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.
The Okeanos mission is at 2000 m below the Pacific. Have it on your computer in a window – amazing marine biology!
Indeed it is–all kinds of weird and wonderful creatures! Click on the screenshot below to go there, and keep it open as Matthew suggests (click on the arrow when you get to the site):
Guess what the creatures above are (yes, they’re animals):
From the website:
From February 25 to March 18, scientists will continue 2015 Hohonu Moana expedition efforts to explore deep-water habitats in and around Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The expedition will include work on seamounts in the Mid-Pacific Mountains while en route to port in Kwajalein.
You may recall the links to the video discussion a couple of weeks back on whether alien life existed. We also recorded a second discussion, discussing if machines will rule the world.
Apart from myself, the other participants were David Kirby (biologist and historian), Alastair Reynolds (astronomer and SF writer), Danielle George (radio engineer), Aravind Vijayaraghavan (nanotechnologist) and Sheena Cruickshank (immunologist) (all of us except Alastair are from the University of Manchester). The programmes were made by my pal Mark Gorton.
Here are the three 18-minute clips.
Part 2:
Part 3:
And if you have any doubt about what the future holds, there’s this video of the Boston Dynamics ‘Atlas’ robot, which has had a new swearing module installed:
Reader Darryl Gwynne described an incident he experienced at his university in Canada, and I asked him to write a brief account of it for me. So here it is. I’ve added a photo to supplement the one Darryl links to below.
Segregation by gender at a University of Toronto event
Darryl Gwynne
So it’s 2016 in Canada. Several students and I turn up at a public ‘science’ seminar where we are astonished to see that men and women are being seated on opposite sides of our campus lecture hall. Segregation began at the entrance when ticket-takers directed the women from our group through a separate door, but was further enforced inside; after we had taken seats with the ‘sisters,’ the males in our group were twice asked to move over with the ‘brothers’ (the second time by the speaker himself). We refused. The January 8th event – God Is Not Dead: Science and Atheism in Islam – was co-hosted by our (University of Toronto-Mississauga) Muslim Students Association and Ilmster Seminars.
We were not the only ones objecting to the segregation that day; a hijab-wearing student quietly thanked us for not moving, stating that dividing the audience by gender was wrong. Our subsequent discussions with her and other women were very interesting (and revealed that they were far better than the speaker, Abdul Malik, in articulating some of the key lecture points).
I complained about the segregation to our campus equity officer, the campus Vice-President, and the University’s Vice President of Human Resources & Equity, and they all indicated that gender segregation should not occur in lectures and seminars. However, there appears to be no policy and very little effort at our university to prevent such segregation. Although our equity officer informed me that, in response to my complaint, she is having an ongoing dialogue with our Muslim Students Association, segregation appears to continue at this group’s recent campus workshops and seminars:
JAC: I’ve added this photo to the one linked above. FB caption: “Dawah workshop happening right now till 5pm with Sheikh Osta in CC2150!”
When I contacted the Ontario Human Rights Commission they refused to give me an opinion on whether gender segregation at a public university event violated Ontario’s Human Rights Code, and simply informed me that any person who believed their rights had been infringed can submit a claim. Importantly, there appears to be no “legal standing” here in Canada on the issue of audience gender segregation at universities. This is in direct contrast with other countries such as the UK where “Gender segregation is not permitted in any academic meetings or at events, lectures or meetings.”
When it comes to prayer, however, our university does allow religion to overcome the right of women to sit where they wish in a student audience. In order to accommodate religious ceremony our campus has a Muslim group prayer room where (to quote one official) “gender segregation during worship services that the Muslim Students Association practices is in accordance with their religious beliefs which is permissible at the University of Toronto”.
Finally, Ilmster Seminars have done the God-Is-Not-Dead thing at several Ontario universities. There will likely be others, and the coordinators of the event will no doubt continue to separate men from women in modern university classrooms.
