President Morsi shows his true colors

October 23, 2012 • 12:58 pm

Back in June I posted my worries about Mohamed Morsi (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood) having been elected President of Egypt. I was told by some of my readers to “calm down,” since Morsi was either a moderate or a meaningless figurehead.  I don’t think that’s proved to be the case.  Check out this video, which implies that he’s not a moderate.  Here Morsi joins a cleric in a prayer for the destruction of the Jews and infidels.

My prediction: Egypt is moving slowly towards a state run on Islamic law, along the lines of Iran.

And don’t say he’s just along for the show; he’s participating.

h/t: Malgorzata

Beluga imitates human speech

October 23, 2012 • 6:32 am

A new short paper in Current Biology reports a pretty amazing phenomenon: a beluga whale has begun to imitate human speech.

As the authors report (reference below (you can find a free link to the paper on this page) captive beluga whales (also called white whales; Delphinapterus leucas) have been reported to imitate sounds, with one apparently able to repeat its name, but there hasn’t been published scientific documentation with sonograms.

Ridgway et al. give the circumstances:

After seven years in our care (see the Supplemental Information), a white whale called NOC began, spontaneously, to make unusual sounds. We interpreted the whale’s vocalizations as an attempt to mimic humans. Whale vocalizations often sounded as if two people were conversing in the distance just out of range for our understanding. These ‘conversations’ were heard several times before the whale was identified as the source. The whale lived among a group of dolphins and socialized with two female white whales. The whale was exposed to speech not only from humans  at the surface — it was present at times when divers used surface-to-diver communication equipment (see Supplemental Information). The whale was recognized as the source of the speech-like sounds when a diver surfaced outside this whale’s enclosure and asked “Who told me to get out?” Our observations led us to conclude the “out” which was repeated several times came from NOC.

The amplitude and rhythm of the whale’s sounds were very smilar to that of human speech; here’s a sonogram from the paper showing the resemblance.

From Ridgway et al, Fig. 1: Figure 1. Acoustic record of human speech and whale speech-like sound. (A) Human speech from a tape recorded voice track analyzed with Audacity (an on-line open source sound editor). (B) Whale speech-like sounds recorded with a B&K microphone in air and displayed in water-fall mode on the SD 350 digital spectrum Analyzer (Scientific Atlanta).

Of course you’ll want to hear what the whale sounded like. New Scientist has a recording of the whale’s sounds; just click “Listen to it here” in the first paragraph. It’s pretty amazing.

The whale’s sounds were produced in a way different from normal whale sounds.

Unlike echolocation clicks, ordinary pulse bursts, and whistle-like sounds, the production of speech-like sounds involved marked inflation of first one and then the other vestibular sac. This was readily observed on the surface of the whale’s head and may have been necessary to emphasize lower frequencies of the speech-like sounds. In usual white whale sounds, such extreme inflation of these sacs is not evident.

Sadly, the speech-like sounds disappeared after four years when the beluga had matured.

The authors aren’t claiming that belugas are great mimics (listen to the sounds yourself), but simply that they were attempting to mimic human speech, something that isn’t surprising in such smart animals.

I recently posted about how unethical it is to keep these animals in captivity, and this is just another example of how smart they are. If they really could talk, they’d say something like this:

h/t: Matthew Cobb

______

Ridgway, S., D. Carder, M. Jeffries, and M. Todd. 2012. Spontaneous speech mimicry of human sounds. Current Biology. Current Biology Vol 22 No 20,  DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.044

Da roolz—again!

October 23, 2012 • 5:22 am

As readership has grown here—a circumstance that pleases me no end—so has the level of acrimony in the comments. All too often the comments devolve into a shouting match, with readers calling each other names, accusing each other of lying, dominating the threads, and completely ignoring the original post.

Now I don’t mind a post inspiring discussion that is tangential; after all, those tangents can be enlightening. But what I do mind is a level of aggression and name-calling that seems to be increasing.

Let me, then, reiterate a few policies of this website.  Sadly, I have to do this all too often.

