Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon lagniappe)

December 11, 2015 • 5:04 am

It’s Friday, and the weather in Chicago is still unseasonably warm, with a predicted high of 55°F (13°C) today.  My brain is still on the fritz (it’s not yet 5 a.m.), so I predict a dearth of substantial and thoughtful writing today by yours truly. Perhaps I’ll resort to clickbait! On this day in 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England for love, a choice that I would have made, too—but not for Wallis Simpson, who by all accounts was an unpleasant person. It was, of course, the Church of England that forced this decision. And, on this day in 1964, the great Sam Cooke, writer and singer of perhaps the greatest soul song of all time) died at age 33, shot to death by the manager of a motel in Los Angeles. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is fishing for compliments (and perhaps noms):

Hili: What’s in the navel of the world?
A: A cat.
Hili: That’s right, but which one?

P1030679 (1)

In Polish:
Hili: Co jest w pępku świata?
Ja: Kot.
Hili: To by się zgadzało, ale który?
********

And Mr. Leon is back with us. Is he a budding entomologist?

Leon: A fly?!!!

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A plea for civility

December 10, 2015 • 2:45 pm

The plea is from your host, Professor Ceiling Cat Emeritus. Matthew called to my attention a post written on the Times Higher Education (THE) blog by Matthew Reisz—a post that apparently was published earlier and has just been republished. Called “Torrents of bile: publish and be damned,” Reisz’s piece decries the invective heaped on people by Internet commenters, anonymous or not. Reisz is especially exercised by a post I wrote about him five years ago, criticizing his accommodationism in another of his THE pieces.  I stand by my own piece, which is think is pretty civil, but Reisz says that some of the comments below it were rude, and I have to agree with him. Here’s some of what he says:

. . . the other day, when I was searching for something else, I happened to come across a post on the Why Evolution is True website, where I was subjected to some pretty startling abuse.

I was accused of “promoting a science-faith lovefest”, being “pretty much biased against atheists”, and producing “totally juvenile”, “massively tedious…bilge”, fit only for being “put in the recycling bin or better still in the cat litter tray”. I was called “an asshole” and a “so-called journalist” who managed not only to “miss the target when he shot his arrow” but to send it in “the wrong direction”, where it “came around and shot him square in the ass”.

One contributor to the thread wondered whether I was “really so blind or stupid” or just “a manipulative prick”. Another (don’t tell my boss) was “shocked at such an appalling article being in the Times Higher Ed”. A third – best of all – suggested I was “lying for Jesus”.

None of this was very pleasant to read, although it is pretty trivial compared with the kind of garbage women and minority groups have to put up with all the time. But what is really weird is just how distant it seems from what I actually wrote. Amid what strike me as a few valid criticisms and a few more I am happy to reflect on, torrents of bile were directed at me for minor irrelevancies, things I hadn’t said (and don’t believe) or comments I had quoted from others. Far from being “biased against atheists”, I am – for what it’s worth – a pretty convinced atheist myself. And although I am sceptical about whether science and religion are engaged in a battle to the death, that hardly means I want to “promote a lovefest”.

Some of these comments were more offensive than others, but calling Reisz an “asshole” and a “manipulative prick” is simply out of bounds here.  What I’m asking for now is this: is when commenting on a piece by someone who’s not a known charlatan, miscreant, or historical jerk (i.e., not people like Deepak Chopra or Ken Ham), readers should try to ratchet down the name-calling and deal with the arguments at hand. In other words, try to be civil and battle over ideas.

The Roolz (read them again) specify that we’re not to abuse other commenters or call them names. I’d like to add that we should extend similar courtesy to people who write articles with which I or the readers disagree.  I know this is a fine line, because I myself sometimes give in to the urge to characterize people as idiots or mushbrains. And sometimes, as in the case of Chopra et al., it’s appropriate. But have a look at Reisz’s post and see if you wouldn’t feel bad if those names were hurled at you. All in all, he handled it pretty well, and I’ll apologize on his website for the name-calling.

Thanks,
—The Management

As a digestif, reader Taskin informs me that the squirrels are very fat in Ottawa this winter, and the CBC has published a piece about their avoirdupois (be sure to go through the pix at the top), showing some tw**ts produced by readers. They also ask for Canadians to send pictures of fat squirrels to cbcnewsottawa@cbc.ca. One specimen:

https://twitter.com/kdtemp/status/674931074347229184

Be sure to feed the squirrels this winter, as they don’t hibernate and need food. I’ve just got a big bag of sunflower seeds.

