Dawkins on “The Life Scientific” tomorrow: BBC Radio 4

September 3, 2012 • 8:57 am

“The Life Scientific” series at BBC Radio 4 highlights the life and thought of eminent scientists, often interviewing their friends and colleagues (I participated in one recently for Steve Jones). Tomorrow at 9 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. British time (4 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern time), the next show will feature Richard Dawkins (note that the following ad omits the evening broadcast). You can listen to the show here live, and it will be archived soon thereafter.

Richard may talk a bit about the new book he’s writing, which is an autobiography/memoir.

Hey, kids! A free homeschool course on accommodationism, courtesy of the Faraday Institute, Cambridge University, and the Templeton Foundation!

September 3, 2012 • 5:20 am

The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion resides at Cambridge University in England, and was set up and is sustained by generous grants from the Templeton Foundation.  I’ve posted before on the odious “Faraday Schools Project,” which comprises a series of resources designed to teach children that science and God are compatible, while also pushing not just a religious view of the universe, but a Christian one.  Well, a tweet from that project on August 12, sent to me by reader Mark, alerted me that it’s up and ready to begin the indoctrination of children:

You can see the overview of the project at the Test of Faith Homeschool Page, where, if your stomach is strong enough, you can download the course, Science and Christianity: An Introductory Course for Homeschoolers. I’d urge you to have a look at it, particularly if your children are going to experience it.  It looks as if it’s aimed at the UK and US.

I’ve read all 88 pages, and it’s palpably clear that the purpose of this course is to convince children that science is compatible with religion.  Along the way there’s some good stuff, like strong advice to conserve the environment (based on the Biblical injunction that we’re supposed to be “stewards” of the earth), and to accept evolution.  But it’s outweighed by the accommodationism, which mandates that the evolution accepted be theistic evolution (Simon Conway Morris makes an appearance here using the flawed argument of convergence to show the hand of God in evolution), that things like the “fine-tuning” of the universe give evidence for God, and that humans have a frankly dualistic free will that is somehow independent of the brain’s material structure. In those senses the course is profoundly antiscientific despite its nod to being science friendly. As we’ve learned, even in liberal Christianity one sees strong conflicts with science.

Here’s all you need to know about the contents:

And in case you think that Templeton is out of the accommodationism business, this is from the introduction:

The formal course begins with the Argument for Jesus from Hot (Haught) Beverages, which is becoming very popular, employed not just here but previously by Johns Polkinghorne and Haught. You’re supposed to fill in the blanks at the bottom (this is interactive accommodationism):

I won’t bore you with the rest of the course, for it employs all the accommodationist tropes with which we’re familar: there are “different ways of knowing,” science can be dangerous, the evils in the world weren’t caused by God, but are a byproduct of his mechanisms of natural selection, plate tetonics, etc. etc. etc.

I’ll just make one point. The course discusses the faulty tactic of using God to fill in the blanks of our scientific ignorance, decrying “God-of-the-gaps” arguments as both theologically and scientifically untenable.  Well, that’s good.  But then they go on to use a God-of-the-gap argument when it comes to the “fine-tuning” of the physical laws of the universe:


It then gives some examples of fine-tuning (I’ve shown one of four):

Now of course this is precisely the kind of God-of-the-gaps argument that the course argues against: because we don’t know why the universe appears “fine tuned,” and there may be a scientific explanation, we can’t automatically say this is proof of God.  But the Faraday folk are cleverer than this. They say that while it’s not “proof” of God, it constitutes “evidence” for God.  In that way they adhere to the God-of-the-gaps argument without appearing to:

They don’t mention, of course, that science doesn’t “prove” things, either: we adduce evidence for things, and when that evidence is strong enough, we regard something as provisionally true (evolution is a good example).

By adducing scientific evidence for God (free will and human morality are others), this booklet shows that Test of Faith, and Templeton, are not regarding science and faith as separate magisteria, but claiming that science gives evidence for faith. If we’re going to go that route, then, why not give all the evidence against God from science, like the fact that we see unjustified evils in the world (like childhood cancers), that we see rudiments of “moral” behavior in our closest relatives, and that intercessory prayer doesn’t work.  Of course this homeschool booklet doesn’t do that, for its purpose it is not to let students judge the facts for themselves. Its purpose is to strengthen students’ Christianity by showing that not only does science not conflict with it, but actually supports it.

