Chipmunk Monday

June 17, 2013 • 4:35 am

If you’re not feeling chipper this Monday, have a gander at these lovely chipmunks (they’re Eastern chipmunks, or Tamias striatus) photographed by reader Diana MacPherson. They came with an email:

I often have chipmunks at my house and put out seeds for them on my deck. These are from a couple years ago now but there are a bunch of new babies that have just come out and I’m hoping to get pictures of them.

They often look like they are pondering deep questions & wringing their hands.
This one looks as if it’s taken aboard a full cargo of seeds:
20090426-IMG_5859-Edit
I love chipmunks but hardly ever see them in the eastern U.S., and never in Chicago.
Stay tuned for the babies. . .
IMG_0101

21 animals you didn’t know existed

June 16, 2013 • 10:33 am

From imgur comes a post on weird creatures: “31 animals that you didn’t know existed” (actually, I count 21; the “31” may be the number of photos). But since there are so many biologists and science buffs here, I suspect some of you may know more than half of them. I’ll post a few below; try to identify them without peeking at the names. Then go to the imgur site to see if you know the rest.

Extra credit if you’ve seen one in the wild, and weigh in below if you have.

I love this first animal, and used to see a specimen every day as a graduate student in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology when I walked between my office and the Coke machine. I believe Darwin mentioned it in in The Voyage of the Beagle:

EayqwrVh

iGlGLbah

IK7zUe1

8Fjx9ap

7wr7YMY

IZwFdNU

piIPhvth

Finally, a lovely bird:

t6THZpp

The Saudi woman who dared to drive

June 16, 2013 • 9:12 am

Apparently Driving While Female is not technically illegal in Saudi Arabia, but you can still get arrested and jailed for it. This woman, Manal al-Sharif, found herself sufficiently ticked off at the prohibition of women driving that she defied the ban, landing in jail for ten days and garnering the expected death threats. Unwittingly, she became an icon for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. She describes the incident and its aftermath in this 14-minute TED talk.

Her statement about how to effect change in a misogynistic society, starting at about 10 minutes, is quite eloquent.

While Americans often think of Saudi Arabia as an ally, it’s hardly a democracy, and, soaked in Islam, enforces despotic rules on its people.  They also still behead people in public. Most of the despotism, of course, comes from Islam.

h/t: Matt

Salon calls atheists “as obnoxious as Christians” for trying to stop distribution of Bibles in U.S. schools

June 16, 2013 • 5:49 am

Salon has a distinct animus against atheism, and that includes a new piece by staff writer by Mary Elizabeth Williams: “Atheists: Just as obnoxious as Christians“.  Her remarkably naive piece instantiates the famous xkcd cartoon that has become almost viral in our community:

atheists

So why are atheists as obnoxious as Christians? Here’s the story.  In January of this year, a religious group, World Changers of Florida, began a “passive” distribution of Bibles in eleven public schools in Orange County Florida. (“Passive” means that the Bibles were simply laid on tables in the school for students to take.) The Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) news report notes:

The [school] district has created a limited public forum in Orange County public schools. On Jan. 16, World Changers of Florida used the forum to distribute New International Version bibles to students in 11 schools. WCF “support[s] the biblical account of creation, including having creation theory taught in our public schools” and “speak[s] out against humanistic views contrary to the biblically based founding fathers’ constitutional vision.”

This is clearly a violation of the Constitution, for it promulgates religion in public schools. FFRF objected by letter, trying to stop the distribution of Bibles:

The plaintiffs contend that public schools shouldn’t allow literature distributions by any outside group and told the school district that by letter before the World Changers event. Williamson reiterated that position at a Jan. 29 pre-agenda meeting of the School Board.

FFRF encouraged the district to adopt a policy that “prohibits outside groups from turning schools into religious battlegrounds while preserving the distribution system for the benefit of the school” and suggested model language.

But the school refused to stop the distribution, and a judge ruled it legal. The FFRF, then, asked that they be allowed to distribute their own nonreligious materials at the same time:

After the district refused, FFRF asked for permission to distribute secular materials. Williamson submitted the secular groups’ literature Jan. 29 for approval. Included were nine “nontracts,” five brochures, eight books, one essay and one sticker. Three books were voluntarily withdrawn in order to speed the approval process after stonewalling by the district.

The district prohibited four of FFRF’s five books, leaving part of one book and several small pamphlets. “Good Without God” stickers were prohibited.

