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.
It’s August 24, 2016, at least in Chicago, and the cool weather continues here, a welcome relief from the scorchers of yore. But now the sun doesn’t rise until an hour after I walk to work—a harbinger of BACK TO SCHOOL time.
It’s National Waffle Day in the U.S., celebrating Cornelius Swarthout’s patent on the waffle iron that was granted on this date in 1869. Have a waffle—they’re great! Now there’s also an International Waffle Day, which takes place on March 25. That one started in Sweden and is called Våffeldagen. I’d be pleased if a Swedish reader would inform us if people really do eat waffles on that day, and what they look like. Here’s a specimen of we eat in America—the so-called Belgian Waffle, though I have no idea if they actually serve these in Belgium. I prefer mine with pecans and real maple syrup (the lowest grade, and hence the tastiest):
If you don’t like it, keep your opinion to yourself.
On this day in 1456, the printing of the Gutenberg Bible—the first mass-produced book printed using movable type—was completed. 49 copies survive today. And, on this day in 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel.
Notables born on this day include Ronee Blakely (1945; remember her in Nashville?) and paleontologist Tim White (1950). Those who died on August 24 include Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (2004), who completed all her stages, and Julie Harris (2013♥). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili keeps getting involved in quite intellectual dialogues (for a cat):
A: What is genius?
Hili: It’s a creative ability to avoid plagiarism.
In Polish:
Ja: Na czym polega geniusz?
Hili: Na twórczej umiejętności unikania popełniania plagiatów.
And for lagniappe, reader Taskin forwarded this very short video of a cat in a pirate suit:
If they gave Pulitzer Prizes for headlines, that should get one!
The story: a 53 year old father in Omaha found brownies in the back of his car, a car his kids had used earlier in the day. He ate four of them, and, sure enough, the brownies were pot brownies. The expected effect occurred: the man got stoned, but had no idea what was happening. He began getting terrible anxiety, and the cops and paramedics were called. This was the scene when they arrived:
Paramedics called to the scene who checked the man found his vital signs to be normal. But they noted that he was displaying odd behavior — crawling around on the floor, randomly using profanities and calling the family cat a “bitch.”
The man was put to bed, one of the kids confessed that the brownies belonged to one of the other kids (LOL), and no arrests were made.
But The Pot Father was not so sure, so it was then that he tried to go upstairs to his bedroom, where later (as he got even higher) he would see the demons and the flying circles and squares.
Except that as he walked across the living room somehow his walk turned into a crawl. And then somehow his crawl turned into a military crawl like he learned at Marine Corps basic training back in 1981. (“Michael was displaying odd behavior,” the police report reads. “Crawling around on the floor …”)
And then somehow he was sprawled on the stairs, and the family cat, Kipper, was standing at the top of the stairs staring down at him, unblinking. Maybe a tad judgey.
For the record, The Pot Father claims he was actually attempting to tell the paramedics helping him off the stairs that the cat is sometimes a bitch. As in, don’t touch her tail, guys, that cat will claw-shank you. But it maybe came out kind of weird, owing to the fact that he had just accidentally ingested an enormous amount of pot brownies. Maybe, just maybe, it came out sounding like he was “calling their cat a ‘bitch’ ” as the police report so eloquently states.
Which he wasn’t, The Pot Father swears. Although: “She can be a b…,” he tells me Thursday night.
And here’s Kipper, the bitch cat. LOL: it’s a tortie!
Photo: Matthew Hansen for the World Herald
I have a similar story! When I was in grad school, my officemate was a postdoc from India, and had never in his life tried pot. It turned out that, one Saturday, there was going to be a lab party, and another grad student had made a pan of pot brownies for it, using an entire ounce of the stuff. He put the brownies in the cold room, and we knew they were there.
