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.
There are some clever ones here; my favorites are Newton, Gödel, Darwin, and Feynman:
p.s. I don’t know who the clever person is who should get credit for these logos, but if anybody knows tell us in the comments.
UPDATE: Reader Don Bilgren, in the comments, identifies the designer as Kapil Bhagat, who made these logos for a National Science Day in India.
h/t: Merilee
Well, things often move fast when the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) complains about First Amendment violations. Just yesterday I wrote about how Mary’s Gourmet Diner in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was giving customers a 15% food discount for praying aloud in their restaurant. I also posted a letter that FFRF attorney Elizabeth Cavell wrote to the diner telling them that they were violating the Civil Rights Act by discriminating among customers on the basis of religion. In the end, it took Mary Haglund, the owner, just one day to “see the light.” I quote from a Freedom from Religion Foundation bulletin:
Mary’s Gourmet Diner agrees with the Freedom From Religion Foundation that all of its customers should be treated equally instead of some being rewarded for praying in the restaurant in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Staff Attorney Elizabeth Cavell wrote an Aug. 4 letter of complaint after FFRF, a national state-church watchdog, learned that the diner had long been offering a 15 percent discount for “praying in public.”
Co-owner Mary Haglund emailed Cavell yesterday (Aug. 6): “I am notifying you & the FFRF that as of today we are no longer offering the 15% discount for Praying in Public.”
A news story in the Greenboro News & Record included a photo of a sign in the restaurant window: “We at Mary’s value the support of all our fellow Americans. While you may exercise your right of religious freedom at this restaurant by praying over your meal to any entity or non-entity, we must protect your freedom from religion in a public place. We are no longer issuing the 15% praying in public discount. It is illegal and we are being threatened by lawsuit. We apologize to our community for any offense this discount has incurred.”
Here’s the photo from the News & Record
I have to say that that’s a remarkably enlightened letter, which isn’t obstreperous but does seem to accept the notion that freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. The FFRF bulletin continues:
Cavell’s letter noted that according to the federal Civil Rights Act, as a place of public accommodation, “Mary’s Gourmet Diner may not lawfully offer a discount only to customers who pray,” and added, “Any promotions must be available to all customers regardless of religious preference or practice on a non-discriminatory basis.”
“Praise be to Mary!” commented FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We’re very pleased that Mary’s Gourmet Diner has seen the light about the meaning of the Civil Rights Act, and responded with such alacrity.”
Gaylor added, “We have found that most restaurant owners, who, after all, are in business to please all customers, are gracious and drop illegal discounts that selectively reward customer piety.”
Annie Laurie is always courteous, and quick to praise those who “see the light,” but she’ll never give in when it comes to principle.
Here are two items from the Winston-Salem newspaper report on the issue. The first is a bit ironic, for it shows that a religious customer helped bring the practice to an end:
The discount made national news after some customers – Dan Bremnes, a Christian recording artist, and Jordan Smith, a promoter at Capital Music Group – posted their receipt on their Facebook pages after they passed through Winston-Salem and got a 15 percent discount at Mary’s for “Praying in Public.”
And, of course, “seeing the light” really means “seeing a lawsuit”:
Haglund told WGHP/Fox 8, the newsgathering partner of the Journal, that she dropped the discount out of fear of a lawsuit from the Wisconsin group.
It’s a pity that some Christians (not Mary) don’t “see the light” in the sense we’d like: realizing that they’re unfairly promoting their religion by offering such discounts, which violates the Civil Rights Act (and the Constitution). So thank Ceiling Cat for the FFRF, which starts by using the carrot, but will take up the stick if necessary to protect our civil liberties.
But of course Lebanon, Missouri hasn’t yet seen the light. If the Lebanon School Board thinks that they’ll win by stonewalling—by refusing to give up the right to foment Christianity on public school children—they’re making a serious mistake. Dan, Annie Laurie, and their coterie of crack attorneys don’t give up so easily.