Here’s the list of materials suggested for distribution by the FFRF (taken from the ensuing FFRF lawsuit), and what happened to them.  The FFRF voluntarily rescinded three books under pressure from the schools, which was delaying approval. The school then prohibited four of the remaining five books, leaving one partial book  (Part III of The Age of Reason) and a few small pamphlets, so the volume of material was substantially less than the contents of the Bible. (The version of the Bible distributed was the equivalent of 1900 pages when printed as a normal book; the FFRF asked for 1300 pages—less material—to be distributed, but only about 100 pages were allowed.)

Picture 3The FFRF objected to this differential treatment of materials. Especially humorous were the reasons the school gave for prohibiting the atheist materials (my emphasis):

  • The district objected to the Harris book for describing “the sacrifice of virgins, killing and eating of children in order to ensure the future fertility of mothers, feeding infants to sharks, and the burning of widows so they can follow their husbands into the next world.” FFRF’s complaint notes that the concepts flagged as age inappropriate all appear in the bible.
  • WCF put up interactive whiteboards, had volunteers staffing tables to talk with students and passed out invitations to worship at the Orlando Wesleyan Church. Plaintiffs attempted to pass out a pizza party invitation but were censored at several schools. Freethought volunteers had to wait up to an hour at some schools to set up.

In other words, violence and immorality are okay if they’re in the Bible, but it’s not okay for Harris to point this out.

At this point the FFRF had enough, and filed suit against the school board (free pdf of lawsuit here).  As you’ll see, the lawsuit requests this:

Our public schools exist to educate, not to serve as conduits for advertisers, proselytizers, and special interest groups seeking to propagandize a captive audience of young students. Plaintiffs prefer that no dissemination of outside materials, such as Bibles or their own literature, occur in Orange County Public Schools. But since Defendants are allowing distributions, all viewpoints must now be granted fair and equal access.

Enter Salon, where Mary Elizabeth Williams, who does object to the distribution of Bibles, objects even more to the FFRF’s lawsuit, calling it “obnoxious,” “whiny,” and even “idiocy”:

It’s patently absurd and offensive that the World Changers of Florida organization, a Christian group with the hilariously inaccurate stated purpose of furthering “the biblically based founding fathers constitutional vision”  has been allowed to run roughshod over the district and impose its vision at taxpayer-funded schools. This should never have happened in the first place.

But idiocy isn’t fixed with more idiocy. A petulant strategy of “You let them do this and if we can’t do that we’re going to sue” is absurd and immature. The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s threat that the “plaintiffs intend to repeat the distribution every school year, unless the school prohibits all such distributions, including bibles” doesn’t sound like a blow for freedom of expression; it just sounds whiny. And when you say you’re “committed to the cherished principle of separation of state and church” and you’re fighting to distribute anti-religious materials in state-run facilities, you’re not separating church and state either. You’re promoting an explicit agenda.

I get that a point is being made here about the selectivity of the school board’s permissiveness. I get that it should not rain Bibles in schools. You know why I get it? Because I’m a concerned parent. Because I have two children I’m trying to protect from aggressive hotheads trying to shove their ideologies upon them. At their schools. I resent that, and I sure as hell don’t respect that, regardless of the source.

You know that thing about being the change you want to see in the world? Yeah, that. You want to make a statement? Is there a way you could do that that wouldn’t involve being all aggro toward minors? If you’re concerned that inappropriate materials are being handed out to kids, you don’t threaten to do the same thing. You don’t get in a pissing contest over who can be more obnoxious. And you don’t use schoolchildren as your pawns.

In fact, it’s Williams who is the whiny one here, and also shows a profound misunderstanding of the serious issues at hand.  First of all, this is not an issue of “the separation of church and state”, but one of, as the lawsuit argues, of “equal protection and freedom of speech.”  Second, the violation of freedom of speech here is a serious issue. If it’s allowed to stand, it will spread, for Christianity in America is ever busy and ever feeding on ignorance.

Apparently Williams feels that if the courts allow the distribution of Bibles, not much should be done about it.  After all, that’s “using schoolchildren as pawns.” (It isn’t, of course: no schoolchildren are directly involved in this suit). This isn’t about explicitly promoting an atheist agenda, but allowing contrary viewpoints to be expressed if a Christian viewpoint is permitted and encouraged.

After all, doesn’t Williams think that World Changers of Florida were “promoting an explicit agenda”? If not, why on earth were they distributing Bibles?

Finally, the FFRF’s lawsuit was a last resort, one taken after the courts allowed the distribution of Bibles but prohibited the distribution of nearly all opposing materials. The FFRF did everything it could to stop the Bible giveaway, and when that failed they tried to secure the Constitutional freedom of secular speech. When the schools wouldn’t go for this, the FFRF filed a lawsuit, albeit reluctantly (see below).

