Readers’ wildlife photos

August 11, 2014 • 5:11 am

Today we have a diverse selection of both critters and contributors:

First, a hymenopteran from reader Ant:

What I’ve tentatively identified as a mammoth wasp (Megascolia (Regiscolia) maculataflavifrons also Scolia flavifrons). This specimen was about 4 cm long.[JAC: 2.54 cm/inch, so about 1.6 inches!] and quite docile, but one of our party got quite a shock when she saw what had landed on her back. (No pics of that!)  Le Jardin des Abeilles, Corsica, 8 July.

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From reader Glenn Butler, of Portsmouth, Virginia:

Not great pics from my ipad, but an unfortunate trio of squirrels that had their nest tree removed. Their mother should come back for them, but if not we’ll be sure wildlife rehab tends to them.

I’m posting the best of the baby squirrel pictures.

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Reader Rob sends two photos of Spruce Grouse (Grice?), Dendragapus canadensis.

These are shots of the elusive Spruce Grouse.  The big bird is momma looking down on us as her 3 chicks were foraging on the ground.  This was a Great Wass Island, a sanctuary managed by the Nature Conservancy north of Arcadia National Park.

When sending photos, please don’t forget the Latin binomial, or it will make extra work for the management!

Spruce Grouse

I assume this is a chick, but I don’t know from grice:

 

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From Reader Stephen Barnard in Idaho:

A Western Wood Pewee [Contopus sordidulus]perched on my tripod before and after catching a meal.

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Male Black-chinned Hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri):

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And I’m sneaking in a spiffy new logo for Professor Ceiling Cat designed by reader Aneris:

Logo Coyne Aneris

Two cats for Sunday

August 10, 2014 • 2:12 pm

(That would be a good name for a rock group, wouldn’t it?) I have two errant cat items, and might as well post them now.

The first is a picture of Butter, the awesome rescue cat of reader Steven Muth (he’s a flame-point Siamese who was rescued form a Colorado highway). I have a new picture of Butter grinning. This is what you call a “furball”. Butter also has his own Blackberry, which he occasionally uses to post here.

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And you Brits can rest easy. According to the BBC, Chancellor George Osborne’s cat, who resides at 11 Downing Street, is all right after a traffic accident:

Chancellor George Osborne’s family cat, Freya, is being treated by vets after being “clipped” by a car near Downing Street.

The tabby’s injuries are not serious, a spokesman said.

Freya has lived at No 11 Downing Street – the Chancellor’s official residence – since 2010.

Her previous misadventures include being rescued by a charity worker after straying more than a mile from her Westminster home.

The cat, believed to be about five years old, is also reported to have gone missing from the family’s home in Notting Hill in 2009.

 

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Freya

h/t: Aaron

Why Dembski is speaking at the University of Chicago

August 10, 2014 • 11:09 am

As I’ve mentioned before, ID creationist William Dembski is giving a talk in August at the University of Chicago’s “Computations in Science” seminar. As “Censor of the Year,” I could hardly let that rest, though when I protested I never requested that his seminar be canceled. Rather, I called into question the judgement of the seminar’s organizers. I would rarely ask that a seminar invitation at an academic institution be canceled or rescinded.

Dembski’s talk will apparently be some version of his own “No Free Lunch Theorem,” (NFL) which supposedly shows that progressive evolution (aka “specified complexity”) requires a designing intelligence, and cannot be produced by naturalistic evolution. In my previous post on this talk, I pointed out several refutations of Dembki’s theorem. But of course since Dembski’s not a scientist but a believer, he simply ignores the criticisms. (In a comment, reader Jon Herron posted a link to yet another refutation of Dembski’s NFL theorem by population geneticist Joe Felsenstein.)

To express my concern, on Friday I emailed both the organizers and faculty hosts of the Computations in Science Seminar. I’ll give my emails in full, but the responses (multiple emails from one person) I’ll redact, giving only the gist of what was said.  The upshot was that the person who invited Dembski has the view that every opinion must be expressed to procure the “widest possible dialog.”

