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.
Long-time readers might be able to identify this scene and give its significance, as a long time ago I put up a relevant post. (No reverse-image searching or looking at the photo’s metadata!).
You get lots of bonus points if you can name the cat.
I wonder if it sees beauty in the sunset?
h/t: Don
The d*g is altering Hili’s worldview. . .
A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I’m assessing.
A: What are you assessing?
Hili: Whether the world is friendly or just the opposite.
Ja: Na co tak patrzysz?
Hili: Oceniam.
Ja: Co oceniasz?
Hili: Czy świat jest przyjazny, czy wręcz przeciwnie.
The World Cup starts tomorrow, though Argentina (Lionel Messi’s team) won’t be playing until Friday, when they take on Bosnia and Herzegovina. #10, who normally plays for Barcelona and is only 26 years old, is in the opinion of many (including me, and I don’t know much about football) the greatest player alive, and perhaps the greatest of all time.
I like him not only because of his speed and amazing dexterity, but because he’s apparently a nice guy and not a showboater. There are many Messi videos around, but here’s a short one demonstrating his legendary control of the ball and fantastic dribbling.
Until I get my book finished around July 4 (God bless America!), you’ll have to live largely on persiflage. Here’s some.
According to the BBC Newsbeat, the world’s oldest cat, a tortoiseshell named Poppie, has died at her home in Bournemouth, England, She was 24.
Here’s a recent photo of Poppie her birthday party (the cake looks like a couple cans of wet food), and I must say that the cat looks aged. But she was of course well loved.
The tortoiseshell was born in February 1990 and was officially recognised by Guinness World Records in May.
Poppy, who has lived through five British prime ministers lived with her owners Jacqui West and her two sons Joe and Toby at their home in Bournemouth on the south coast of England.
“We knew she was old but it’s still very upsetting,” said Jacqui.
Here’s a soupçon of information:
The average age for a cat is 15.
Experts generally agree that the first two years of a cat’s life are equal to 25 human years. After that, every three months is said to be a year.
This theory would make Poppy 114 in cat years.
But Poppie didn’t come near the longevity record for felids, which is held by a Texas cat named Creme Puff, who died in 2005, aged 38 years and 3 days! According to the formula above, that would make Creme Puff the human equivalent of a 169-year old.
I posted about Creme Puff last year (his owner, Jake Perry, produced many old cats, attributing their longevity to a diet of asparagus bacon and eggs). but also about a living cat, Wadsworth, who was 27 in March, 2013. I wonder what happened to him?
I’ll repost the video about crusty old Jake Perry and his superannuated cats. As I said at the time:
Here’s a 9.5-minute video of Jake Perry and some of his many his cats. It’s lovely—watch it! You can see Perry cooking breakfast for the cats; “Granpa”, a Sphynx, makes an appearance [he lived to 34!]; and record-holder Creme Puff finally shows up at 7:23, looking very good for 35!
h/t: Steve
If you’re an astronomy buff, you’ll already know that we had three big solar flares in the last two days. According to NASA, they were classified in Class X, the biggest ones of all. We happen to be in a peak year of an apparent 11-year cycle for these eruptions.
First have a look:
What is a solar flare? A separate NASA page tells us (my emphasis):
A flare is defined as a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. Radiation is emitted across virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves at the longwavelength end, through optical emission to x-rays and gamma rays at the short wavelength end. The amount of energy released is the equivalent of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time! The first solar flare recorded in astronomical literature was on September 1, 1859. Two scientists, Richard C. Carrington and Richard Hodgson, were independently observing sunspots at the time, when they viewed a large flare in white light.
As the magnetic energy is being released, particles, including electrons, protons, and heavy nuclei, are heated and accelerated in the solar atmosphere. The energy released during a flare is typically on the order of 1027 ergs per second. Large flares can emit up to 1032 ergs of energy. This energy is ten million times greater than the energy released from a volcanic explosion. On the other hand, it is less than one-tenth of the total energy emitted by the Sun every second.
There are typically three stages to a solar flare. First is the precursor stage, where the release of magnetic energy is triggered. Soft x-ray emission is detected in this stage. In the second or impulsive stage, protons and electrons are accelerated to energies exceeding 1 MeV. During the impulsive stage, radio waves, hard x-rays, and gamma rays are emitted. The gradual build up and decay of soft x-rays can be detected in the third, decaystage. The duration of these stages can be as short as a few seconds or as long as an hour.