I saw this on last night’s news and was enchanted. The giraffes at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo are kept inside during cold weather, as they don’t have the right genes for winter, but there’s been a warm spell the past few days and so they were let out into their outdoor enclosure. (Giraffes are let out only when the temperature exceeds about 50° F [10° C ], and it was 70° F [21° C] on Tuesday!) This shows the antics of Potoka, a two-year old male reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis reticulata), as he gains some freedom.
Who can say that this is not joy unbounded? It seems as if he’s trying to get his fellows to join the fun.
Now whether one should keep these large and magnificent creatures in captivity is another matter (this is an endangered subspecies). But I’m at least glad to see them bounding about.
I didn’t get a chance to post many photos of my trip to Canada while I was there, so I’m catching up now. Today I’ll concentrate on one of the best parts of any trip: noms.
As part of my Centre for Inquiry gig in Ottawa, we had a “free will” brunch (we discussed the issue, but didn’t have a choice of what we ate) at the sumptuous home of Dave Smith. Smith is a famous figure in Ottawa as he not only ran the chain of Nate’s Delis (now down to one), but is also a big-time philanthropist, having raised more than $100 million for charities, including building a youth treatment center for drug addiction. He recently turned 83, but is as active as ever, and cooked all the food for our brunch. Here’s Dave in his basement kitchen:
His entire home is covered with awards and plaques for his philanthropy, as well as photographs of the famous people he’s cooked for, like the Queen:
and Nancy Reagan:
And Princess Di and Prince Charles:
But this is the prize: a picture of Pope John Paul II autographed “To Dave, God bless you (the bagels were great). Jean Paul II.” I couldn’t believe that Dave served bagels to the Pope, and that the writing was really John Paul’s, so I asked Dave. He assured me it was authentic, and that he’d cooked for several days for the Pope and his retinue when they visited Canada:
I was promised a real Jewish feed for brunch, and so was really excited, but there was a miscommunication: Dave made Indian food. Well, that’s an acceptable substitute, and it was very good. Still, I missed the promised latkes, brisket, and blintzes.
Dave also made a chocolate fountain for dessert:
Sensing my disappointment, I think, my genial host Seanna cooked up a batch of delicious cheese blintzes (with sour cream) for dinner that night:
As I noted previously, I took the train from Ottawa to Montreal, and my first night there I repaired to Reuben’s Deli downtown, where I had one of Montreal’s famous “smoked meat” sandwiches. It was the equivalent of a good pastrami sandwich, but the bread was too insubstantial to hold the meat, and it fell apart. (Note to Reuben’s: get some substantial kosher rye!) Service was also desultory, and, worst of all, I finished the sandwich. As we all know, such sandwiches should be big enough to furnish lunch the next day:
One of the great aspects of Montreal is its largesse of real French food, including pastry. Here, for instance, are the wares in a pastry shop at the Montreal train station, which is part of a large underground shopping complex. They had pain au chocolat and real croissants, as well as fancy cakes:
Napoleons, too!
The really funny part was that right next to the pastry shop above was a Tim Hortons donut store. The pastry shop had almost no customers, but people were lined up in front of Tim’s to get their coffee and mediocre donuts. What a corruption of French-Canadian culture!
The next evening, two readers, Anne-Marie and Claude, invited me to their home for dinner. And a real feast it was, too. On entering, I was presented with two squirrel presents (we share a fondness for squirrels): a Belgian chocolate squirrel and a wooden squirrel (with a bell) that Anne-Marie had carved herself. The gift came in a bag said to be inscribed by the resident squirrel himself, also known as “le petit ami”:
Dinner began with nuts (of course) and this amazing bottle of fancy local beer. It was, in fact, the best porter I’ve ever had, redolent of chocolate, malt, and cherries. I’m sure I’ll never get this again. [Update: as a reader notes in the comments, this is a Grand Cuvée Porter Baltique, brewed in Quebec by Le Trois Mousquetaires, and is very highly rated by the Beer Advocate. It’s also 10% alcohol by volume, which accounts for my feeling slightly buzzed as we sat down to dinner.]
