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 May 5, the wind is howling like a freight train outside, and I dread to think what I’ll encounter on the walk to work. What with the ungodly banshee racket, I was awake at 3:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep.
It’s Thursday, May 5, and on this day in 1821, Napoleon died (presumably of stomach cancer, but there are theories that he was poisoned) on the island of St. Helena, one of the most remote places on the planet. In Mexico, of course, it’s the Cinco de Mayo holiday, celebrating a victory of the Mexicans over a much better-equipped French Army in 1863. The battle was in Puebla, a lovely city that I visited a few years back. Happy holiday to my Mexican friends!:
On this day in 1925, teacher John Scopes was served a warrant in Tennesee for violating the Butler act that prohibited the teaching of human evolution (not “evolution”). The rest is history. And, on May 5, 1981, Provisional IRA fighter Bobby Sands died in Maze Prison after 66 days of a hunger strike. Notable births on this day include Nellie Bly (1864; read about her asylum exposé) and Tammy Wynette (1942). Those who died on this day include, beside Napoleon and Bobby Sands, Irv Robbins (2008, a man who gave the illusion of choice to millions of Americans).
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili manages to pwn Andrzej even while denigrating her own intellectual capacities:
A: What’s going on in a feline head?
Hili: It’s not great philosophy.
In Polish:
Ja: co się dzieje w kociej głowie?
Hili: To nie jest wielka filozofia.
What the hell is up with Greenpeace—and with the U.S., for that matter? According to Macleans, the U.S., once a strong supporter of banning trade in polar bear parts (I assume it’s the skin that’s the valuable “part”), has now dropped its support, and Greenpeace doesn’t care. Remember, these bears are on the wane.
Inuit hunters may have just brought down their biggest quarry ever.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to stop pushing for an international ban on the trade in polar bear parts — an effort that has been strenuously opposed by Inuit and the Canadian government.
The U.S. agency has been trying for years to have skins and other parts put in the same category as elephant ivory. It sponsored votes at the last two meetings of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that would have prevented Inuit hunters from selling hides or teeth even after eating the meat.
Late last week, the service quietly dropped its campaign.
“Though we remain concerned about the commercial use of polar bear hides as an additional threat to the species, we are not pursuing increased … protections at this time,” says a statement on the service’s website.
“We are putting our resources into working in collaboration with other polar bear range states to address climate change and mitigate its impacts on the polar bear as the overwhelming threat to the long-term future of the species.”
The decision was immediately welcomed by Natan Obed, head of the national Inuit group Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.
The sad part is that the U.S. was, until now, on the winning side:
The U. S. service abandoned the campaign even as it appeared to be winning.
The European Union went from supporting Canada at the 2010 convention vote to abstaining in 2013. Major countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom opposed Canada’s position.
The U.S. motion was co-sponsored in 2013 by Russia, which argued that poachers from that country were using Canadian bear permits to launder their own illegal kills.
The Americans were also supported by groups such as Humane Society International, the Natural Resources Defence Council and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. They all warned that allowing Canada to continue trading in the bears was contributing to more hunting at a time when their sea-ice habitat is shrinking because of climate change.
Global concern was strong enough that an international review was conducted in 2014 into Canada’s bear management.
So what happened? Apparently it’s pressure from the Inuit, a fear of crossing a First Nations people, and a lack of support from other organizations, including Greenpeace. The Inuit can shoot the bears for “subsistence hunting,” which includes the meat (not very good, I’d guess), and, more important, the pelts, which can go for up to $10,000 each. But they can also sell licenses to other hunters for trophy hunting, and that’s even more reprehensible. Frankly, I’d say the life of a bear provides more well being to the world than a dead bear does to an Inuit. They were here before us, and I suspect that if trading were suspended, the Inuit would survive. It’s not clear about the bears, though, for they’re already going down the tubes due to climate change and loss of sea ice.