JAC: My post on the tuatara parietal eye was short and, for some readers, not informative enough. Where did it come from? What does it look like? (By mistake I published a picture of an iguana and not a tuatara.) Greg answers some of the many questions that have surely been tormenting many of you about this bizarre feature.
by Greg Mayer
The tuatara has long been of interest to us here at WEIT, and just the other day Jerry posted a video of one hatching, along with many interesting notes on their biology, especially on the parietal or ‘third’ eye. Jerry included a picture of the parietal which, as Jon Losos, among others, noted, was not, alas (as a simple google image search indicated), that of a tuatara, but rather that of what looks to me to be a common or green iguana (Iguana iguana— which, if you learn no others, is the one scientific name you should commit to memory). Jon remarked to Jerry that good pictures of a tuatara’s parietal would be hard to find. Well, here’s the best I could find.
This is Plate 20 from Arthur Dendy’s classic 1911 monograph describing the pineal organs (including the parietal eye) of the tuatara. The upper figure is a longitudinal section of the parietal eye, and the lens, retina, and pineal nerve (equivalent to the optic nerve) are readily apparent. The two lower figures provide details of the retina.
Dendy studied both adults and embryos; the above figures are of adults. Dendy, an Englishman, resided in a number of the antipodal parts of the British Empire, and in his monograph records his good fortune in not losing some of his histological sections of tuatara embryos, “… for they were, with most of my Australasian collections, shipwrecked in transmission from New Zealand to South Africa. The boxes containing the sections were, however, salved, and reached me after being soaked for weeks in salt water.”
The following figure, from Angus Bellairs’ still useful Life of Reptiles, is based on Dendy’s top figure, and labels some of the parts for clear identification.
Neither of these pictures, of course, shows the parietal from the outside. I’ve read that the parietal is not externally visible in adult tuatara, but I’ve never checked on the preserved tuatara I’ve seen; Jon has seen tuatara live and up close– perhaps he will stop by again here at WEIT and let us know if he has noticed the eye on the ones he’s seen and held.
The parietal eye is also found in many lizards (which, together with snakes, are the tuatara’s closest living relatives, so the sharing of this features is not anomalous.) In vertebrates, there can be a number of evaginations (together known as the pineal complex) from the region of the brain called the epithalamus. One of these forms the pineal gland or organ, while another forms the parietal organ. Both can be photoreceptive. In lizards and tuatara, the parietal organ can have a lens and a retina, forming the parietal eye. The eye is overlain by a translucent scale, easily visible in many lizards. It cannot, as far as is known, form an image. In lampreys, both the the pineal and parietal can be eye-like, so that some authors refer to them having a pineal eye and a parietal eye (which is why the median eye of lizards and tuatara, though sometimes called the pineal eye, is better called the parietal eye). In lampreys the position of the median eyes is indicated by a whitish, unpigmented, oval on the otherwise dark skin of the middle of the head, In birds and mammals, the parietal organ is absent, and the pineal organ (now called the pineal gland) is buried deep in the head, and has endocrine functions.
The pineal complex was present in some of the earliest fishes, as indicated by the presence of a single median foramen [JAC: small opening in the bone] in the skull of ostracoderms, placoderms, and others. It is most eye-like in the parietal eye of lizards and tuatara, which suggests that a fully eye-like parietal or pineal was not present in early vertebrates, so that the parietal eye did not evolve from a “real” eye.
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Bellairs, A. 1970. The Life of Reptiles. 2 vols. Universe Books, New York.
Dendy, A. 1911. On the structure, development and morphological interpretation of the pineal organs and adjacent parts of the brain in the tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 201:227-331, pls. 19-31. pdf (Dendy’s interpretations of homology are no longer all accepted, but the morphological and histological work remains fundamental.)