1. No name-calling.  It’s okay to call creationists in general “morons,” but have some respect for your fellow commenters, even if they’re creationists. Do not accuse them of being “liars”; if you do catch them out in a misstatement, deliberate or not, just correct them. Do not call them any names; they are human beings and have feelings that can be hurt.

Extremism in defense of truth is no vice. But there’s no need for incivility. I’m serious, and will reprimand those who are uncivil. If they don’t tone it down, they’re gone.

2. Try to avoid one-on-ones.  Too often a thread devolves into a mano a mano argument between two people. Neither, of course, ever changes their minds! If two people together are making more than, say, 20% of the comments on a thread, then they should either stop the discussion or take it to private email.

3. If you’re religious, provide evidence for your views. My policy has always been this: if a creationist, or some other vociferous religious person, appears, I first ask them for the evidence for their beliefs. Before they are allowed to post further, or become a regular commenter, they have to give that evidence. This is, after all, an evidence-oriented website, and if you’re going to make statements about a god, or the veracity of scripture, you have to support that with evidence. My view has always been that many religious beliefs are indeed scientifically testable, and so you have to adduce your evidence.  This isn’t one sided: I’m constantly giving evidence for evolution.

Since I’m travelling these days, I’ll leave it to readers to challenge any religious commenters. Ask them how they know what they’re saying about their faith. If they don’t answer but continue to comment, let me know by email.  If they do, feel free to challenge their beliefs.

UPDATE:  Three more roolz:

4. Don’t insult the host.  By all means go after my ideas, but a sure route to ticking me off is to make derisive comments about my boots, love of cats, appearance, and so on.  That is rude and unnecessary. I don’t make a penny from my posts, so give me the benefit of civility.

5.  This is a website, not a blog. Don’t argue with me about this or quote dictionary definitions; it won’t change my mind. I dislike the word “blog” because it’s ugly and declassé, so please indulge this quirk as a lovable peccadillo.

6.  Please not embed videos in the comments.  Just provide the YouTube link. It eats up bandwidth and is awkward.

Italian scientists sentenced to jail for failing to predict earthquake

October 23, 2012 • 5:00 am

This is unbelievable. According to yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor, an Italian court sentenced six scientists and a bureaucrat to six years in jail for failing to predict a 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, a small city in the center of the country. That quake toppled ancient buildings and killed 309 people.

They were sentenced not for scientific inaccuracy, but for manslaughter.

Today, a court in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, 380 years after that miscarriage of justice, sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead.

. . . The seven convicted men stood accused of “inexact, incomplete, and contradictory” information about the risks posed by tremors in the weeks ahead of the April 6, 2009, earthquake that caused so much destruction.

The seven, all members of the “National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks,” were convicted after an apparently emotional trial in which the testimony of people who had lost loved ones was allowed, as if it was relevant to the question of whether current science can predict earthquakes. No grief, no matter how great, can answer that question (which is a resounding “no,” by the way).

As we all know, especially Americans who live in California, there is no way to predict when an earthquake will take place, even with advanced technology involving sensors placed along fault lines. Residents of San Francisco, for instance, all know that The Big One is Coming, but you don’t see people scrambling from of the city. It could happen today, or in a century. (Wikipedia has a decent article on the methods and success of earthquake prediction.)

The CSM continues:

The scientific consensus has been clear on this for some time. As much as the world would like the ability to predict earthquakes, it’s eluded the best efforts of scientists for decades. The plate-tectonic revolution in geology held out some hope for greater predictive abilities as it gathered steam in the 1950s and 1960s. But while scientists have a much better understanding of why earthquakes happen and where they’re likely to occur than at any point in human history, their predictive powers are so vague as to be practically useless – beyond recommending people shouldn’t live in quake zones like L’Aquila. People are generally resistant to such advice though. The city was rebuilt after major earthquakes in the 15th and 18th centuries, just as it has been rebuilt now.

Exactly what did they do to deserve six years in stir? Joel Cohen, a professor at Rockefeller University (and one of my old professors at Harvard) explains what the miscreants did:

Italy’s National Commission for Prediction and Prevention of Major Risks, which comprised the seven men now on trial, met in L’Aquila for one hour on March 31, 2009, to assess the earthquake swarms. According to the minutes, Enzo Boschi, President of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, was asked if they were precursors to an earthquake resembling the one in 1703. He replied: “It is unlikely that an earthquake like the one in 1703 could occur in the short term, but the possibility cannot be totally excluded (emphasis added).”