The dinner was served, French style, in courses, starting with a salad (and baguette, with olives and olive oil):
And then homemade pasta with homemade sauce; I forgot to photograph the dish as I was hungry, but here’s the sauce that Anne-Marie made, with herbs saved from her garden:
And a selection of five cheeses, including a Brie de Meaux and several other raw-milk cheeses from France. I dearly love real French cheese:
Dessert: a homemade maple-syrup pie! It was spectacular, especially topped with local vanilla ice cream:
Also in attendance was a d*g: Ariel, a nine-year-old German shepherd. Although a d*g, he was quite amiable:
The next day Anne-Marie and Claude kindly drove me around on a tour of Montreal, so I got to see lots of stuff I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. Even in winter it’s a gorgeous city. I’ve already posted about our lunch of poutine, but wanted to add that at a state dinner for Justin Trudeau on Wednesday, the White House chef served a poutine appetizer:
“One of our canapes is actually a duck poutine,” said [White House chef Chris] Comerford as he described Hudson River duck shaved on fries with gravy and cheese.
“So it’s kind of like a take on a wonderful national dish of Canada. It’s a play on that dish.”
Before lunch, I asked to be taken to one of Montreal’s two authentic bagel bakeries. We went to perhaps the most famous, the Fairmount. Montreal bagels are made by hand using unbleached flour. They’re boiled in water with a touch of honey, and then baked in a wood-fired oven. They are then topped with sesame seeds (the classic topping), and come out toothsome and chewy—not the soft, oversized donuts you find in the U.S. They’re the real thing—the kind you used to be able to buy in New York during the Pleistocene. This store, founded in 1919, has been on its present site since the year I was born:
The menu. I, of course, wanted a sesame bagel:
Baking the bagels over wood:
Ready to serve:
The wood for firing the oven is stacked in the alley outside:
My prize: a warm sesame bagel with a schmear. I limited myself to one as we were on our way for poutine:
We did a lot of sightseeing, and before I went back to my hotel I asked to be taken to La Confiserie CandyLabs, an interesting place downtown where a Japanese couple make hard candy by hand, and it’s fancy stuff, coming in many natural flavors.
Claude photographed me with a cat lollipop. I was told it was a Japanese cartoon character, but can’t remember the name (I’m sure a reader will):
I bought two kinds: mixed fruit and taro candy (flavored with real taro root). I haven’t yet opened the bags:
Here’s a video from CandyLab. Making the small candies with designs inside is a real art. It’s this video, which I watched before going to Canada, that impelled me to go to the store:
Thanks again to my hosts, Anne-Marie (shown here amused by my photographing of poutine):
et Claude, having our postprandial café crème (it’s okay to have milk with coffee after lunch in Montreal, but not in France):
Even the rational Canadians have a sprinkling of loons among them, and by that I mean human loons, not the ones on the one-dollar coins. The latest pair is David and Collet Stephan of Alberta, whose son, Ezekiel, became ill with meningitis four years ago. As the CBC reports, Ezekiel was ill for several weeks, but the Stephans, whose family runs Truehope Nutritional Support, a dubious food-supplement company in Raymond, Alberta, didn’t take their child to the doctor. Rather, they dosed him with a mishmash of ineffectual nostrums:
In a bid to boost his immune system, the couple gave the boy — who was lethargic and becoming stiff — various home remedies, such as water with maple syrup, juice with frozen berries and finally a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horse radish root, hot peppers, mashed onion, garlic and ginger root as his condition deteriorated.
Court heard the couple on tape explaining to the police officer that they prefer naturopathic remedies because of their family’s negative experiences with the medical system.
That didn’t work, of course. In the end, Ezekiel worsened, stopped breathing, and was airlifted to Calgary. But it was too late. He died—in March, 2012. Now David and Collet are on trial for “failing to provide the necessities of life” for their son. They’ve pleaded not guilty and have responded by claiming that “they are being unfairly persecuted and that their approach to health should be respected.”
The late Ezekiel
Someone’s also set up a “Prayers for Ezekiel” Facebook page, with the following last-minute note, and on that page David Stephan defends the family’s actions.
