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.
Soon after Gonzalez’s move to BSU was announced, evolutionists once again chastised the school. Jerry Coyne, a staunch atheistic evolutionist, suggested on a Sunday blog posting that “BSU should keep an eye on Gonzalez to make sure he doesn’t teach [intelligent design] in his science classes.”
“I don’t believe in academic freedom for anyone who teaches religiously based woo as science,” Coyne wrote, “just as I wouldn’t for someone who taught astrology in a psychology class or homeopathy in medical school.”
Someone should write a computer program to generate these slurs, with choices from three columns like the following:
During his onstage interview this afternoon, James Randi announced that ten days ago he married his partner of 27 years, artist Jose Alvarez, whose real name is Devyi Pena. This was presaged by a slide in Michael Shermer’s talk this morning, which, when touching on gay marriage, showed a picture of Randi and Alvarez in tuxes with carnations in their lapels.)
When asked by the interviewer about his “news,” Randi raised his hand, displaying a wedding ring, and said it was not for decoration: he and Alvarez had gotten married in Washington, D.C. a bit more than a week ago. Randi flew there; Alvarez, who can’t fly because he’s restricted due to a legal conviction, drove up. D. C. is the closest place to Florida where gay couples can be legally married. The audience gave Randi a standing ovation.
The discussion itself involved two filmmakers who have made a documentary on Randi that will soon be released; they screened several clips from the movie. The last one showed Randi returning home after a long trip, displaying his new silver-headed cane (“I guess I’ll have to find some silver cane-head polish,” he said) and being embraced lovingly by Alvarez. It was a very touching scene, and many people teared up.
I hope to meet Randi at the speakers’ reception tomorrow after my talk. He really is amazing, and was hugely entertaining in the conversation.
I’ll be on Freethought Radio tomorrow with Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, discussing the distressing the incursion of intelligent-design advocates at Ball State University. The whole show runs from 11 a.m.-noon Central (U.S.) time, and you can listen to it live at The Mic 92.1. (Just click on the red strip at the top left.)
I am returning from London, where I have been talking about my book about the Liberation of Paris (should be available in the US soon, folks!) to Manchester, hurtling through the English countryside at around 100 mph on the train (I can hear the sound of French readers snickering and US readers gasping in amazement). So it’s entirely appropriate that I post this video of the cutisssimo 4-week old kitten that was discovered yesterday on the London underground railway (aka The Tube – it’s because, unlike New York or Paris, the tunnels are very very deep and are tube-shaped).
The kitten – only 4 weeks old they say – has been named Victoria, after the station she was found at. There is a tradition in the UK of naming animals after stations: Paddington Bear, from Darkest Peru, was found at Paddington Station. His life was described by Michael Bond, and Paddington, complete with duffle coat, sou’wester and marmalade sandwiches, haunted my childhood. Victoria may have a similar success, if some canny author decides to write her life story:
I’ve been a professional biologist for decades, but I’m still learning stuff that just floors me. Reader Gregory called my attention to a piece in the Atlantic about the wasp Sphecius speciosus: “The cicada killers are coming.” The whole short piece is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight one bit that stupefied me (it’s in bold):
Cicada killer females construct burrows that are small wonders of engineering and effort. Several feet long, and featuring numerous individual brood chambers at their far end, they require the excavation of hundreds of times the insects’ own weight in soil. The female killers manage the feat in just a few hours, using only their jaws and hind legs.
After that they hunt, for the so-called dog-day cicadas of genus Tibicen. A killer paralyzes a cicada with a single sting, but getting it back to the burrow can be an all-day affair. It may be three times the killer’s own weight–too heavy to properly fly with. Instead she drags it up the nearest tree, then launches herself, prey in claw, and glides as far as possible toward her burrow. She may have to repeat the process half a dozen times.