In fact, other seismologists agree that that statement was the most informed one possible at the time.

That’s science, folks.  We can make statements about likelihood of tectonic events, but can never have complete certainty.  In fact, we can’t totally exclude the possibility that evolution didn’t occur either, though, given the mountain of evidence supporting it, that possibility is extremely unlikely.

PuffHo has more information, including a BBC video of the quake, the trial, and statements by residents. (The video continues after the first pass-through).

The convicted are appealing (I hope the scientists haven’t been jailed yet), and I trust the Italian courts will come to their senses.  If they don’t, the upshot is this: Italian scientists will no longer make informed predictions about anything of social import lest they languish in jail for making a mistake.  The court needs to learn a lesson that scientists have long absorbed: we don’t know anything with absolute certainty (though we know some things with near-certainty).

h/t: Linda

Peregrinations

October 22, 2012 • 2:26 pm

As I posted a few days ago, I’m taking off tomorrow for two weeks. Destinations: Cambridge, Massachusetts; Stockbridge, Massachusetts (site of the small “Moving Naturalism Forward” meeting; and Mexico City, site of their second annual atheism conference.

I’ll return from Mexico November 7, and leave a week later for two talks in Scotland.  The upshot is that posting may be sparse, though I’m sure Matthew and Greg will step into the breach.

For those of you expecting books with hand-drawn cats and autographs, please be patient until I return from the UK at the end of November when, I hope, Obama will have been elected.

Einstein’s anti-God letter goes for $3 mil+

October 22, 2012 • 9:29 am

UPDATE:  Note that in the comments several readers point out inaccuracies in the translations I took from other sources.

___________________

You might have heard that a 1954 letter written by Albert Einstein to a Jewish philosopher, Eric Gutkind, was up for auction at eBay.  Its importance it that it dispels the myth, once and for all, that Einstein was religious.  Well, the auction ended a few days ago, and the final bid was $3,000,100 (someone put that hundred in at the last minute).

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Richard Dawkins had some interest in acquiring the letter:

The current owner of the letter picked it up at a London auction in 2008, where it sold for $404,000. At the time of the sale the New York Times reported that Richard Dawkins was among the bidders.

Eric Gazin, president of Auction Cause, the online auction management agency handling the eBay sale, said as far as he knows the London auction was the first time the letter had gone up for sale.

“It wasn’t discovered in an antique store or behind a painting,” he said. “Someone knew what it was and held onto it.”

I asked Gazin why the seller turned to eBay to sell the letter, rather than through a more traditional auction house such as Christie’s or Sotheby’s.

“At a traditional auction the bidding is over in just a few minutes,” he said. “On eBay you’ve got 100 million active members, and the bidding lasts for 10 days. You also get great exposure.”

Here’s a photo of of Einstein’s Epistle to Gutkind:

A larger image of the letter, which is written in German, is here.

What did it say? Among other things, these tidbits:

… I read a great deal in the last days of your book [Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt], and thank you very much for sending it to me. What especially struck me about it was this. With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common.

… The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the privilege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolization. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Well, that settles that. Of course we all knew that Einstein didn’t believe in a personal god, and seemed to use “god” as a metaphor for “the cosmos” or “the principles of physics”.  Now maybe the faithful will catch on.

New Atheism scares a Christian because it’s too optimistic

October 22, 2012 • 4:13 am

This is the second time I’ve heard this criticism of atheism, the first being the bizarre lucubrations of Francis Spufford, who didn’t like the atheist bus slogan (“There probably is no God. So stop worrying and enjoy your life”) because it was too optimistic.  There is more to life, said Spufford, than merely enjoying it.

Now, over at PuffHo‘s “Religion” section, Paul Wallace (self-described as “a professor of physics [at Agnes Scott College] and a former working scientist”), Wallace diagnoses this optimism as “The real problem with New Atheism“:

What scares me? Plenty of things. “The Shining” scares me. Cancer scares me. The vulnerability of my children scares me. And for a number of years now the New Atheists have scared me.