When I got to my office on Saturday afternoon, my officemate was lying on the cot we kept in our office for naps, writhing around and giggling uncontrollably. I was baffled, as he was a pretty straight guy. After a bit of interrogation, I discovered that he had gone into the cold room to get some electrophoretic buffer, and came upon the pan of brownies. He was also a guy who liked his noms, so he helped himself amply to what he thought was cake.
It took him hours to come down, and, as far as I know, he never tried pot again after that!
I could be wading into murky waters here, and in fact I am, but I have no opinion on the issue of intersexuality and sports, and am just writing this post to solicit opinions—partly to help formulate mine. And forgive me for any errors I make below (but do correct me), as there’s a ton of literature to wade through, and I’ve only skimmed the surface. The issue is one that involves our conceptions of gender, of humans rights, of fairness, and of athletic competitions.
The issue is, of course, the competition of athletes who are transgender or have conditions that increase the levels of testosterone in their bodies, which adds strength so long as the body is not testosterone-insensitive. Over the years, a number of people who have competed as women have been, or have been accused of being, hermaphrodites, intersexes, or of having other medical conditions that increase the level of effective testosterone. (The reverse situation is not a problem, since in most strength sports males score higher than females.) It’s not a problem of duplicity, as I’ve never found a case of a “normal” male masquerading as a female to gain an advantage.
Rather, we have cases like that of South Africa’s Caster Semenya, who won the 800-meter race in this year’s Olympics. Semenya is what we call an “intersexual” individual. While she identifies as female, she has a rare condition of having the “male” XY chromosome constitution, external female genitalia, no ovaries, and internal testes that produce testosterone. There’s little doubt that that added testosterone has given her an added advantage, since after rules stipulating an upper limit of testosterone in female athletes were put in place (and presumably Semenya had to reduce her testosterone through drug therapy), her performances dropped sharply.
In 2015, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), under a ruling from the Court for Arbitration for Sport (CAS), dropped the testosterone-threshhold limit, so there was no longer a limit to the amount of testosterone an athlete self-identifying as female could have. Semenya has almost certainly taken advantage of this rule, and is now virtually untouchable in middle-distances races. Some women athletes without this “hyperandrogenism” condition feel this is unfair. Others claim that testosterone is simply one of many biologically varying factors that could affect performance (see below), and shouldn’t even be considered.
In November, the International Olympic Committee produced a consensus document on hyperandrogenism and transgenderism, recommending that for both situations, to compete as a woman, “the athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L [nanomoles per liter] for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).”
This upper limit was based on average testosterone levels of some women competing in the 2011 and 2013 World Championships. The testosterone levels were measured in women athletes who already had elevated testosterone from having Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and then the upper cutoff was set 5 standard deviations above that level. There are medical ways to reduce the testosterone of those above the limit who want to compete as women.
These guidelines, as far as I know, have not been officially adopted by the Olympics, and were not in place in Rio.
As expected giving the current controversies and confusions about gender, reactions to female-identifying hyperandrogenic athletes being allowed to compete as women has been mixed and acrimonious. Here’s a small sampling of opinion from both sides:
And we can get into a whole debate about male-vs-female athleticism, but as it stands, Semenya is, for all intents and purposes, a female. That’s how she was raised. That’s how she identifies. And that’s how she competes.
I do not believe that women with hyperandrogenism should be competing unregulated. I believe that the divide between men and women exists precisely to ensure fairness in competition (as far as this is ever possible), and I think that if you respect that division, then a policy that addresses hyperandrogenism must exist. I think CAS made a ludicrous decision, and I think it is damaging to women’s sport. Saying that men and women are different is a biological reality, and in sport, the difference has obvious performance implications. It does not mean “inferior”, but different, so spare me any “patriarchy” nonsense on this (I’ve heard it said, for instance, that women’s performances are slower because of the “fucking patriarchy”. If you think that, let me save you time and tell you to stop reading now, and save us both the aggravation).