After this post I’m going back to atheism, cats, food, and biology—at least for a while; but I thought that this talk, given by Carol Tavris at this year’s The Amazing Meeting, was a good complement to the discussion we had about Dawkins two days ago. Not all will agree with what she says, of course, but I hope to inspire civil discussion.
Tavris is a well-known social psychologist who has worked at UCLA, the New School, and has published widely. Twof her better-known public books are Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me):Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (with Eliot Aronson)—a book I’ll read soon—and The Mismeasure of Woman. Because both her academic and feminist credentials are strong, she’s one of the few people with the credibility to pull off a talk about such a hot-button topic: skepticism around claims of sexual abuse.
The YouTube notes say this:
The Woody Allen sex scandal of 2013 triggered a national conversation on who to believe, with people lining up on each side as if they knew what really happened. Based on recent research on how people navigate the often tricky waters of sexual negotiation, Dr. Carol Tavris shows that it is entirely possible in some sexual assault cases neither side is lying, but instead both sides feel justified in their positions. This talk was considered one of the best ever given at The Amazing Meeting.
My friends who were there agree with the last sentence. What I like about this talk are two things. The first is the emphasis on skepticism. Presumably many of us lost our religious faith through skepticism—the absence of evidence supporting religious claims—or are skeptics because that is the prime characteristic of the scientific attitude. I think Tavris’s emphasis on maintaining skepticism whenever the issue of evidence is relevant is an important one.
For many years I worked (without fee) for public defenders (lawyers representing indigent defendants for free), trying to make sure that the DNA evidence presented against accused criminals was used accurately. In the early days of such evidence, state and federal governments would regularly present “match statistics” (i.e., “the chance that someone other than the accused did this is one in 2 billion”*) that were not only misrepresented (as in the quote I just used, which was used often by prosecutors but is dead wrong), but also miscalculated. The possibility of lab error, which could give false matches at frequencies as high as 2%, was never taken into account, which of course would grossly reduce the match probability. There were many other types of calculation errors made by the prosecution. But., as I found to my dismay, the prosecution didn’t care about accuracy: they wanted a conviction. After all, we need to convince the public that offenders are caught and incarcerated.
From this I learned a few things. The first is that evidence must be used properly, and not twisted to fit one’s preconceptions, which is partly what Tavris’s talk is about. The second is that the prosecution’s brief is to obtain justice, but gets twisted by public opinion and their bosses into their real aim: convict the accused. That’s just wrong.
The brief of the defense, for whom I worked, is not to ensure that justice is done but to ensure that the system of justice is maintained: that the prosecution must be able to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. Public defenders (the vast majority of lawyers I worked with) told me that their assumption was that about 85% of their clients were guilty. But they rarely knew for sure, and I never did. But it didn’t matter, really. We were trying to preserve those standards of evidence that the justice system mandates are required to convict.
Maybe this is all irrelevant, but it’s given me an enormous respect for the need for evidence when there is an accusation, and for certain standards to be preserved, standards that are easily eroded by emotion, personal bias, and so on. This is what Tavris’s talk is about, but she’s applying it to accusations of sexual misconduct.
A brief precis: the talk is summed up by her statement, near the beginning, that “As skeptics it is our intellectual obligation to tackle big complicated, emotionally charged issues as well as the easy ones we all agree on.” Some of those questions involve these: What is sexual assault? How common is it? How reliable are the statistics? Do those stats “anchor” people in their views, in the way Daniel Kahneman describes in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow? How can two people, or two groups, see the same facts and draw such different conclusions? What preserves the divide between such people?
Based on her work, and that of others, Tavris shows three ways that different people can present conflicting narratives of the same event—not because any of them are lying, but because they are presenting what she calls “honest false testimony.” That is, their views of what really happened aren’t made up, but are tinged by several factors that makes them believe they are telling the truth. Tavris pinpoints three factors causing honest false testimony. The first is the “dance of ambiguity” that occurs in conjunction with so-called “normal” sexual relations. As Tavris says, ” by being vague and indirect, each party’s ego is protected in case the other says no, . . . one can thus can reject offer without rejeccting the suitor. . . The price of all of this ego-protection is possibility that each partner misunderstands the other’s wishes.”