It’s true: Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and even sweet lovable PZ Myers. I am not making this up. These gentlemen, with their impressive and sustained frontal assault on all religion everywhere, have scared me.

Poor guy! He needs a hug from Dennett. Why is he so scared? After all, he’s had his own doubts about faith:

Am I a closet atheist?

No. In my time of trying on Yes I never felt the familiar click and closure of discovery, of having come across something true.

Yet I was unsatisfied. I could not get to the bottom of my disagreement with these people.

Then, just last week, it happened: click and closure. I was leafing through my well-worn copy of William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” When I came across — for the nth time — that section of the book in which James draws a distinction between two psychological types, the “healthy-minded” and the “sick soul,” I saw clearly what separates me from the New Atheists: pessimism.

The truth is, if I were more optimistic I’d probably be an atheist.

Yes, Wallace sees the big problem of New Atheism as optimism.  I would have thought the opposite: we’re the people who don’t believe in life after death, and so have been accused of nihilism.

The essence of my discovery is this: What truly separates me from atheism is not my belief in God; that’s a long way from the point of departure. It is instead my conviction that evil and weakness are not only problems to be solved, but are also reliable clues to the secret of the world. For me the emptiness of the glass is, in James’ words, “the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only opener of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”

That’s bizarre: he doesn’t see the big difference between him and atheists as turning on the matter of God? In fact, according to the above statement he does: both atheists and non-atheists see evil and injustice in the world, but he sees it as the key to “the deepest levels of truth,” which presumably involve the Divine.

Wallace then tells us why we should be more pessimistic, and why the bus slogan is inappropriate:

Contemporary atheism is optimistic. Given its wall-to-wall phalanx of writers hell-bent on mocking everything that smells of religion, it may seem that this label is ill-applied. Yet under its bluster and iconoclasm atheism is full of good cheer and high spirits. Anyone who knows an actual atheist knows this.

Really? Since when has Dawkins been accused of “good cheer and high spirits”?

This sanguinity is likely drawn from science, which is without question the most optimistic enterprise ever concocted by human beings.

. . . Yet science as a philosophy is incomplete. It wears blinders and refuses to acknowledge whole classes of questions that are important to people everywhere, questions of good and evil, and of human weakness, and of meaning. And it seems that New Atheism, in its wholesale dependence upon science as a philosophy, imports science’s blinders — bound as they are to its optimism — into its overall worldview. And this is where the problem lies.

Science isn’t a philosophy, for crying out loud; it’s a methodology for finding out what’s true about the universe. And certainly we recognize that there are questions about morality and meaning that science can’t answer. Which scientist thinks that we have a handle on what’s right, and how each person should live his or her life? All we maintain is that there are no objective answers to those questions, only personal ones, and that one can’t derive them, and shouldn’t base them, on a nonexistent being.

Here’s Wallace’s real beef:

Imagine a clear fall Saturday in London’s Hyde Park. Footballers are out; lovers doze on picnic blankets; tourists stand in clumps shuffling through maps; university students pass by laughing. And then, over at the park’s edge, behold! There passes the Atheist Bus, one of those U.K. buses that, a few years ago and with Dawkins’ support, were plastered with the brightly-lettered and chirpy slogan, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

This is the zenith of optimism.

It is optimistic because it assumes that the default condition of human life is peace. It is optimistic because, in its refusal to acknowledge the deeper problems of life, it redraws human experience on a solvable and finite scale, presuming that what people really need is to “enjoy their lives.” After all, it’s a beautiful day in the city; what else could there be to need? It is optimistic because the creators of the campaign could not bring themselves to imagine — or if they did imagine it they did not take it seriously — someone reading it who, in the words of Francis Spufford, is poverty-stricken, or desperate for a job, or a drug addict, or a mother who just lost a child to social services. Someone who is truly alone in this world and who may have nothing but the faintest hope of a loving God keeping them alive. Maybe they did think about such a person and decided that they too need to “stop worrying and enjoy their life,” starting with a breath of clean godless air. Now that’s optimism.