Templeton is reprehensible, as is this homeschool course. Let us hear no more about the Templeton Foundation becoming more secular, for it’s clearly up to its same old tricks.

Swell insects from Mozambique

September 2, 2012 • 10:46 am

Today’s New York Times Magazine has a nice slideshow showing insects captured as part of a project to survey the group in Mozambique. As the paper explains:

Earlier this year, scientists from Harvard spent two months documenting insects in Mozambique. This was the first step in a long-term project, led by the biologist E. O. Wilson, to survey all life — and then help restore it — in the Gorongosa National Park, which was nearly destroyed by the country’s civil war. To avoid killing his portrait subjects, one of the entomologists, Piotr Naskrecki, built an open-air studio of white fabric that the bugs were free to flee if they wanted. Some did, forcing Naskrecki to chase them down. Others stayed — perhaps out of curiosity. ‘‘They will look at you, they will judge you,’’ he says. ‘‘They were very suspicious of the camera, and they were very wary of me. I’m sure that none of these animals had ever seen a human. They did not know what to make of us.’’

These wonderful photos are all from Piotr Naskrecki; he’s added a comment—#11 below—and do have a look at his website, which is filled with gorgeous photos of insects and other animals. This is definitely a site worth following if you love animals, photography, or just the wonders of evolution.

I’m mostly showing insects that are either cryptic (camouflaged) or aposematic (brightly colored so as to advertise their noxiousness or toxicity):

A zebra katydid, said to mimic an acacia leaf:

Here are some acacia leaves:

A praying mantis said to resemble a curled leaf. Regardless, it’s certainly cryptic, and the eyes are freaky:

Two aposematic grasshoppers explicitly identified as eating toxic plants. Predators learn to avoid the bright colors after sampling one. (In some cases—though probably not these—predators might have evolved an innate avoidance of the patterns since those who ate the toxic animals might leave fewer offspring. In such cases natural selection could favor an inborn repugnance toward certain colors or patterns. This has happened with some American birds who avoid the black/red/yellow patterns of coral snakes even though they’ve never seen one. But coral snakes are deadly, and selection favoring avoiding the pattern would be much stronger than selection operating when you get a bellyache after eating a toxic grasshopper.)

Finally, the creationists’ favorite insect: the bombardier beetle, which, when disturbed, mixes two chemicals from glands in its abdomens, creating a toxic, boiling-hot mixture that it sprays on enemies and predators.

Creationists used to say that this insect could not have evolved (ergo Jesus), since there was no conceivable intermediate evolutionary step in which the beetle wouldn’t explode from its own chemicals. But that’s long since been refuted since we have a plausible series of intermediate steps that could lead to this condition.  See the bombardier-beetle page at TalkOrigins for an explanation.  In the meantime, the mechanism whereby this beetle defends itself is pretty amazing. From TalkOrigins:

The mechanism of their spray works thus: Secretory cells produce hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide (and perhaps other chemicals, depending on the species), which collect in a reservoir. The reservoir opens through a muscle-controlled valve onto a thick-walled reaction chamber. This chamber is lined with cells that secrete catalases and peroxidases. When the contents of the reservior are forced into the reaction chamber, the catalases and peroxidases rapidly break down the hydrogen peroxide and catalyze the oxidation of the hydroquinones into p-quinones. These reactions release free oxygen and generate enough heat to bring the mixture to the boiling point and vaporize about a fifth of it. Under pressure of the released gasses, the valve is forced closed, and the chemicals are expelled explosively through openings at the tip of the abdomen. [Aneshansley & Eisner, 1969; Aneshansley et al, 1983; Eisner et al, 1989].

Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Venus, the amazing split cat

September 2, 2012 • 6:38 am

I saw this cat on Facebook, where she has her own page.  Venus has apparently gone viral (see here, for instance) because of her “split face” appearance, which affects not only coat color and pattern, but eye color.

Now I could explain the genetics and developmental biology of the coat color, and why Venus would have to have been a female, but over at her website Planet of the Apes, Faye Flam has already done it, so go read her explanation. Note that Faye doesn’t explain the different eye colors, nor does National Geographic’s piece on Venus. Savvy readers may try their hand at this problem.

As for me, I don’t know why the eye colors are “split” along with the face. Eye color depends on genes different from those involved in coat color, so this may be a rare coincidence of somatic mutation (for eye color) that happens to accompany early inactivation of one X chromosome that carries coat color.

Venus’s Facebook page also has a diverse album of “split-face” cats and dogs.

h/t: Ant, Jon Losos, and many other readers who emailed me about Venus

Creationists respond to Bill Nye’s pro-evolution video

September 2, 2012 • 5:13 am

Last week I posted Bill Nye’s “Big Think” video in which he went after creationism without mincing words.  Predictably, the creationist organization “Answers in Genesis” enlisted a video response (below) from two of the self-described “science guys” (better described as “Liars for Jesus”) from Kentucky’s Creation Museum,  Dr. David Menton and Dr. Georgia Purdom. The title of the video is offensive as well: “Bill Nye, creationism is highly appropriate for our children.”

It’s unfortunate that Nye said that creationism was a problem unique to the U.S., but it is true that levels of evolution-denial are higher in this country than in any other First World nation.  But as for the rest of the creationist response, it’s predictable and lame. Purdom draws a false distinction between “observational science” and “historical science,” placing evolution in the latter category, a category in which truth is determined solely by one’s “worldview.” She also avers that “historical science” “confirms the literal history in Genesis.” What has she been smoking?

Menton’s argument for why the idea of evolution is “highly superfluous” is hilarious. How can these people believe such things?  Well, we know the answer. A world without religion would be a world without creationism, and our kids could learn the truth about their origins without opposition.

Also predictably, the creationists have disabled comments on the video.

Denisovans are us

September 1, 2012 • 11:09 am

by Greg Mayer

One of the most exciting recent developments in paleoanthropology has been the discovery, based on just a few bones, of a previously unsuspected type of human called Denisovans (named for the cave where they were found in Siberia). Because of the paucity of skeletal evidence, our knowledge of them is based almost entirely on DNA extracted from the bones. Both Jerry and I have been following developments in these genetic studies here at WEIT (here, here, and here), and so the release of a new paper in Science by Matthias Meyer and a cast of thousands (well, 33, actually) (abstract only) is of great interest, presenting a high quality full genomic sequence of Denisova Woman.

Tree of 11 modern plus the Denisovan genomes, showing interbreeding event(s).

The paper’s results are well summarized in the above figure: in comparison with 11 geographically diverse modern Homo sapiens genomes, the Denisovan genome is distinctive, but shows evidence of interbreeding with Papuans, such that 6% of the Papuan genome derives from the Denisovans. Based on genetic evidence, they date the modern-Denisovan split at about 800,000 years ago (this would also be the date of the modern-Neanderthal split, since Neanderthals and Denisovans split from each other after the moderns split off), and date the Denisovans themselves to about 80,000 years ago.

This essentially confirms what had been found by Reich et al. (2010) in an earlier study (of which Meyer was a coauthor) of the same material, which had not achieved as high quality a determination of the Denisovan genome. The new study is also noteworthy for its technical advances in the genome sequencing of ancient DNA. Interestingly, modern humans from Asia (through which the ancestors of the Papuans had to pass on their way to Papua), do not show a Denisovan genetic influence, so the history of migration through Asia must involve at least two migration events (one in which the Papuans’ ancestors encountered and interbred with Denisovans, and another in which the ancestors of modern Asians did not).

Matthias Meyer at work in the clean lab at the Max Planck Institute. Credit: MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology.

The current work tends to confirm the conclusion that archaic humans (Neanderthals and Denisovans) were part of a group of interbreeding populations in nature that included the immediate ancestors of modern humans, and thus were members of the species Homo sapiens. This was a conclusion that Jerry, I, and, independently, John Hawks, the University of Wisconsin paleoanthroplogist, had reached. Hawks has a very interesting and detailed take on the new paper which is well worth reading.

In another recent paper (may be abstract only), Anders Eriksson and Andrea Manica argue that the shared components of the modern and archaic genomes may result from the retention of variation from an ancestral African population, and not from interbreeding outside of Africa; John Hawks finds their conclusion unlikely.

__________________________________________________________

Eriksson, A. and  A. Manica. 2012. Effect of ancient population structure on the degree of polymorphism shared between modern human populations and ancient hominins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 109:13956-13960.

Meyer, M., et al. 2012. A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual. Science in press. [This is presumably a MS in press, but Science in the past has released preprints whose subsequent publication history has been murky- think arsenic based life.]

Reich, D., et al. 2010. Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature 468:1053-1060.

There’s no such thing as bad publicity: Giberson disses my theology at HuffPo

September 1, 2012 • 7:52 am

I am really flattered to see that Uncle Karl Giberson has devoted an entire column on the HuffPo Religion page attempting to debunk me. I’m not quite as famous as Maru or Henri, but this will do.

Giberson is exercised by  a recent post in which I criticized an Oxford Catholic theologian’s attempt to show that, because of the prescient lucubrations of St. Thomas Aquinas, we now see that there is no conflict between evolution and science.  I criticized as well the Vatican’s attempt to harmonize science and faith by setting up a special foundation to “build a philosophical bridge between science and theology.” Well, you know that’s the Bridge to Nowhere. And as for the theologian, Wiliam Carroll, he made a claim that I thought fatuous:

“A proper understanding of creation, especially an understanding set forth by a thinker such as Thomas Aquinas, helps us to see that there is no conflict between evolutionary biology or any of the natural sciences and a fundamental understanding that all that ‘is’, is caused by God,” Professor William E. Carroll of Oxford University’s theology faculty told CNA [Catholic News Agency] Aug. 22.

In his HuffPo piece, “Science and religion talks remain controversial,” Giberson first compliments me for posting energetically (sadly, he uses the word “blog”) and for trying to keep up with modern theology, before he goes after me for being “uncharitable” in attacking both Aquinas and the Vatican’s attempt to marry science and faith. His beef? That I criticized the characterization of Aquinas as some kind of prophetic accommodationist:

Nevertheless, I think [Coyne’s] critiques of the Vatican project are slanted and unfair. For starters, Thomas Aquinas is not being “trotted out” to make some point, as though he were some obscure figure cherry-picked from a pantheon of options because his 13th century view of creation comports with contemporary views of evolution. Aquinas is, by most estimates, the most important Christian thinker since St. Paul, and his views on creation have informed all subsequent thinking on the topic by both Protestants and Catholics.

Who ever said he was “trotted out” as an obscure figure cherry-picked from a pantheon of options? I said he was trotted out because among all famous Catholic theologians, he is the one most cited by modern accommodationists as supporting their views: according to them, Aquinas said that it was okay to read scripture metaphorically.

The thing is, he didn’t.  First of all, Carroll is dead wrong—though Giberson doesn’t mention this—in claiming that there is no conflict between evolutionary biology and Catholicism.  Aquinas bought huge swaths of the Bible literally, including those bits that are diametrically opposed to evolution. Even Giberson knows this:

Like other thinkers from previous centuries, Aquinas certainly held beliefs that we can no longer embrace. Coyne mentions that Aquinas believed the earth was 6,000 years old, for example, and thought the events in Genesis, including the Eden story, really happened as described. “So let us hear no more,” he concludes, “about Aquinas showing that there’s no conflict between the Bible and science.”

And if you read Aquinas, he doesn’t say that the Bible can be read completely metaphorically. What he said was that the Bible can be read both literally and metaphorically, but when there was a conflict in the book of Genesis, and elsewhere, literalism takes precedence (see my earlier post for the supporting quotations).  So again, it’s a gross distortion to see Aquinas as the Great Accommodationist. Nevertheless, Giberson tries to save St. Thomas’s bacon:

What Coyne is missing here — because he opposes harmonizing science and religion — is the difference between beliefs that Aquinas shared with his century, embraced uncritically because they were not controversial, and Aquinas’s more original thinking in response to the challenges of his day.

Aquinas’s central insight — the one that is appropriately defended as his enduring claim and not just something that everyone accepted in his time — is that the foundation of the Christian doctrine in creation is the belief that God created and upholds everything, including the laws of nature. This remains relevant today because it lets us distinguish between God as the primary cause or source of the laws of nature, and the activity of the laws themselves.

Well, remember that Aquinas lived in the 13th century, and we really didn’t have many “laws of nature” then. Yes, Aquinas proposed a “natural law” for both objects and humans, but it’s not clear to me that this is the same thing as saying that the principles of physics and biology and chemistry all obeyed regularities imposed by God (remember, Aquinas lived well before Copernicus).

But even granted that, Aquinas also accepted many exceptions to the laws of nature, including the miracles of the Garden of Eden, the Resurrection of Christ, and the existence of a soul.  All of these violate at least the laws of nature known today.  And really, how does God “uphold everything”? Many modern theologians say that if the universe operates by known laws, it doesn’t need any damn upholding.  God made the laws, and then retired to put his feet up on a cloud and watch the show. Would atoms and stars fly apart if God isn’t busy holding them together?  If God disappeared, would the “laws” (actually, just regularities) vanish too? Giberson doesn’t tell us.

What Giberson is doing here is reverse-engineering modern accommodationism to say that it’s the same as that of Aquinas.  And to some extent, it is: plenty of modern theologians have a deistic view that is superficially similar to what Aquinas said: God started everything, created the regularities of nature, and then let the show go on by itself.  Unfortunately, Aquinas also accepted plenty of irregularities.

It’s a sign of how pathetic theology is, and how little it has moved on, that people like Aquinas are still cited as exemplars of how to reconcile science and religion. We didn’t even know much about science in his day, and the problem of reconciliation has become far worse: we now know about the Big Bang and evolution. Aquinas’s views are in direct conflict with those. Citing Aquinas as an accommodationist is like citing Archimedes in support of the modern laws of physics.

Still, Giberson pretends that there is no conflict, no “debate,” between science and religion:

Unfortunately, such dialog between science and religion will continue to be widely misconstrued as a “debate,” largely because Andrew Dickson White [author of History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896)] did such an effective job painting it with that brush. White’s influential polemic, one of the holy books of the New Atheists (you can download it for free at infidels.org) has been widely condemned for its irresponsible scholarship, but convenient mythologies can be hard to displace. I have just started teaching a course at Stonehill College titled “Does Science Disprove God?” and one of the primary goof the course will be to expose the poverty of White’s thesis.

Is Uncle Karl kidding here? Does he really think there is no conflict? Giberson just left an organization—BioLogos—that dealt with this “debate” on a daily basis.  The “dialog” between science and religion consists, in America, of many religious people rejecting stuff like evolution and global warming.  That’s no dialogue; it’s a refusal to listen. The real dialogue is a one-way street: science tells theology it’s wrong, and theology (as Giberson is doing here) reverse-engineers its philosophy to accommodate scientific facts. Theology has nothing—nothing—to contribute to science. Why are we supposed to listen to theologians, except to refute them?

In fact, at the end of Giberson’s piece, he admits that religion stops people’s ears:

The Vatican project, executive director Father Tomasz Trafny told the Catholic News Agency, raises the important question of “how to offer a coherent vision of society, culture and the human being to people who would like to understand where to put these dimensions — the spiritual and religious and the scientific.” At a time when religiously motivated concerns make it almost impossible to discuss the warming of our planet, the curriculum in our schools and even the reproduction of our species, we should embrace efforts at dialog, not assault them.

Well, the whole purpose of Giberson’s former organization, BioLogos, was to embrace dialogue with evangelical Christians with the aim of converting them to Darwinism.  That failed. In fact, the reverse seems to have happened—BioLogos is getting more and more evangelical, floating various theories about how Adam and Eve might have been real people.

Speaking of that, did I mention that the modern Catholic Church still takes a profoundly antiscientific view on at least two evolutionary issues: the uniqueness of humans in having a “soul,” which mysteriously appeared sometime in the hominin lineage, and the Church’s insistence that Adam and Eve were the real progenitors of all humanity, whom they afflicted with original sin? It looks like even Aquinas wasn’t so effective at dragging the Church toward modern science.

I close with a comment following Giberson’s piece by Bob Metcalfe, which pretty accurately sums up the state of the art: those scientists who do try to reconcile science and faith almost invariably turn out to be religious.  The rest of us don’t see the point.

It seems to be religious people and have this overwhelming need to reconcile religion and science. As an atheist I don’t find any need to do this at all. If religion and science conflict – science is probably correct, religion is probably wrong – end of story.

Except that I’d substitute “invariably” for “probably.”

And here’s Uncle Karl’s new book:


Caturday felid: The Internet Cat Video Film Festival, a reader report, and the winner!

September 1, 2012 • 4:18 am

On July 11, Greg Mayer posted an announcement of the upcoming Internet Cat Video Film Festival (ICVFF) in Minneapolis; it was to take place on August 30, and last exactly one hour (cat videos are short). I also asked any readers in the area who were attending to send a report. Well, we lucked out, and an ailurophilic reader went to the ICVFF and has provided a first-person report.

Before I present it, let me note that the ICVFF received huge media coverage: unlike the handful of people expected to turn out, nearly 10,000 people showed up, and there are long pieces about the screenings (and the winning video) in The New York Times, The Atlantic, HuffPo, and elsewhere (see the great slide show at boston.com).  As the NYT reports:

The crowd — easily double what organizers expected — packed the lawn outside the museum, spilling onto the sidewalks across the street. There were local cat lovers and out-of-state fans of Fluffy; many wore kitty-theme T-shirts or simply ears and whiskers. Some took real cats on leashes. A few dogs came, for irony.

They all settled in for a screening of cats behaving badly, or cutely, or mysteriously, sometimes all at once. That much of the audience had already seen the clips on YouTube did not seem to diminish the enthusiasm. Quite the contrary.

There were about 10,000 entries of which 79 were shown. (The entire playlist of those 79 is on YouTube at this link.) That’s a success rate of 0.79%, far more selective than Harvard University.  And one video, which I’ve shown before, was the paws-down winner. But first, the reader report (with links and photos), by Zach Buchan:

*****

My excellent adventure at the Internet Cat Video Film Festival

by Zach Buchan

On Thursday evening, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (which is probably best known as the home of Spoonbridge and Cherry) held what was billed as the world’s first Internet Cat Video Film Festival. According to a speech given just beforehand by one of the organizers, when they first conceived of the idea they figured that it would turn out to be 18 people huddled around a laptop. Instead, they had somewhere around 5000 people [JAC: actually, twice this] packed onto the hill behind the museum, watching an hour of cat videos on a 20-foot-tall screen. They also worried about finding enough cat videos to fill up an hour’s worth of time, but then the press attention surrounding the festival (including this very website) led to them getting ten thousand entries! They watched every one, which is the sort of job I wish I could get.

Part of the crowd (all photos by Zach)

The festival consisted of 79 videos broken up into nine different categories: Comedy, Drama, Foreign, Animated, Documentary, Musical, Art House, Lifetime Achievement, and People’s Choice. All were collected from YouTube, and they ranged from the extremely popular (Nyan Cat has 83 million views, Surprised Kitty has 64 million) to the extremely obscure. Purring Face, which competed in the Art House category, only had 71 views at the time of submission. Island Cat, from the Musical category, had 47.

It would be difficult to pick out a favorite just from audience reaction. There was a huge round of applause when Stalking Cat (Drama) finally reached his target. Keyboard Cat (Lifetime Achievement) and Simon’s Cat (Animated) were also very popular. But those are also some of the most viewed internet cat videos of all time, so people may have just been reacting to old favorites. The biggest laugh for a little-viewed video was probably for Little Cat Provokes Big Cat (Drama), which only has 14,000 views, but which deserves more.

The least popular are much easier to find. The whole Art House category was poorly received. There were really some weird videos in that one. Slow Motion Kitten is interesting, but is two minutes long, and really seemed to drag. Schoenberg is a decent composer, but atonal classical music as played by cats was mostly just confusing. The Art House category concluded with a video called Cat Puke (don’t worry – there’s no actual puking involved), which was apparently edited especially for the event. It was extremely unpopular, as evidenced by the number of people you could see checking their cell phones.

The evening concluded with the awarding of the first ever Golden Kitty award to the winner of the People’s Choice category. Will Braden was there in person to collect for his video Henri 2, Paw de Deux. It’s a wonderful video which tells the story of one cat’s existential ennui. Going in, I thought there’d never be a cat video I loved more than a Maru one (Maru was represented twice at the festival, once in Foreign and then again in People’s Choice), but I was wrong. Henri 2 is really just that good.

If you were unfortunate enough to not be able to attend, you can watch the whole show on the Walker’s YouTube stream, and then tweet your favorite nominee for a “Best In Show” prize. Details, including a complete list of the entries, can be found here. Turnout for the event was so overwhelmingly high that I’m sure they’ll do another one next year. Buy your plane tickets now, and be sure to shop for your Sky Mall Kitties!

*****

Thanks to Zach for this report, and the many readers who wrote in and sent me links.  And now, the winner, which you’ve seen here before, “Henri 2: Paw de Deux”:

And here’s a question I’d like to post to readers.  In the U.S., at least, dogs are about as popular as cats for pets.  Yet cat videos, not dog videos, have become the internet phenomenon. There is no dog as famous as Maru, no dog video film festival.  Why, do you suppose, is that?