Two photos from NASA:
And more information about yesterday’s events:
On June 11, 2014, the sun erupted with its third X-class flare in two days. The flare was classified as an X1.0 and it peaked at 5:06 a.m. EDT. Images of the flare were captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. All three flares originated from an active region on the sun that recently rotated into view over the left limb of the sun.
To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.
. . . This flare is classified as an X2.2 flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc.
h/t: Grania
The new Jesus and Mo strip, which the artist describes as “the waffle and dodge approach,” seems to me to parody the behavior of British Muslims when questioned about the tenets of their faith. Hamza Tzortzis, regarded in Britain as a liberal Muslim, for instance, has said that it’s okay to behead people for blasphemy and apostasy, because beheading is “painless” (listen to his statement on the Magic Sandwich Show beginning at 0:55). Throughout the conversation, Tzortzis waffles in exactly the way that the J&M artist satirizes.
And remember, you can donate to the artist through Patreon—as little as $1 month. He/she has now been pledged $659.41 per month, a pittance compared to what some people get who don’t do nearly as much. Further, the artist, unlike others, does produce his promised rewards!
h/t: Linda Grilli
Talk about a country bending over backwards to cater to Islam! Spaniards, you have reason to be angry at your country. For the Gatestone Institute (and also Jihad Watch) reports that Spain is set to deport a legal immigrant who was allowed residency in the country in 2006 for fear of persecution. Imran Firasat, from Pakistan, married a non-Muslim Indonesian woman, and received the customary death threats for apostasy in both Pakistan and Indonesia. Here he is with his family:
Firasat fled to Spain, but wasn’t a quiet citizen: he proceeded to agitate against Islam and the Qur’an, which he asked to have banned in Spain because it incited hatred. He even asked to burn one in public.
Well, that wouldn’t fly, but Firasat continued to criticize Islam. In 2012, he made a film, “The Innocent Prophet,” which you can see on YouTube, but of course there’s an obligatory warning even there:
I wonder who complained about that being offensive?
Here’s Firasat’s film, one hour and 11 minutes long:
According to Gatestone, the film was the nail in Firasat’s coffin, although its model, “Innocence of Islam,” was truly dreadful, and, to my mind, genuinely Islamophobic in the sense of being anti-Muslim as well as anti-Islam:
Spanish authorities, however, took measures to deport Firasat in December 2012, after he released a one-hour amateur film entitled, “The Innocent Prophet: The Life of Mohammed from a Different Point of View.” The movie, which was posted on YouTube, purports to raise awareness of the dangers of Islam to Western Civilization.
The film shows images of the Muslim terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, on double-decker buses in London and on commuter trains in Madrid. The movie, which features many passages from the Koran that threaten violence against non-Muslims, promises to answer the question: “Was Mohammed an inspired prophet of God, or was he a madman driven by his own demons, thus producing a religion of violence and tyranny?”
Firasat, who runs a website called MundoSinIslam.com (A World Without Islam), says he was inspired by another amateur film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” which portrayed the Islamic Prophet Mohammed as a womanizer and a pedophile. Released in September 2012, the movie triggered a wave of riots across Europe and the Middle East that resulted in the deaths of more than 30 people.
I haven’t watched the whole film, but my sampling shows that it’s strong stuff, and in some places verges on true Islamophobia. Muhammad, for instance, is called the head of a “Mafia” and depicted with an automatic weapon.)But in the main the film underscores the lack of “peacefulness” of the faith itself, showing hateful verses from the Qur’an, and criticizes the tenets of that faith. The bulk of the film is a critique of the religion, and, at the end, Firasat says that his aim is not even to make people leave the faith, but simply examine it, and at the least embrace “the way of love and humanity” that could inhere in a new Islam.
Well, maybe that is “hate speech” in Spain, which, after all, doesn’t have the same rules for freedom of speech as does U.S. But it doesn’t matter, at least morally. What matters is that the Spanish Supreme Court decided to deport Firasat, and, depending where he goes, this is equivalent to a death sentence.
Further, the deportation order comes not from Firasat’s movie itself, but clearly from the fear that it would incite Muslims to violence:
Shortly after Firasat’s film was released, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo and Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz initiated a process to review his refugee status.
A Foreign Ministry document, dated November 27, 2012, stated that “the consequences of the release of a video with such [anti-Islamic] characteristics are highly worrisome and constitute a real risk for Spanish interests because the author of the video identifies himself as a ‘Spanish citizen.'”
The document added that Firasat’s actions, including his threats to burn the Koran, were “destabilizing” and “heightened the risk of attacks against Spanish interests abroad, especially in the current context of the extreme sensitivity and indignation in the Muslim world.”
Fernández issued an order on December 21, 2012 to deport Firasat based on Article 44 of the Law on Asylum and Protection, which allows the state to revoke the refugee status of “persons who constitute a threat to Spanish security.” The deportation order stated that Firasat constituted a “persistent source of problems due to his constant threats against the Koran and Islam in general.”
Firasat appealed the deportation order at the National Court [Audiencia Nacional], arguing that the expression of his views about Islam fall within the constitutional right to free speech.
But the National Court rejected Firasat’s appeal. A ruling dated October 3, 2013 states:
“The right to the freedom of expression can be subject to certain formalities, conditions, restrictions or sanctions, which constitute necessary measures, in a democratic society, to preserve national security, public security and the constitutional order.”
In other words, criticism of Islam constitutes a threat to national security and order!
And the Supreme Court of Spain, in a total display of cowardice, upheld that ruling:
Now the Supreme Court has not only confirmed the National Court’s ruling, but it has gone one step farther. Its ruling states:
“The right to the freedom of expression does not guarantee the right to intolerant manifestations or expressions that infringe against religious freedom, that have the character of blasphemy or that seek to offend religious convictions and do not contribute to the public debate.”
This paragraph is strangely similar to an international blasphemy law being promoted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 Muslim countries dedicated to implementing a worldwide ban on “negative stereotyping of Islam.”
Have a look at UN initiativ 16/18, introduced by Muslim countries trying to codify that blasphemy law. It passed the UN General Assembly in 2011—with the support of the Obama Administration.
That, of course, really means, “we are committed to avoiding criticism of Islam.” It doesn’t have the power of law, but Islamic countries are promoting its enforcement.
What is ironic about all this is that Spain gave Firasat and his family residency to protect him from the perfidies of Islam, but now wants to expel him because he’s making public statements about those perfidies. And the real reason for his deportation is not really his own actions, but fear of retribution from Muslims. That’s quite clear from the Supreme Court’s statement.
Firasat can still appeal his “sentence” to the European Court of Human Rights, and the Spanish government has said that it wouldn’t deport him to a country where he’d be endangered. Great: put the problem in someone else’s lap.
I accuse the Spanish government of cowardice and hypocricy born of fear of Muslim violence. They abjure the rights of criticism of Englightenment democracies, preferring to endanger the life (and family) of an activist.
The final irony is that the Spanish government fears the very violence that Firasat criticizes in his film, criticism which he’s being deported. If he’s wrong, and Islam really is a peaceful religion, what’s Spain afraid of?
Although Firasat may be a bit of an extremist (who wouldn’t if you have to leave your home because of dumb religious rules on apostasy?), he’s also a very brave man. As he said:
“When I heard that the U.S. ambassador [in Libya] was slain,I said okay, you Muslims, use violence, but we will continue to make films. One day one of us will lose.”
Let’s hope it’s reason that doesn’t lose.
h/t: Malgorzata
Two contributors today; the first is reader Ivar Husa, photographer and woodworker, who contributes photos of adorable kildeer chicks (Charadrius vociferus):
I had to get my ‘oar in the water’ on these killdeer pictures. I came across a small family of killdeer near a wildlife refuge road, and took these pictures. They were taken on Lateral C RD, in Yakima County, WA, close to the Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge.
Here’s a family, with the chicks looking like miniature adults. Easy one: spot the chicks.
By ‘doing the math’ (knowing the distance to the subject, from EXIF data) I determined that this little bird’s dimensions. Nose-to-tail, this little guy is 3.9” ‘long’, in this pose. Top to bottom he/she is 3.4”.
This is ADORABLE. Don’t you just want to kiss its little head?
For another subject, here is a tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) with a mouth full of bugs to feed its chicks. How do they capture a second (third, fourth) bug without losing the first, in flight?
Finally, an Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) from regular Stephen Barnard, who says it’s a new species for him.