I don’t buy it. And as a Christian, I’m not supposed to buy it. The Joel Osteens of the world notwithstanding, it is only through the channel of pessimism — the full and unqualified acknowledgment of life’s dark underside as a clear and present reality — that Christianity is able to do its transformative work.

The Christianity I know takes note of the blue London sky, of the footballers, and of the picnicking lovers, but it starts with the addict on the street. You know, the one optimism forgot about. The fragile one standing alone at the edge of the park, watching the Atheist Bus roll jauntily past.

This is just dumb.  Does Wallace think that atheists don’t take the problems of the world seriously, and are just lah-dee-dah about everything? One of the hallmarks of atheism, for instance, is its refusal to ignore the problems that religion causes. That is, after all, one part of life’s “dark underside”: a part that Christianity can’t cure because the religion causes it.  Which atheist refuses to admit that the world is beset with political, religious, and environmental problems?

Finally, Wallace, like Spufford, simply ignores one likely meaning of the athist bus slogan (granted, it could have been clearer about this).  To me, the phrase “stop worrying and enjoy your life” means this: “stop worrying about whether you’re going to heaven or hell, because you’re worm food after you’re dead.  Instead, try to make the most out of your one short life.” Well-being, which is a form of enjoyment, is one of our goals. We want it not just for ourselves, but for others, because for many helping others is a source of personal satisfaction.

Only a petulant Christian would single out the atheist bus slogan to create a diatribe against New Atheism for being too optimistic.  We can’t, it seems, do anything right.

Fall at the U of C

October 22, 2012 • 3:41 am

Yesterday was a glorious autumn day in Chicago, and our campus is at its best when all the trees turn color.  Here are a few snaps taken right outside the Zoology Building where I work.

The Zoology Building is adjacent to a famous campus institution: Botany Pond, so called because it was next to what was once called the Botany Building.  The pond has since been turned into a permanent fixture with a cement bottom and water drains, but it’s still lovely, as are the landscaped surroundings. Click all pictures to enlarge:

Two large ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) trees stand outside, and they drop their foul-smelling fruits at this time of year. (The smell comes largely from butyric acid). I don’t know if you’ve smelled ginkgo fruit before, but it smells like a combination of feces and vomit. Usually the facilities people put awnings over the sidewalk to prevent the fruits from falling on them, for if you step on a fruit your shoes will be redolent of dog poop all day. They didn’t do that this year.

Often I’ll see Chinese people collecting the fruits (if that’s the technical term) and removing the pulp to get the seeds, as this man was doing yesterday afternoon:

Wikipedia explains why:

The nut-like gametophytes inside the seeds are particularly esteemed in Asia, and are a traditional Chinese food. Ginkgo nuts are used in congee, and are often served at special occasions such as weddings and the Chinese New Year (as part of the vegetarian dish called Buddha’s delight). In Chinese culture, they are believed to have health benefits; some also consider them to have aphrodisiac qualities. Japanese cooks add ginkgo seeds (called ginnan) to dishes such as chawanmushi, and cooked seeds are often eaten along with other dishes.

When eaten in large quantities or over a long period, especially by children the gametophyte (meat) of the seed can cause poisoning by 4′-O-methylpyridoxine (MPN). MPN is heat stable and not destroyed by cooking.Studies have demonstrated the convulsions caused by MPN can be prevented or terminated with pyridoxine.

Some people are sensitive to the chemicals in the sarcotesta, the outer fleshy coating. These people should handle the seeds with care when preparing the seeds for consumption, wearing disposable gloves. The symptoms are allergic contact dermatitisor blisters similar to that caused by contact with poison ivy. However, seeds with the fleshy coating removed are mostlysafe to handle.

This guy is wearing gloves.

Next: a view of the biology area “Hull Court” through the Gothic archway topped with gargoyles.  The four gargoyles on each side are said to represent the four stages of student life (one per year): freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. I have no idea if that’s true, but I doubt it.

This is the Zoology Building. My office and lab are the five windows on the right in this picture, third floor. We have a lovely view of the pond: