in my hometown Hamburg and filled the air with odd smelling blue smoke. I saw strangers hugging strangers, tears in their eyes, their voices tired from singing. I was too young to understand, but I felt that life was different now and that different was better. Now it is our obligation to tell this story to all those who couldn’t be there, who could not feel the spark of the peaceful revolution themselves and more importantly who can’t remember how existence feels when its incarcerated by concrete walls. It is time to celebrate 25 years of unity.”
We couldn’t have said it better.
If you’re too young to remember, well, imagine what it felt like when a people who had been physically divided for nearly 30 years (45 if you count restricted movement)—including separated relatives—began coming together again as one unified nation. I would love for this to happen in our lifetime for North and South Korea, but that seems unlikely so long as the North is ruled by inhuman tyrants and thugs.
Even after the bear post was up, people continued to bring out their teds. What else can I do except put these precious (and often decrepit) childhood relics on display? I will put these up today in lieu of “Readers’ wildlife photos”.
Reader Nick Hiltner sends a “traveling bear”:
In 1991, an aunt gave me and my siblings stuffed bears. Since she had traveled to see us, she called them “traveling bears”. Once, when we were driving (to Poland!) with the windows down, I snuck my sleeping brother’s bear away from him. Then I rolled up my window and woke him. He saw his bear in my hand, and watched as I chucked it at the passing fields. He screamed and lunged, but was restrained by his seatbelt, his bear bouncing back into his lap.
My sister and brother retired their Traveling Bears long ago, but mine still travels with me.
My good friend Andrew Berry, who teaches at Schmarvard, sent an essay on his toy panda (like the one in the last post, also named “Panda”), which turned into a musing on mortality:
Panda and his owner have been through a lot together. And over a long period: like many treasured soft-toy companions, Panda is about the same age as his owner. He had a rough start to life, being, you might say, overly loved. The results were one ear being rather larger than the other (from being dragged around by it) and what might be termed mild alopecia of love — hair/fluff loss. More problematic, however, was the connection between Panda’s head and his body. Being dragged around by your ear is hard on your neck, especially if you don’t really have one. Panda’s head and the rest of him started to separate, necessitating emergency surgery. A tricky procedure, and one that has resulted in Panda being permanently rather well dressed (by naked panda standards, anyway). He wears in perpetuity a tartan tie, which must never come off (for fear of his head coming off with it).
Panda’s owner, being the product of bourgeois English parents, was sent off in 1976 to boarding school at the age of 13. A traumatic parting for all involved. Panda’s owner recognized that it would be rather unmanly to appear at his single-sex boarding school accompanied by a rather raggedy, tie-wearing Panda. Panda would have to stay at home. Aargh…, the separation! A (partial) solution: on a pre-boarding school trip to Wales, Panda posed on a dry stone wall and allowed himself to be polaroid photographed (a technology that was all the rage at the time). The photograph accompanied his owner to school, and Panda headed home to an empty childhood bedroom. But Panda has never been neglected or forgotten. For example, he followed his owner across the Atlantic for a new life in the US, where Panda ponders the ideas de jour such as the shortcomings of his thumb (well, in his case, the complete lack of one).
Below are a couple of photos of Panda and his owner, including a scan of the original 1976 Panda Polaroid. Panda and his owner represent a nice example of what should perhaps be called Dunnet-Fulmar Effect. George Dunnet (1928-95) was a Scottish ornithologist who was photographed in 1950 with one of the seabirds he was working on, a fulmar. Forty-two years later we have another photo of Dunnet with the same bird. The bird is unchanged, Dunnet is not unchanged. In comparing the 1976 photos of Panda and his owner with ones taken this year, we see the same pattern. Panda, fulmar-like, is enigmatically ageless; his owner is in a state of headlong decay.
Reader Sarah Crews sent a pair of tigers:
So, the tigers in the pic…While I was doing my post-doc in Australia in 2009, my aunt Mary Lou (a family member I regularly spoke to) was diagnosed with bladder cancer and it had spread and the prognosis was not good. I ended up leaving a few months early from Australia (note, I did finish everything and publish on time etc). She slowly got somewhat better and things seemed to be going ok until this year when there were multiple problems and the doctors said surgery would be too complex and “not worth it” (I said she should see other doctors).
She passed away about a month ago and my sister went to help clean out her house.( My aunt was a bit of a hoarder.) She always liked cats and dogs and when we would go to Ohio for easter or Thanksgiving when I was 3-5, I would go in their house, play with their beagle, Buddy and then go under the bed and spend the day with Cocoa, the 18 lb calico cat [JAC: a live cat.] Like I would just hang out under there all day until forced to come out. On the bed were two stuffed tigers. I think one may have been my aunt or uncle’s when they were children and the other was won at a fair or carnival, or maybe they both were. Anyway, before cleaning, my sister asked if there was anything I might want. I said, well, it’s a long shot, but there were these two tigers…I got the package last week. I hadn’t seen them for over 30 years and they were just like I remembered. I don’t remember the two little cats that were also sent, but I suppose those are probably something my grandmother made a long time ago.
Mary Bierbaum has an especially beat-up bear, a real gerontocrat:
This is Bobby Bear. He belongs to my husband and he estimates that Bobby is 70 years old. He originally belonged to his oldest sister but he became the owner when he was about 8. The jacket, now seriously moth-eaten was made by his mother for one of his sisters’ Barbie Doll but he claimed it for Bobby. Bobby has become a family mascot and is the official bear of the Bierbaum Family Reunion. His eyes are long gone and so is his fuzz and his nose is completely squished due to the redistributing of his stuffing.
Reader Hetta has a battered bear who evolved an exaptation:
I got this guy from my grandparents before I was born. There are hundreds of stories about him.. He’s been through al ot over the years…
When I was was around 5 years old, the back of his head got a big tear. The tear kept growing and growing until it turned into a big hole and there was too much teddy tissue missing for him to just be sewn back together again..
But one day, my dad decided he would surprise me. He took an extra long lunch hour, went home and very carefully stitched him togethe rwith what little fabric was still there to sew in.
When i got home and saw him sewn back together I got really upset. By sewing his head back together, the shape of his face and head had changed.. making him look …. really stretched.. Kind of like a person who’s had too many face lifts.. Teddy style.
I thanked my dad and then, with a pair of scissors, removed every single stitch.
This is what he looks like now, 18 years later. Now in charge of my contraceptive pills.
And he still has a big hole in the back of his head.
Note: the first photo is of the front of the bear:
If you have a childhood plush toy you haven’t sent it, go ahead and do it. If there are enough I’ll make one more post. Thanks to all for sending in their teddies, tigers, and so on.