__________________

My initial email:

Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 10:15:06 -0500
From: Jerry Coyne
Subject: Creationist seminar

Dear Colleagues,

Just a note to express dismay that your group has invited notorious creationist William Dembski to give a “Computations in Science” seminar on August 15:

http://mrsec.uchicago.edu/Comp_in_Sci/

Dembski is a major figure in the Intelligent Design movement, and the “no free lunch” theorem he’s going to talk about has been debunked several times. I’m actually quite surprised that any respectable group here on campus would give him this kind of platform and credibility. I have published a note about this on my website:

http://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/08/08/creationist-dembski-gives-academic-talk-at-my-university/

Sincerely,
Jerry Coyne
Professor

_______________________

The response came about two hours later, and was from the person who invited Dembski. It turns out that that person was Dembski’s Ph.D. supervisor, who said he/she invited “Dembsky” (repeatedly misspelled throughout our correspondence) with “full knowledge and aforethought.” The person also noted that “academic audiences should hear intelligent opinion on various sides of issues,” and added that, “You and everyone are invited to come to his seminar and offer questions and opinions in the measured tones appropriate for academic discussion.”

_______________________

My response to this is below:

On 8/8/14, Jerry Coyne wrote:

Dear Dr. [name redacted]

Thank you for your response about Dembski, although it appears you can’t spell the name of your former Ph.D. student. As for hearing “intelligent opinion on various sides of issues,” that might apply if the views presented
really were rational, if the person’s theories had not already been debunked, and if the speaker were not motivated by belief in Christianity (Dembski has admitted this).

Your rationale, I’d add, would also justify inviting advocates of homeopathy, astrology, and dowsing, which have exactly as much credibility (i.e., none) as Dembski’s claims. Would you invite a Holocaust denier to
speak to a history department? For this is exactly what you are doing by inviting Dembski. Further, you’re giving unwarranted academic credibility to debunked, religiously-motivated science. I should know, because I teach evolutionary biology here at Chicago, am familiar with Dembki’s claims, and have spent much of my career fighting his form of religiously-based creationism, gussied up though it may be with mathematics. His views, and that of his colleagues, are damaging to science education, and have no merit.

I have no intention of going to Dembski’s talk, but I do find this part of your email odd: “You and everyone are invited to come to his seminar and offer questions and opinions in the measured tones appropriate for academic discussion.” I can interpret that only as a warning to me and other critics to behave ourselves and not make a fuss. It’s condescending.

It does not speak well of you or your seminar to invite a purveyor of creationism to speak to an academic audience at Chicago, and then characterize that creationism as an “intelligent opinion.” It is exactly as
intelligent as homeopathy or the view that the Holocaust is a ruse. Your invitation to Dembski is an embarrassment to this University.

Yours,
Jerry Coyne
________________________________________

Dembski’s invitor responded again, and I quote from that email:

The question you bring up is what constitutes a sufficient degree of academic respectability to merit an invitation to an academic seminar. Should we require that the speaker hold opinions that are also held by
the majority of professionals in his area? Should we demand that the speaker hold views also held by the majority of our fellow citizens? One such requirement would eliminate Dembsky; the other would likely
eliminate the majority of speakers on evolutionary issues. Both criteria are silly. We must choose speakers on the basis of their ability to use the tools of our disciplines to produce likely advance in the state of our knowledge.

Dembsky’s use of the no free lunch theorem points out that, if the fitness landscape is sufficiently rough, and if one depends on a truly random walk through that landscape, evolution will not work. That much of his argument is, I believe, true. It is also potentially apposite for thought about evolution.

But the question is not the truth or falsity of his arguments. Has he used the tools of the math and philosophy trades in such a manner as to provoke further thought about the tools, the disciples, and our modes of thinking? I believe that he has done so.

Some topics, like the holocaust are so painful and so politicized that for the sake of civility we should limit our discussion of these topics. If you include evolution among those topics, then once dialog is prevented, the next recourse is to majority opinion. In this court, creationism wins out.

A truly liberal university must include the widest possible dialog. I hope you continue to join in.