Crow he went a-fishing

December 10, 2015 • 11:00 am

by Matthew Cobb

This hooded crow in a park in Ramat-Gan (near Tel Aviv) appears to use bread to catch a fish.

This video was first posted in 2000 by Dr Oren Hasson, and has just popped up on Imgur and Tw*tter. You can read Dr Hasson’s description of the behaviour here. Hasson gives some references to previous observations of bait fishing in herons in Japan and Florida. I presume it was the kind of behaviour shown in these two videos:

This heron in a Mauritius park is using a cigarette butt in the same way.

This heron (location unknown) is trying a similar thing with some bread, but it takes a while before it gets it right (maybe it’s a young bird?)

So what did birds use before bread and cigarette ends? Here’s Dr Hasson’s thoughts about how ‘his’ crow began fishing. He’s also particular sharp in the third paragraph, where he ponts out that the bird is giving up something it can eat (bread) in order to get something else (a fish) which is presumably of higher value.

In addition to this particular pool, there is a large artificial pond in the park, in which there are many fish. Fishermen regularly arrive to this pond to fish. Little egrets, night herons, pied kingfishers, kingfishers, and white-throated kingfishers are among the common fish-eating birds that hunt fish in it, and there are a number of places that could be used by crows as a perch to catch fish. So there was a chance that this behavior was practiced by many crows, depending, perhaps, on how long ago was it first learnt. To test this, I spread slices of bread all over the park to see how crows handle them. The result was that crows do what crows do, namely, they ate all pieces of bread on the spot. It was only near that particular small pool that I have seen this phenomenon again. As this was at the beginning of the crows breeding season, and as there were two nests that were built at the time on two adjacent sycamore trees next to the pool, I suspected, by following these unmarked crows, that there was only a single crow, possibly two (one of each nest), which are using the bait-fishing technique. One way or another, it was a rare phenomenon.

Altogether, my own bait, slices of bread spread around the pool, worked well. I have seen about 10 crows’ attempts to use bread bait to lure fish, all on the very same perch, and 4 of them were successful. I managed to document two of them, one with my 200 mm camera (photos on the top-left corner), the other with a very good digital video camera recorder that I rented for this purpose. Given my equipment, and given that the crow was not tame enough to fish when I was at the edge of the pool, the only way I could do this was by leaving my camcorder continuously recording on a tripod, while watching the pool from a distance. The two wmv files that I put here, are the result of this low-tech effort. One shows an unsuccessful attempt, the other a successful one, pretty much like the first time I saw the crows doing it. Observations were made during March, 2000, except for the time I videotaped it, which was on April 5th, 2000.

Crows of Caledonia are known to prepare sticks and adjust their size, or bend metal hooks for hunting larvae in wood. Ravens are known to pool fishermen’s bait out of the water, and steal their fish. Crows all over the world are known to lift up pecan nuts and drop them on the road to crack and eat them. They are also known for using this technique to break clams on rocks. However, giving up bread in order to gain fish is unique, mostly because the crow gives up some resource it owns (food), not just expending energy. Admittedly, it retrieves most of the bread and eats it before it gets lost. Admittedly, it may not understand the fish will eat the bread. But clearly, it did not need to soften the fresh bread that I put their just a while ago, and it lost some of it in the water. In the end, when it catch the fish, it does not hesitate leaving the bread behind, to fall in the water. Did it expect to eventually lose its bread when it brought it to the pool (rather than just expected to gain a fish)? – This is really difficult to tell. However, as much as can be seen, this was a deliberate behavior, and very special. Regarding whether it qualifies for the definition of tool-using, maybe it does. It took a slice of bread, held it in its foot, and put only pieces of it in the water. As shown in the video, it seems as though it even deliberately adjusts size and rate of the crumbs it dropped in the water, according to the presence or absence of fish in the water next to its perch. However, more data should have been gathered to determine that.

There are other birds known to use bait to lure fish, the most famous among which is the green-backed heron, which drops insects in the water. In those birds the trait is known to be heritable, being improved later by experience. In the hooded crow it is much more likely to be a self learnt behavior by one individual, maybe copied by another, than a rare lucky mutation.

 

Iran’s forcible “sex-reassignment” surgery for gays

December 10, 2015 • 9:45 am

The television program that inspired the Twit**er exchange at the bottom of this post actually aired in April, but I didn’t learn some things about Iran’s odious policies towards homosexuals until I investigated that exchange yesterday, when Knight rebuked the first gentleman on Twi**er for his gross misunderstanding of what’s actually happning in Iran.