It’s curious that although Williams seems strongly opposed to her kids being offered free Bibles, she also decries the FFRF’s attempt to “make a statement,” and, tellingly offers no suggestions about how to do make any statement. Are the FFRF and the secular parents who supported them supposed to offer timid editorials in, say, the local newspapers? That’s really going to work in Florida!

No, the only way to get this kind of nonsense to stop is to ask for equal time, and, if that’s not granted, file a lawsuit.  The FFRF doesn’t like doing that because, as they told me, they realize that schools have limited financial resources and they don’t want school budgets eroded by litigation.  But legal action, or the threat thereof, is one of the few ways to get these proselytizing Christians to actually pay attention.  This is what we learned in the case of Eric Hedin and Ball State University.

Schools have to learn that if they insist on violating the Constitution, their budgets will be at risk. And insisting on such violations really is using schoolchildren as pawns.  As the FFRF’s lawyer on this case, Andrew Seidel, wrote me (quoted with permission):

We gave the school plenty of opportunities to either (1) shut the forum down as they are allowed to do by law—every time they refused, or (2) to at least allow a fair and equitable distribution.  Paragraph 5 of the complaint on page 2 lays out our stance pretty clearly.  The bottom line is that we always try to work with schools.  But if they refuse to follow the Constitution or if they violate our rights, we’re not going to take it lying down.

Saturday critters

June 15, 2013 • 3:05 pm

Several readers sent in photos of animals today. The first is by our anonymous correspondent in Idaho who has been following a brood of two eaglets. As you can see below, they’re about ready to fledge, carefully watched by their proud parents. It’s a fantastic photograph (click all photos to enlarge).

Eagles

Matthew Cobb called my attention to a tweet by Bug Girl calling attention to the caterpillar of Harris’ Three-spot (Harrisimemna trisignata), a beautiful moth (at bottom). According to the photos, by Colin Hutton, the caterpillar is cryptic, mimicking bird droppings. The curious thing is that each time the caterpillar molts, it retains the head from the previous molts as part of its camouflage:

Caterpillar 1

Caterpillar 2

Hutton has some really nice insect pictures on his website.

Here’s the adult, from Bug Guide:

Three spot

Finally, reader Dermot C called my attention to a National Geographic post describing the discovery of a new, hot-pink slug, ( Triboniophorus aff. graeffei) from Australia, where it’s endemic to Mount Kaputar, in New South Wales. The 20-cm (8-inch) slugs resemble the candy lipstick I used to get at Halloween, or maybe Gene Simmons’s tongue:

Hot pink slug
Photo by Michael Murphy, NPWS

The article notes:

A volcanic eruption 17 million years ago on Mount Kaputar kept a small, four-square-mile (ten-square-kilometer) area lush and wet even as much of the rest of Australia turned to desert. This changing environment marooned the plants and animals living on Mount Kaputar from their nearest neighbors for millions of years, making the area a unique haven for species such as the pink slug.

Because the pink slugs live in beds of red eucalyptus leaves, [Ranger Michael] Murphy suspects their color could potentially serve as camouflage, helping the animals blend in to their leafy habitat.

“However, [the slugs] also spend a lot of their time high on tree trunks nowhere near fallen leaves, so it is possible that the color is just a quirk of evolution. I think if you are isolated on a remote mountaintop, you can pretty much be whatever color you like,” Murphy noted.

And here’s where the things live: Mount Kaputar:

kaputarranges

So much for benign religion, Rabbi Sacks

June 15, 2013 • 12:09 pm

The other day, the old faker Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Britain’s “Chief Rabbi,” was busy expatiating in the Spectator how wonderful the non-fundamentalists faiths are, and how much the world would suffer if they vanished, taking with them all the grounding of human morality. Well, that was bogus, but Sacks also neglected the malignity of some non-fundamentalist faiths.

Take Catholicism, not generally thought of as fundamentalist. Yet I’d claim that its tenets are profoundly immoral, as evidenced by its marginalization of women and gays, its refusal to sanction birth control (therefore spreading AIDS in Africa), its retrograde stands on divorce and sex, and its official coverups of child rape. (See my series a while back on Catholic “sins of the day”.)

And speaking of coverups, have a gander at this New York Times article documenting yet another perfidy of the Church. It’s fighting lengthening the statue of limitations for child abuse, so that child-raping Church officials can get off the hook more easily:

Victims and their advocates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York are pushing legislators to lengthen the limits or abolish them altogether, and to open temporary “windows” during which victims can file lawsuits no matter how long after the alleged abuse occurred.