Back at the burrow, she deposits the paralyzed cicada in a brood chamber. Then she lays an egg and carefully tucks it beneath the cicada’s foreleg, beside the puncture wound from her sting. (The doomed creature looks, creepily, like a wizened old man with a baguette tucked under his arm.) The female then seals the chamber with dirt, the cicada still living and immobilized within it. A few days later the egg hatches and grub begins to eat the cicada alive, using the puncture wood as an entry point. Later, the grub spins a cocoon, in which it metamorphoses into an adult wasp, emerging the following year. (Footage of these behaviors has been kindly posted online by filmmaker Sam Orr, who is working on a documentary about the 17-year cicadas.)
(I haven’t found Orr’s videos, though I’ve found his Kickstarter page with a 3.5 minute clip about cicadas, so if you find his other videos, feel free to embed them in the comments.)
I’m astounded, and still find it hard to believe, that the wasps actually glide to their nests from a tree rather than fly. Verification by insect-savvy readers is welcome, but the video below suggests that it would be very hard for a wasp to fly while carrying a cicada.
The ability to glide toward her burrow after climbing several trees in succession suggests that these wasps have an exquisite sense of direction. And what tenacity!
It’s this kind of eating-the-prey alive behavior that helped convince Darwin that if there was a god, it wasn’t a kindly one.
I can’t help but post occasional comments from creationists—just to remind us what we’re up against. This comment, sent in response to my post about declining ticket sales at Kentucky’s Creation Museum, goes above the fold, for the writer, one “Lynette,” is just so uninformed, so willfully ignorant, that it makes me despair of America.
How many mistakes or lies can you spot in this post? You’ll surely recognize The Darwin Deathbed Canard:
I was very distraught when I read your uneducated and rude comments toward the people in this country who do believe in creation. I know many doctor, lawyer’s [sic] and business owners, who absolutely do believe in creation and further more [sic] believe in God. You might also want to further examine the very man who came up with the ridiculous theory, lie, of evolution and relie [sic] he actually died rejecting his own theories, and became a Christian. He ended up not only believing in creationism, but also believing that God sent His Son to die for Him, and accepting Him as his savior. So maybe you should get a little more educated. It is also true that many European countries, who believe themselves extremely well educated, teach both creation and evolution in their public schools. To be honest I don’t know what people are so afraid of, evolution is taught as a theory, so why not creation. THERE IS NO SOLID PROOF FOR EVOLUTION, YET HAMS [sic] THEORIES MAKE MORE SENSE than anything I have ever read. By the way the percentage of how many Americans believe in creation is hopeful on your part, I know it’s not factual. There are many people that don’t claim Christianity, that still believe in creation. Sorry but the truth of the matter is wether [sic] you like it or not it’s probably at least 70 percent.
My point here is twofold. Our country is full of people like this: over 40% of Americans believe in young-Earth creationism and the de novo appearance of species that have remained unchanged ever since. Second, these people have had ample opportunity to inform themselves about evolution. Unless they’re some of the few that have never been exposed to evolution on television, in books, or in school, we have every right to deride their ignorance.
Now that’s what I call a safari: a group of impala charge across the road, oblivious to the safari cars, focused only on one thing: escaping the cheetah. The cat is similarly single-minded. One of the impala ends up bumping into a car. Spoiler: the cheetah goes hungry. This time.
I got this email a short while ago from a religious publisher:
Dear Dr. Coyne,
My name is [name redacteed] and I lead the [name of division and publisher]. Dr. William Lane Craig is one of our authors and we are planning to organize a debate next April or May in Chicago, and would like to invite you to participate as his opponent. I let Dr. Craig know that I was planning to contact you, and he welcomes the opportunity to debate, and has suggested this topic: Are Science and Religion Incompatible? We think this will be a good opportunity for two opposing positions on this issue to have a fair hearing, and to benefit a wide audience both in person and online.
If you’re interested we can discuss additional details, but I wanted to first share the idea and hear your thoughts.
Thanks, Dr. Coyne.
[name redacted]
My response:
No thank you. It would look good on his c.v., but not so good on mine.