We all know that homosexuality is a legal offense in some Middle Eastern countries, as it violates Islamic law—law set out not in the Qur’an, which is unclear on the issue, but in the hadith. In Iran, homosexuality has been illegal for over eighty years, but in fact was tolerated under Shah Reza Pahlavai.

That all changed when the Shah was deposed in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, and homosexuality and transsexuality became crimes punishable by death. Seven years later, though, transsexuals were legally reclassified as “heterosexuals.” Since gays were lashed and then executed if the whip didn’t prove a deterrent, this new policy opened a legal path for gay males to continue having sexual relationships with men. But that meant having their penis and testicles cut off, and living transgendered—as a woman.

Since we know now that being gay is not a “choice” but a behavioral imperative—and one that does not respect national boundaries—gay Iranian males either must to repress their behavior, exercise it in secret at risk to their lives, flee the country, or get sex-reassignment surgery and live as females. Many apparently choose the last option, but clearly that’s a choice made under coercion, one carrying serious medical risks. As the YouTube description notes:

Post-revolution Iran is notorious for its religiosity: when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979 he enforced strict Islamic custom that made homosexuality punishable by death. Surprisingly, though, the state treats transsexuals differently, allowing sexual reassignment surgery and in some cases even paying for it. It’s become so widespread there, in fact, that Iran is now one of the world capitals for the procedure.

But the fatwa allowing the surgery has a grim drawback: families, therapists, and the state see gender reassignment as a solution to the “illness” of homosexuality—not understanding the risks of forcing the long, life-changing process of a sex change on someone who wasn’t born wanting it. Gay Iranians now face the agonizing choice of fleeing their communities or permanently changing who they are.

A VICE program on the issue was commissioned by HBO and aired last April; the entire program is embedded below. Do watch it if you have the time, for its coverage of the issue is thorough, including personal, religious, and medical issues. It also shows that women are forced to undergo the procedure as a way to become “legal lesbians”.

Seeing homosexuality as an illness that can be “cured” by surgically refashioning the genitals of gays is certainly not an enlightened policy. Gays should of course have that option, but it’s clear that many Iranian gays get the surgery as their only viable option to either death or exile. Thus, the tweet by the first “gentleman” at the very bottom of this post—I use the term very loosely—was based on either duplicity or sheer ignorance.  That person implies that Iran’s policies toward LGBTQ people are enlightened, with the government actually favoring and subsidizing sex-change operations to help gays. But of course that’s not the situation at all: it’s largely a form of punishment, and a severe one. It’s done not to help gays, but force them to conform to religious dogma.

Those Westerners who ally themselves with Muslim extremists holding odious views like the ones discussed here, and who claim to do so on grounds of favoring the oppressed, should realize who they’re getting into bed with. That was, for instance, the mistake made by the Feminist Society of Goldsmiths College when they—and, ironically, its LGBTQ+ Society—allied themselves against Maryam Namazie and with the Islamic Society, whose own president opposes equal rights for women and gays.  That president, Muhammed Patel, has since resigned after his homophobic tw**ts came to light. Here are two of them:

Muslimsoc2_640x345_acf_cropped Muslimsoc1As Stephen Knight commented:

A pervasive strain of toxic western feminism is on show here. It seems they hold two books for equality: One for themselves, and one for the browner, less ‘them’ people. Like Namazie, they should be screaming from the rooftops about the oppression visited on women in the name of Islam. Instead, we have an instance where a group of men openly harassed and intimidated a woman minority (Iranian ex-Muslim), and the feminist society chose to stand with her aggressors. ’Feminists‘ siding with Islamists is akin to PETA sponsoring your local steak night. This is an utterly shameful display of moral confusion.

The double standard also applies to the Goldsmiths’ LGBTQ+ers. How dare they ally themselves with a society whose president (along with many of its members) opposes equal rights for gays, issues homophobic tweets, and stands against Namazie, who favors LGBTQ rights? What sort of twisted doublethink could create such behavior?

Well, we know. It’s the doublethink that says it’s okay to deny gays and women rights so long as oppressed “people of color” are doing the denial. It’s the doublethink espoused by the first gentleman in the tw**t below.

Actually, the Advocate site mentioned by Stephen Knight (“Godless Spellchecker”) is no longer the one in the link above; rather, it’s here. 

Finally, you might find this exchange with Ali Rivzi enlightening and amusing.