The Catholic Church has successfully beaten back such proposals in many states, arguing that it is difficult to get reliable evidence when decades have passed and that the changes seem more aimed at bankrupting the church than easing the pain of victims.

Already reeling from about $2.5 billion spent on legal fees, settlements and prevention programs relating to child sexual abuse, the church has fought especially hard against the window laws, which it sees as an open-ended and unfair exposure for accusations from the distant past. In at least two states, Colorado and New York, the church even hired high-priced lobbying and public relations firms to supplement its own efforts. Colorado parishes handed out postcards for churchgoers to send to their representatives, while in Ohio, bishops themselves pressed legislators to water down a bill.

How can an institution that supposedly embodies morality be so concerned about money? What does money matter—and the church has billions—compared to the sexual abuse of a child?  If they really were God’s institution on Earth, they’d be working to get rid of all time limitations on prosecution.

This is about the most cynical thing I’ve heard a Catholic say:

The church’s arguments were forcefully made by Patrick Brannigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, in testimony before the State Legislature in January opposing a proposal to abolish the limits in civil cases.

“How can an institution conceivably defend itself against a claim that is 40, 50 or 60 years old?” Mr. Brannigan said. “Statutes of limitation exist because witnesses die and memories fade.”

“This bill would not protect a single child,” he said, while “it would generate an enormous transfer of money in lawsuits to lawyers.”

Uh huh.  They just don’t want to pay lawyers. But of course it would protect children, because priests and other abusers wouldn’t be free from prosecution after the statue of limitations ran out. It would also protect them by deterring current abusers, some of whose crimes are long past, from transgressing again. It’s a powerful disincentive. And, as we know, many victims of abuse don’t even admit it, or become sufficiently empowered to seek redress, until decades have passed.

Finally, the Church could make the same argument about murder, which has no statute of limitations. Too many lawyers to pay! Memories fade! Tell that to Whitey Bulger.

The priests even try lobbying in their sermons!

Joan Fitz-Gerald, former president of the Colorado Senate, who proposed the window legislation, was an active Catholic who said she was stunned to find in church one Sunday in 2006 that the archdiocese had asked priests to raise the issue during a Mass and distribute lobbying postcards.

“It was the most brutal thing I’ve ever been through,” she said of the church campaign. “The politics, the deception, the lack of concern for not only the children in the past, but for children today.” She has since left the church.

What do you say, Chief Rabbi? Is this good behavior or what?

Latest news on HedinGate from the Muncie newspaper

June 15, 2013 • 9:00 am

Seth Slabaugh has been covering the Eric Hedin case for the Muncie [Indiana] Star-Press, and has published a longish piece in today’s issue, “Panel investigates Christian BSU prof’s class” (note, it’s four pages long, so click at the bottom of the story to continue).

As you will remember, Eric Hedin is the Ball State University professor who taught an honors science class at that public university, a class that was infused with Christian religious prosyletizing, including teaching intelligent design. I became aware of this course through an anonymous student who complained to someone in the area, and that person then informed me. After investigating Hedin’s syllabus, I wrote to Hedin’s chair, letting him know about the course and its strongly pro-religion syllabus. The chairman blew me off, defending Hedin’s course as having been approved by the University and offering a diversity of viewpoints (not true). You can read more about Hedin’s course here.

Nothing else happened until the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), whom I contacted after being tossed under the bus, wrote to Ball State letting them know that they may be in violation of the First Amendment requiring that government not promote specific religions.

Slabaugh’s piece begins with a picture of one of the three textbooks used in the course, John C. Lennox’s odious God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Answer: of course not!). Here’s a picture of the book; I’ve looked at it and the one other textbook available in the University of Chicago Library (the third is apparently a nonreligious book on cosmology).  The cross on the cover gives it away, and it’s as expected: a deeply Christian analysis of science, showing that everything we know about evolution, physics, and biochemistry comports with Christianity. It’s also creationist, suggesting that the gaps in the fossil record mean that macroevolution didn’t happen, and that natural selection on random mutations couldn’t possibly explain evolution. (It also goes after our ignorance of how life began, slyly insinuating that maybe God did it.) Those are classic creationist arguments.

Lennox
Praise the Lord and pass the pipette!

The other textbook I’ve seen is The Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew. It does the same thing as Lennox’s book, but using the Old instead of the New Testament, also comporting science with the Bible. (It’s not quite as bad as Lennox’s book, but that’s not saying much.) Clearly, the use of both books as texts, with no dissenting material, constitutes proselytizing for religion. It’s unconscionable if you have any love for true science untrammeled by the albatross of woo.

Slabaugh’s story has some new information of interest, including the following (quotation marks include direct quotes from the paper):

  • “State Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, was among the first to call Ball State University President Jo Ann Gora after news broke that Eric Hedin, an assistant professor of physics, had been accused of encouraging students in a science class to believe in the Bible.. . . “I come from a Christian perspective and a conservative perspective,” Kruse told The Star Press on Friday. ‘I’m under the impression academic freedom should be for everybody, not just liberal, non-God people but Christians as well, who should have the liberty to teach what is the best thing for kids to learn.’ The chairman of the Senate education committee, Kruse last year unsuccessfully sought the teaching of creationism in schools. This year he filed a bill, also unsuccessfully, that would allow public schools to require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, though individual students could opt out if they or their parents preferred.”

LOL.  Kruse is the perfect advocate for Hedin!  Several of Hedin’s students also wrote the University’s president supporting his course, but there are also dissenting students whose complaints have not been made public, either because they are currently wary of revealing their names (no surprise!) or because the University won’t release the student evaluations, despite the fact that they are anonymous:

  • “Ball State denied The Star Press’ request for access to student evaluations of Hedin’s ‘Boundaries of Science’ course, even without the students’ names. The university said the evaluations are private because they are ‘deliberative documents that are used for the purpose of recommending personnel decisions about promotion, tenure and salary.’. . . Hedin lectured only a few times, [one] student wrote to Gora. ‘The sole content of these lectures involved the life cycle of stellar bodies and the Big Bang Theory.’ Twice, while Hedin was away at conferences, the class watched movies, one of which ‘detailed specific gaps in evolutionary theory,’ the student reported.

I am nearly 100% certain, from what I’ve heard, that the movie in question was the intelligent-design movie “Expelled”, featuring Ben Stein.

It’s heartening that a former BSU trustee also wrote to the University’s president:

  • “Academic freedom is not to be confused with the right of freedom of speech, former BSU trustee James Garretson wrote to Gora on May 26. ‘Instructors are not free to teach whatever they want but are obligated to present the best knowledge of the day on their particular subject,’ wrote Garretson, a member of FFRF. When authorities can’t be convinced that they are breaking constitutional law when they sponsor sectarian activities, ‘FFRF sues, and it wins more often than not,’ he wrote.A retired social studies teacher at Carmel High School, Garretson told The Star Press his interest is ‘merely academic and pride in BSU. I have no problem with creationism being compared to evolutionary science, so long as it is not taught as a science. The Supreme Court settled this years ago …'”

And we now know who will investigate Hedin’s class and his behavior.

  • “Following established policies, a review will be conducted by four faculty members, [spokeswoman Joan Todd] told The Star Press. ‘They will consider carefully all the course materials and speak with Dr. Hedin. They will then render a decision on the academic integrity of the course.’ The review committee members are Catherine (Caty) Pilachowski, a professor of astronomy at Indiana University and past president of the American Astronomical Society; and three BSU faculty: Gary Dodson, professor of biology; Juli Thorsen Eflin, professor of philosophy; and Richard Fluegeman Jr., professor of geological sciences.”

The only thing that irks me is that Hedin’s chair, Thomas Robertson, brushed me aside when I complained, and it took a complaint from the FFRF to get the investigation launched. Well, such is the power of that organization, and I’m glad they interceded. But I say this to Dr. Robertson: “Pity you didn’t listen.”

Finally, this statement early in Slabaugh’s piece threw me for a loop (my emphasis): “A variety of others also have contacted Gora, including a trumpeter from Tempe; a school teacher and ex-Hoosier from Okeechobee; alumni; a former member of BSU’s board of trustees; academics; a Methodist church member from Fort Wayne; the parent of a BSU student; and students who have taken the controversial course.”

A trumpeter from Tempe? That sounded familiar! Sure enough, it was our own reader and owner of Baihu, the prolific Ben Goren:

“As a fan of atheist Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago who brought the complaint against Hedin to FFRF’s attention, Ben Goren, a semi-professional trumpet player and database consultant from Tempe, felt compelled to contact Gora. He claimed two of the textbooks used by Hedin are ‘as outrageously off-the-wall as those on conspiracies of space lizards who directed the building of the pyramids.'”

Classic Ben Goren!  I’m not sure, though, why I was identified as an “atheist”. And I’m not sure, either, how Christians will react to the comparison of Jesus with a space lizard!

Picture 3