Dear little Ezekiel was brought into the hospital after he stopped breathing on Tuesday night. He was rushed to Calgary and was on life support at the Children’s Hospital. He had no indication of Brain function but his organs were in great condition. The doctors gave us until the middle of Sunday to find improvement. Please send love, healing energy and strength in prayers to Ezekiel’s family. ♥
A heart, for crying out loud: an organ the family apparently doesn’t possess. There was also a “crowdfunder” page for legal defense, but it seems to have disappeared.
The Stephans family. There are three kids left (note the picture of Ezekiel). What chance do they have?
While religion doesn’t appear to be involved here, faith is—crazy and unsubstantiated faith in the efficacy of these “natural” remedies for meningitis. David and Collet Stephan are due no “respect” for their “approach to health.” That’s equivalent to giving respect to those who think that epilepsy is caused by demonic possession.
We have science now, and we know how to treat meningitis. When caught early, it’s highly curable. Parents have no “right” to neglect cures known to work in favor of those that don’t, and neglectful parents deserve not respect, but scorn, opprobrium, and, yes, jail. If they’re not punished, it sends a message to parents that they can treat their children how they want.
At least the Canadian government is prosecuting them. In the U.S., in most states the Stephans wouldn’t be prosecuted if they pleaded that their treatment was based on religious faith— or, if they were prosecuted, would be given a slap on the wrist. But there should be no exemptions for such child neglect, religious or otherwise. Children are at the mercy of their parents’ faith, and can’t decide for themselves. When parents neglect medical care—which of course is free in Canada—in favor of superstition, and thereby harm their children, they should be punished, severely. Such punishment is known to deter others from curing via “faith”—as it has done with some religious sects in the U.S.
One line of the CBC’s report struck me:
The Crown told court the couple loved their son and are not accused of ignoring or killing him. But they should have sought medical help sooner, the Crown argues.
Yes, they may well have loved their child, but they loved their superstitions more. Were they truly ignorant, or willfully so? If they wanted to use supplements, they could have supplemented the maple syrup with national healthcare.
And what about the Stephan’s other three children? Will they grow up believing in nutritional supplements in place of scientific medicine? If so, they’re the equivalent of Christian Science children who get indoctrinated into that pernicious faith and thus perpetuate the killing of innocent children from generation to generation.
There should be no exemptions, religious or otherwise, for parents seeking to avoid medical care by treating their children with faith, whether that faith involve God or maple syrup. The Stephans, who show no remorse, should be jailed, and their children given to other families willing to treat them properly when they become ill.
h/t: Russel
p.s. One note: in 47 of the U.S.’s 50 states, parents don’t have to get their kids vaccinated to attend public school if those parents have religious objections. In 20 states, you can get exemptions based on philosophical objections. The disparity between religion and philosophy is telling.
Last month Robert Lang sent some lovely photos of hummingbirds, which have at last reached the front of the queue.
From a recent trip to Costa Rica, we saw some beautiful hummingbirds at the Monteverde Biological Reserve and lower down on the slopes of Arenal volcano. At Monteverde, there is a hummingbird gallery with feeders set up that attract a wide variety to both the feeders and the general area, but we also saw several birds up along the mountain trails.
The most striking was the Violet Sabrewing (Campylopterus hemileucurus):
The colors come from diffraction of microstructure in the feathers, and so the color varies strongly with angle. From many angles, the Violet Sabrewing looks dark blue, but its downcurved bill is fairly distinctive:
My favorite photo was of a Rufous-Tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl), which we saw on a farm near Arenal volcano:
And another photo that shows the entire bird for identification:
Last, a shot of one of the feeders at Mondeverde. I wasn’t able to ID any of these; if any readers can assist, I’d be most appreciative.
And, from Oz, some stars from reader Tim Anderson:
This is a picture of the Orion Nebula (Messier Catalogue number 42 – it sits at the tip of Orion’s “sword”). At this time of year in Australia, the Orion constellation is high in the sky early in the night, making it easy to find.
This picture is a single 60-second image taken with an Atik Infinity astronomical camera through an 80mm aperture telescope. The sky is heavily light polluted from surrounding streetlights (which explains the rather foggy background), but it captured a lot of the complex dust clouds around the nebula core.