This is of course a judgment call: many of you may hold the economic welfare of the Inuit as being more important than the welfare of the bears. But the bears don’t get a say in this; they were here before we were; and under the Endangered Species act they’re listed as “threatened.” Can we please not kill them for their fur—or any other reason?
And look at who’s in favor of the carnage:
Canada — along with Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, influential scientific bodies and other NGOs — said the Canadian hunt is sustainable and that the real threat to the bears is from climate change. Hunting quotas for populations in particularly unstable habitats, such as those along Hudson Bay, have been significantly reduced.
Environment Canada reports that about 300 Canadian polar bears enter the international market every year. That figure has not changed much in recent years and represents about two per cent of the total Canadian population of about 16,000.
Given their coming decline due to global warming, any slaughter is too much!
And let’s have a look at how it goes (pictures from the Mother Jones article linked to above):
ARVIAT, CANADA – NOVEMBER 4 The frozen pelt of a polar bear, shot days earlier, thaws in a bathtub in Arviat, Canada on Nov. 4, 2013. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images)ARVIAT, CANADA – NOVEMBER 1 Schoolchildren investigate a polar bear pelt lying in the snow in Arviat, Canada on Nov. 1, 2013. (Ed Ou/Reportage by Getty Images)
Several readers called my attention to a piece in the latest New Yorker. It’s by Siddhartha Mukherjee, is about epigenetics, and is called “Same but different” (subtitle: “How epigenetics can blur the line between nature and nurture”). I’m sure you know of Mukherjee, as he’s a doctor and writer, author of the renowned and Pulitzer-Prize-winning book (2011) The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. (I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.)
This piece, about new research into how genes are turned on and off—the key to how a DNA “recipe” produces an organism—is written for the intelligent layperson: you guys. I ask you to read it, because tomorrow we’ll start a discussion of it, and if you don’t read it you’ll miss all the fun.
Earlier today, to mark May the Fourth, the European Space Agency released this photo of comet 67P taken by the Rosetta probe with, somewhere on its surface, the tiny Philae lander (you’ll never spot it). The answer is already out there, so no cheating! Genuine spots only in the comments, please. Click to embiggen comme d’hab. We’ll post the answer later. Note that in a few months, Rosetta will be no more, for it will make a final, catastrophic approach to the comet and the mission will be over.
Courtesy of Pink News, we have this appalling cartoon produced by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A mother teaches her daughter why same-sex marriage is wrong, and why you can’t get to Heaven if you’re in such a marriage. Truefact: the loving Jehovah won’t let you in if you don’t follow His rules, and one of those rules is no gay marriage!!!
The Disney-esque production belies a message of pure bigotry:
Note the mother’s claim, “People can change!” That is, being gay is a choice, and you could have chosen otherwise. That’s only one invidious result of religion’s insistence that people have libertarian free will.
The two met while playing separate shows in Nashville, Tennessee, in the mid-1990s and Prince asked Graham [Prince’s bass player], who was a Jehovah’s Witness, to come on tour with him. Graham said Prince was deeply interested in the Bible and they would talk about it for hours.
“He asked me questions every day, every week — sometimes we would bring up the sun talking about the Bible,” he said.
Later, Prince asked Graham if he would move to Minnesota to continue teaching him about God and his faith. He accepted, and Graham and his family relocated from Jamaica, where they had been teaching Bible school.
Prince’s interest in the Bible grew and eventually he came to the conclusion that he, too, wanted to become a Jehovah’s Witness, Graham said. Later, Prince began worshipping at a Kingdom Hall just outside Minneapolis. Graham said he considered Prince to be his “spiritual brother.”
It was important to Prince, like many artists, to give his fans joy with his music, Graham said. But the most important thing to him was not just giving people a “temporary feeling” from a record or album but being able to share scripture, he said.
“His joy — his biggest joy — was sharing the hope of everlasting life,” Graham said.
I wonder if Prince thought that everlasting life was barred to those in a gay marriage.