Yours, [name redacted]

__________________

At this point I was getting frustrated at the person’s inability to see that long-discredited theories motivated by religion do not constitute fit topics for seminars, and I tried one last time to explain it.

Dear Dr. [name redacted],

This will be my last response on the issue of Dembski. And it will be brief. It is not the job of a “truly liberal university” to pass off discredited science as truth. Dembki’s “science” has indeed been discredited and revealed for what it is: biblical creationism gussied up in the trappings of academia. And yes, seeing lies purveyed as truth, and creationists paraded out as if they were academically respectable researchers, is painful to me, and in similar ways that Holocaust denialists are painful to Jews like me. Both fields are based on lies, and those lies do damage.

The “widest possible dialogue” in a liberal university does not have to include every crackpot idea that comes down the pike. It is in fact illegal to teach Dembski’s ideas in public secondary schools, as Judge Jones ruled in the Dover case on Intelligent Design (a case from which Dembski, as a defense witness who possibly foresaw their defeat, withdrew at the last minute). Judge Jones ruled that Intelligent Design was “not science.” And it isn’t: it’s discredited, religiously based speculation. Why on earth are we going to present something like that as a valid platform for discussion at a good university?

I repeat myself: the “widest possible” dialogue in medicine would include homeopathy, the “widest possible dialogue” in human behavior would include astrology, the “widest possible dialogue” in history would include Holocaust denial, and the “widest possible dialogue” in biology would include creationism. But when the “widest possible dialogue” includes discredited and crackpot ideas, it no longer becomes a useful academic dialogue. Why do you think we don’t teach homeopathy in the medical school, or why we have no course on creationism and Intelligent Design in our biology curriculum? For precisely the same reason that Dembski shouldn’t have been invited: they would be courses based on lies and shoddy “scholarship.”

Dembski’s talk here will look good on his c.v., but it won’t look so good on the University’s record.

What’s next: inviting a person who claims the earth is flat (yes, they exist) to foster the “widest possible dialogue” in geology?

Sincerely,
Jerry Coyne

I finish with a Dembki-related cartoon produced by reader Pliny the in Between:

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New Christian app: “Shut up, Devil”

August 10, 2014 • 9:27 am

What do you get when you combine medieval theology with 21st-century technology? The “Shut up, devil,” app! Whenever Old Nick starts creeping into your soul, just start up the app and you’ll be presented with appropriate scripture to drive the Hornéd One away!

From Kyle Winkler Ministries; you can get more information and download it (apparently for free) here.

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h/t: Matt

“The Islamic State” from Vice News: part 2

August 10, 2014 • 7:49 am

Here is the second short  (11 minute) video from VICE News in its series on ISIS, “The Islamic State.” There will be five such videos, and I’ll post them all.

Part 2 is called “Grooming children for jihad“. To me, there are few things more distressing than young kids who are brainwashed into wanting to “kill all the infidels.” They should be learning math, and reading, and science—not hatred and murder. As this video shows, ISIS starts the military training of children when they become sixteen.

The son of Abdullah the Belgian looks a bit coerced, but it won’t take long until this kind of pressure creates a new generation of jihadis. Who is to tell these young folk otherwise?

I was quite surprised at the number of commenters who are eager to pin what ISIS is doing on the actions of the U.S. and their allies. One commenter said, “Do you really suppose that the actions of the US and its allies have nothing to do with this mess?” My response would be, “Well, of course there are different factors involved in this, including a power vacuum in Iraq, but we simply don’t know whether ISIS would exist had the West stayed out of the region”. And is it going to help the situation now to parse the unrecoverable events of history. We can’t do a multifactorial analysis of murder.

What we do know is that ISIS is a group of brutalized and brainwashed thugs, motivated (as its adherents proclaim) by the desire to establish the longed-for Muslim Caliphate, and that most of the people they kill are Shiite Muslims.  The split between Sunnis and Shiites long antedated the incursion of the West into the region. ISIS wants to exterminate all apostates, including Christians and Shiites, and it is my view that the wellspring of that aim is not mainly a need for retribution for Western perfidies, but a need to establish religious hegemony. Why else would they kill other Muslims, or try to impose sharia law on the areas they conquer? What does that have to do with the West?

At any rate, the important thing is not what role the West played in the past in the region (and I do agree that invasion of Iraq was a serious mistake), but what we do now. The marooning of 40,000 Christians on a mountaintop by ISIS is a humanitarian crisis, and it would be a cold-hearted person indeed who thinks we should just let them be executed or starved to death. So far the Obama administration’s response has been measured, and, in my view, correct. But it isn’t a long term—or even a short-term—solution. ISIS and other jihadist groups will continue to exist, even if we beat them back in this one case.

But we get absolutely nowhere by saying, “It’s all our fault.” We can simply stand by and do nothing, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to be slaughtered, with the view that “It’s not our problem.” Or we can try to help those people, mindful of mistakes we’ve made in the past. Perhaps, indeed, we should do nothing about those fleeing Christians, but that thought makes me unspeakably sad.

I don’t know what to do. How do you stop religiously-motivated barbarians, regardless of what brought them into being? (And again I’d urge you to read Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer-Prize winning The Looming Tower, which makes a good case that Islamic terrorism was prompted largely by the desire to restore a pure Muslim state, not by the presence of “foreign boots on Islamic soil.”)

Finally, if you want to see a masterpiece of Western apologetics for ISIS, all you have to do is go over to the Guardian, which is rapidly becoming the West’s biggest media apologist for Islamic terrorism. (That, by the way, may explain its hatred for Richard Dawkins, a passionate critic of Islam). There you’ll find an editorial, “This Islamic State nightmare is not a holy war but an unholy mess“, written by Jonathan Freedland, the lead editor of the Guardian ‘s comment section.

Here are two excerpts:

According to Toby Dodge, the scholar of Iraq at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), what’s driving IS, or at least making its phenomenal success possible, is not pre-modern religious zeal so much as a pre-modern absence of state power. The state structures of both Iraq and Syria have all but collapsed. The result is a power vacuum of a kind that would have been recognised in the lawless Europe of seven or eight centuries ago – and which IS has exploited with the ruthless discipline of those long ago baronial warlords who turned themselves into European princes.

“Islamic State are jihadis with MBAs,” says Dodge, speaking of a movement so modern it has its own gift shop. He notes its combination of fierce religious ideology, financial acumen and tactical nous. “It’s Darwinian,” he adds, describing IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his inner circle as those strong enough to have survived the US hammering of al-Qaida in Iraq between 2007 and 2009. But what has been crucial, Dodge says, is “not ancient hatreds but this collapse of state power”.

. . . Islamic State may wrap itself in the flag of jihad, but its success owes more to medieval lawlessness than medieval religious enmity – helped by the very 21st-century decline of the global behemoth. Our world is being shaken, but the persistence of religion is more a symptom than a cause. The larger problem, as old as mankind, is power and the lack of it. For sometimes weakness can be just as dangerous as strength.

There are other ways to fill power vacuums than by mass extermination of “apostates” and imposition of religious law.  And to even bring up Darwin in this context makes me ill. Anybody who wants to kill or dominate others could be described as “Darwinian,” if you stretch the term far enough. But somehow I doubt that the Sage of Downe would want his name attached to the barbarities of ISIS.

 

Moar logos

August 10, 2014 • 6:41 am

When I presented some “scientist logos” the other day, I didn’t know where they came from. Eventually it was revealed that the first six of them were by Indian graphic deisnger Kapil Bhagat and, as I’ve just learned, the rest came from Prateek Lala, a physician in Toronto. He also told me that you can see all of his own 175 Scientist Logos at the Facebook site “LalaLand Graphics:.  Here are a few of my favorites:

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One of my scientific heroes (I’ve posted about her several times):

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There’s a cute story about this next one, but I’ll let a reader relate it in the comments:

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Finally, for some self-aggrandizement, reader Pliny the in Between made a nice logo for Professor Ceiling Cat:

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And this just arrived from reader Su:

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