Joanna Harper (a transgender woman athlete) interviewed by Ross (same article):
While human rights advocates are deliriously happy over the CAS ruling, those who love women’s sport are mortified. Those Intersex athletes who previously used medications to reduce their T [testosterone] are now off of those medications, and are running faster. Allowing these athletes to compete in women’s sport with their serious testosterone-based advantage threatens the very fabric of women’s sport.
. . . If one believes that women’s sports are vitally important, and one has little regard for the rights of a small segment of humanity, then suggesting that women’s sport should only be for those who are 100% female is not unreasonable.
On the other hand, if one is passionate about the rights of marginalized minorities such as intersex or transgender women, and one is not as invested in the benefits of sport to all women, then it is not unreasonable to suggest that anyone who considers herself female should be allowed to compete as nature made her.
Since I believe in both the vital importance of women’s sport and the rights of intersex and transgender women, then I am forced to consider a compromise position, one virtually identical to that espoused by the IAAF and the IOC. [JAC: the new IOC guidelines stated above.]
. . . While there is some validity to the argument that the rights of the many outweigh the rights of the few, I would counter that we can still maintain the integrity of women’s sport if we allow only those intersex and transgender women who compete with typical female T levels into women’s sport. Any advantages that intersex or transgender women might still maintain after lowering their T, are small enough that they will not create an overly unbalanced playing field.
But even if testosterone did confer an athletic advantage, this advantage would not be unfair. This is because setting a limit on hyperandrogenism and singling it out from other biological variations that may confer an advantage is – at best – an inconsistent policy. There are plenty of other variations – biological and genetic alike – that are not regulated by the IAAF and, even though advantageous for athletic performance, are not considered unfair for competition.
I don’t know enough about this issue to have strong opinions, as it involves negotiating a complex welter of issues, including scientific ones (how strong is the evidence that testosterone gives one an advantage?), philosophical and social ones (should we allow some to self-identify as one gender or another without testing? Is external female genitalia, as in Semenya’s case, sufficient to allow her to be identified as a women?), and moral ones (Should everybody be allowed to compete, and, if so, how many classes of competition should we have?). The only question I’m pretty firm on is that everyone should be allowed to compete, even if there are hormone thresholds. It would be horrible if someone who wanted to be an athlete couldn’t compete simply because of biological accidents of birth affecting their primary and secondary sexual characteristics.
So here are the questions at hand:
Should there be any testing of athletes, or should they simply be allowed to compete based on self-identification of gender? (This would, of course, mostly affect women’s sports; some say it would destroy women’s sports.)
If not, how many categories of competition do we want? The traditional men’s and women’s sports, or an intermediate category? (The latter would, of course, cause huge problems.)
If we don’t accept self-identification and want to retain traditional “men’s” and “women’s” sports, how do we determine the category in which an athlete belongs?
If the identification is based on hormones, can we set limits, as the IOC has done, to demarcate the classes? If we don’t use hormones, how do we classify?
Reader “Fletch” had a comment on the post I wrote yesterday, “To uniquely protect Islam against mockery, Sydney newspaper suggests that Muslims be considered members of a race rather than a religion.” As you may recall, I criticized the Sydney Morning Herald‘s op-ed calling for Muslims to be included among special ethno-religious groups that, considered “races,” are covered by “hate speech” laws in Australia. (Religions in general are not.) I also claimed that Muslims are not a race by anybody’s construal of the term, and this proposal was just a way to uniquely insulate Islam from criticism.
I also claimed (with a bit of hyperbole), that no religion deserves respect, but qualified that by saying that we shouldn’t respect those faiths (nearly all of them) whose truth claims are untestable or wrong and their god-derived moral codes questionable. I do have more respect for, say, Quakers, than I do for the more theistic faiths. Quakerism, however, is almost the same as secular humanism.
But I did make this comment:
Catholicism and Islam are no more deserving of respect than are Scientology or Christian Science. Why is the claim that someone was nailed to the cross, killed, revived, and now is the sole vehicle for eternal salvation in Heaven any more deserving of respect than the claim that the overlord Xenu stashed people in volcanoes and then blew them up, releasing body thetans that now afflict us? Or that disease is merely an instantiation of misguided thinking, and can be cured by prayer. None of the bases of these faiths—their fact claims—survive the merest scrutiny, and none of their behavior claims, including assertions about the afterlife or the efficacy of prayer, are credible to someone not brought up in the asylum. In fact, severe ridicule of doctrine (not “adherents”) is the appropriate response to most religions; or, if you’re not into mockery, calm analysis and rejection of their claims.
Well, Fletch didn’t like that, and tried to post the following. I decided to put it above the fold and get readers’ comments, so I could email the whole lot to him. (I suspect his email address is bogus, but I’ll try). To wit:
I agree and disagree with this column. I agree that Islam is not, and should not be considered, a race; however, I disagree with your assertion that “None of the bases of these faiths—their fact claims—survive the merest scrutiny”. Christianity actually does survive this scrutiny. You just throw off this flip statement because you haven’t really studied it. Look at people like Lee Strobel – the former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. He looked into Jesus and Christianity from the point of a reporter after his wife’s conversion. What he found so convinced him, that he became a Christian.
Or look at J. Warner Wallace, a former homicide detective who worked on cold-cases for 15 years. He approached the death of Jesus like a cold case and the gospels as eyewitness accounts, and he also came to the conclusion that, yes, what the Gospel accounts say are reliable. He also became a Christian as a result.
As C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien said, the Bible is a myth, but that it is also true. That is the difference between Christianity and your overlord Xenu. As Lewis puts it –
“Myth in general is … at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle”.
As most of us know, there’s no extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of someone who either was a divine Jesus (apparently Fletch’s belief) or even a secular preacher on whom the Biblical Jesus was modeled. The rest is commentary.
I didn’t know about Lee Strobel, who apparently wrote five books on apologetics, including The Case for Christ and The Case for The Real Jesus, but I simply can’t be bothered to read every such book that the goddies throw in my face. However, I found a pretty fair review of The Case for Christ by Jeffery J. Lowder on the Secular Web. Lowder, after a non-“strident” but critical review, concludes this:
Case for Christ is a creative, well-written contribution to Christian apologetics. Moreover, Strobel is to be commended for summarizing the work of so many leading apologists for Evangelical Christianity in such a compact and easy-to-read format. Yet Strobel did not interview any critics of Evangelical apologetics. He sometimes refutes at great length objections not made by the critics (e.g., the claim that Jesus was mentally insane); more often, he doesn’t address objections the critics do make (e.g., the complete inauthenticity of the Testimonium Flavianium, the failure of Jews to produce the body is inconclusive evidence for the empty tomb, etc.) Perhaps this will be a welcome feature to people who already believe Christianity but have no idea why they believe it. For those of us who are primarily interested in thetruth, however, we want to hear both sides of the story.
I’m sure there’s at least one reader who has read Strobel’s books, and if you have weigh in below. If Strobel was a true journalist, and was convinced by the evidence, it’s odd that—as Lowder notes—he doesn’t even deal with the objections to the “real Jesus” story. If you’re weaving an evidence-based tale, it’s always best, as we scientists know, to take up possible objections to your case before others do!
As for J. Warner Wallace, author of Cold-Case Christianityand now adjunct professor of apologetics at Biola University, his book appears to be based purely on whether Scripture seems reliable to a detective (see here for his case). Apparently it does. But if the case for Christianity (or rather the divinity of Jesus) is best made by Wallace and Strobel, yet refuted by many others, including the Biblical scholars Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier, then one should hardly commit one’s life to the doctrine.
I wonder what Fletch would think of The Case for Muhammad, which seems much stronger than The Case for Christ?
Anyway, if you want Fletch to read your comments, put them below, and in a day or so I’ll direct him to all of this.
Even if it’s missing Tim Hortons coffee, I can’t imagine a cuter “Canadian” photo. From CBC News, thanks to reader Taskin, we have a wonderful short article called “Mountie + baby beaver = most Canadian photo ever?” The photo isn’t really staged, but grew out of a real encounter. As the CBC describes,
The centre helps injured and abandoned birds and wild animals, and in May received four beaver kits whose mother had been killed near Fort Qu’Appelle.
Jason Pinder, who has volunteered his time with Salthaven for the past five years, works a day job as an RCMP corporal.
When he stopped by the centre a few days ago wearing his red serge uniform, staff couldn’t resist getting a shot with him and one of the furry critters.
The result: an iconic shot for the ages that delighted Salthaven’s Facebook followers.
Most Canadian photo ever? Many agreed.
“Just missing a double-double!” Kimberley Belhumeur said in the comments.
Photo: Megan Lawrence/Salthaven West
Well, when I posted it on Facebook some of my FB friends thought it was missing more than a double double (BTW, if you don’t know that term, read this explanation). Here’s my thread this morning (another comment just added by reader daveau: “I hope that beaver is bilingual.”) But as far as I know, beavers have only one tongue!
We have just one item today, but it’s a good one! Stephen Barnard has produced a wonderful video of Desi and Lucy, his resident bald eagles, and the two chicks they raised this year. It’s 12.5 minutes long, covers the whole breeding season, and is mesmerizing. Be sure to watch to the end. I won’t give the spoiler, but you know what event marks the end of chick-rearing. Note the chick pooping out of the nest (clearly an adaptive behavior), and the repeated delivery of fish, and one pheasant, to the chicks.
Stephen said that his videomaking (the equipment is described at the end) was influenced by Tara Tanaka, and she kindly gave him advice, but he adds that he’s nowhere near as good as she is—especially taking videos of moving birds. I’m just glad that they hooked up (photographically!) through this site.
Be sure to watch the movie on the original site, full screen, and clicking the “HD” (high definition) box.
It’s now August 23 in Chicago, and another cool day is in store (and a haircut for me!). It’s Internaut Day (look it up), celebrated annually on the anniversary of the World Wide Web’s foundation (the Web was opened to everyone on August 23, 1991).
Today is also the anniversary of the Norrmalstorg bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, which took place beginning on this day in 1973, and lasted five days (it was a hostage situation). Nobody was killed, though one guard was wounded; but the hostages sympathized with their captors, giving rise to the familiar term “Stockholm Syndrome“. I bet you didn’t know that!
Here’s a photo of one of the two robbers, Clark Olofsson, with the hostages, taken through a hole that police drilled in the wall:
Notables born on this day include Georges Cuvier (1769) and William Lane Craig (1949; OMG! he was born the same year as I was! OMG!). Those who died on this day include Rudolph Valentino (1926, age 31) and the atheists/anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed on this day in 1927. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the Hili Dialogue requires another explanation, which Malgorzata provided:
“‘Carthago delenda est’, said Cato. Cyrus looks very determined in this picture and Andrzej thought that this is how Cato would have looked. But Hili is too lazy do do such strenuous jobs as wiping a city from the face of the Earth.”
Cyrus: Carthage must be destroyed.
Hili: I don’t know, too much work.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Kartagina musi być zburzona.
Hili: Nie wiem, za dużo roboty.
Leon and his staff (Elzbieta and Andrzej) are hiking in southern Poland, and of course Leon goes along, sometimes on a leash, sometimes in his special backpack, sometimes draped across Elzbieta’s shoulders. Here are three photos from two days ago, with two Leon monologues
Leon: It’s true that I have nine lives but I have to be careful about vipers and bears.
Leon: I’m going to eat this catfood; you are not going to lug it.
And a freebie photo of Leon (he doesn’t seem to be hiking on his own paws much!):
And here’s Gus. His staff can’t figure out what his expression means. But we have experts on this site who can. Diana MacPherson?