The second reason for “honest false testimony” is alcohol, which, says Tavris, facilitates and increases miscommunication, and impairs memory.
The third reason is the kind of normal errors of memory that Elizabeth Loftus apparently discussed at TAM.
Perhaps I’ve said too much, but I offer the video to promote discussion. Please leave comments below, don’t call your fellow commenters names, and try to be civil and temperate, please.
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* A forensic note: The real way to present a match statistic is to say “The probability that a randomly selected person would have a DNA profile that matched the sample from the crime scene is one in X.” [This happens when the victim’s DNA matches the blood or semen at the crime scene, and a probative value must be assigned to the match]. X is usually huge, but the statistic should really revert to 1 in 50 if the DNA testing lab makes false positive errors at a frequency of 2%. (In the days when I testified, contamination that could cause such false positives was fairly frequent: I myself contaminated samples when sequencing DNA). And, of course 2% plus 0.00000000001 is still 2%.
Also, one has to take into account what ethnic group one is talking about when you do those calculations, as groups differ, sometimes markedly, in the frequency of DNA markers. If the defendant is Asian, what database do you use to calculate the statistic if you don’t know what ethnicity of the criminal? All you know is the ethnicity of the defendant. Some way of making conservative estimates has to be concocted, and that was once an issue of great controversy.
Rumble at the feeder! One thing I’ve learned from Stephen Barnard and other readers is that hummingbirds, however cute, are tough little bastards, constantly fighting each other over access to territory, food, and females. But somehow that makes them even cuter.
Stephen, who’s been watching and photographing a lot of hummingbirds lately, has now taken to making videos. Fortunately, they’re on Flickr and I can embed them here. So today we have two reader photographs (a hummingbird and a common nighthawk), and two videos of hummers. Stephen’s captions are indented:
The Rufous Hummingbird shot shows a surprise attack at the feeder. I’ve been shooting some decent hummer videos and putting them on Facebook. I’ll try uploading to Flickr and send you links.
And two hummer videos:
“Hummer feeding frenzy”:
“Black-chinned pwns Rufous”:
The second photo:
There are dozens of Common Nighthawks [Chordelles minor] feeding over the creek right now.
Harry Chapin lived only 39 years (1942-1981), and died under somewhat mysterious circumstances: it was in a car wreck in New York City, but that might have been preceded by a heart attack due to overwork. I doubt that many of you who are under 40 have heard of him. But Chapin produced two world-class songs (and here, of course, people will disagree): “Taxi,” and “Cat’s in the Cradle.”
Both songs are impeccable, with great music combined with a real-life story that resonates with many. “Cat’s in the Cradle” is about a young man’s difficult relationship with his dad; and it recalls my own youth. My dad was a terrific guy, though somewhat emotionally reserved, and when I went home for visits I would squirm inside until sufficient time had passed that I could ask to borrow the car keys to visit my friends. That’s one line in the song.
“Taxi”, recorded in 1972, stands for all lost hopes, lost loves, smashed dreams, The One Who Got Away, and is partly based on Chapin’s real-life experience as a taxi driver. The Wikipedia article gives the “plot,” but you should listen. The only part that’s hard to understand is the falsetto interpolation in the middle, which was actually sung by John Wallace, the male bass player, as he does here at 3:40.. The words are:
Baby’s so high, that she’s skying
Yes she’s flying, afraid to fall
I’ll tell you why baby’s crying
Cause she’s dying, aren’t we all…
From the Wikipedia article:
Chapin debuted the song on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1972, which was followed by many calls and telegrams sent from viewers to NBC demanding that Chapin return to the show. It was the first time in the show’s history that host Johnny Carson brought a performer back the very next night for an encore performance
The original recording is here, but I always like live performances. This is one, and though it doesn’t come up to the quality of the recording, it’s pretty close.
This is an example of pop songwriting as it should be; it’s the seven-minute equivalent of a novel. It affects me in a particularly personal way, but maybe it will with you, too. It was also a favorite of my late best friend, Kenny.
Good lines:
Oh, I’ve got something inside me
To drive a princess blind
There’s a wild man, wizard
He’s hiding in me, illuminating my mind.
Oh, I’ve got something inside me
Not what my life’s about;
‘Cause I’ve been letting my outside tide me
Over ’til my time runs out.
Life is way too short.
Is it Thursday already? Where has the summer gone? At any rate, today’s Hili dialogue came with a title: “A Dangerous World.” (Hili was always wary of going across the football field on walkies: it was one segment on the walk from the orchards to the river, and she doesn’t like other people around.)
Hili: I’m looking at those boys playing football.A: And?Hili: I don’t think they are dangerous now.
In Polish:Hili: Patrzę na tych chłopców, którzy grają w piłkę.
Ja: I co?
Hili: Chyba teraz nie są niebezpieczni.
Who owns the rights to a selfie snapped by a monkey? The monkey who unwittingly pressed the shutter button? Or the photographer who set it up owns the camera, and financed the trip to the monkey’s home?
I would have thought the latter: how can a monkey (especially a wild one) own rights, or benefit from them? But according to today’s Torygraph (via reader Hempenstein), a Celebes crested macaque (also known as the crested black macaque), roaming somewhere in the wilds of Indonesia, has the photo rights:
Wikimedia, the organisation behind Wikipedia, has refused a photographer’s repeated requests to remove one of his images which is used online without his permission, claiming that because a monkey pressed the shutter button it owns the copyright.
British nature photographer David Slater was in Indonesia in 2011 attempting to get the perfect image of a crested black macaque when one of the animals came up to investigate his equipment, hijacked a camera and took hundreds of selfies.
One particularly narcissistic monkey went wild with the camera:
“He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet.”
But after appearing on websites, newspapers, magazines and television shows around the world, Mr Slater is now facing a legal battle with Wikimedia after the organisation added the image to its collection of royalty-free images online. The Wikimedia Commons is a collection of 22,302,592 images and videos that are free to use by anyone online, and editors have included Mr Slater’s image among its database.
The Gloucestershire-based photographer now claims that the decision is jeopardising his income as anyone can take the image and publish it for free, without having to pay him a royalty. He complained To Wikimedia that he owned the copyright of the image, but a recent transparency report from the group, which details all the removal requests it has received, reveals that editors decided that the monkey itself actually owned the copyright because it was the one that pressed the shutter button.
. . . The image has been removed in the past when he complained, but different editors regularly upload it once again.
“Some of their editors think it should be put back up. I’ve told them it’s not public domain, they’ve got no right to say that its public domain. A monkey pressed the button, but I did all the setting up.”
Slater now faces £10,000 in legal costs to recover his rights. And he’s got a good argument:
Mr Slater said that the photography trip was extremely expensive and that he has not made much money from the image despite its enormous popularity.
“That trip cost me about £2,000 for that monkey shot. Not to mention the £5,000 of equipment I carried, the insurance, the computer stuff I used to process the images. Photography is an expensive profession that’s being encroached upon. They’re taking our livelihoods away,” he said.
“For every 100000 images I take, one makes money that keeps me going. And that was one of those images. It was like a year of work, really.”
This is the contested image of Macaca nigra. You have to admit that it’s really good, but Wikimedia is behaving badly so that it can display this thing without paying for it. After all, it was the photographer who made the whole thing possible and must have published the photo somewhere.
Much as I believe in animal rights, I can’t see them having artistic rights! Well, maybe an elephant that paints with its trunk, or a cat who walks on a keyboard and composes a piece, for they can benefit from their activities. But all this monkey did was press a button at the opportune time:
Maybe I should ask Peter Singer about this. . .
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