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.
Rather than recount our group trip to Quebec to eat poutine, I’ll simply refer you to Larry Moran’s post at Sandwalk, “Evolution and poutine.” It has pictures of the comestible and the amiable group of scientists and skeptics.
Yep, the poutine was awesome (I had a “large” size), and readers will kindly refrain from making cracks about health. I’ve had two portions of poutine in five years.
Thank you.
by Greg Mayer
As a bonus felid for this weekend, I present a denizen of Darwell’s Cafe, a Long Beach, Mississippi, eatery that we’ve had occasion to note favorably before here at WEIT. While in Mississippi last week, we had dinner there, and met this fellow (a culinary report will follow).
He occupied a seat at one of the outdoor tables, and as the place filled, and diners checked out his table, he looked at them disdainfully, and would not yield his seat. The singer/guitarist in the trio playing that night noted this, and announced that he was, “the most unconcerned cat on the Coast.” (“The Coast” being what this area along the Gulf of Mexico is known as.)
Reader Peter asked me to call attention to his new evolution-related website, which I do gladly, but with two small reservations. Based on his email below, guess what they are?
I am a philosopher of science. I think we’ve met just once. As a reader of your blog, I thought I’d take the liberty of sending along something about my own new blog, The Giant Cuttlefish.
It is about cephalopods and is written from an evolutionary point of view. A guiding theme is that because our most recent common ancestor with cephalopods is so distant (600 mya?), cephalopods represent an ‘independent experiment’ in the evolution of large nervous systems and minds. The current post, for example, is about REM sleep and dreams. Surprisingly, cuttlefish seem to have something like REM sleep.
Today’s New York Times reviews Gregg Allmann’s new autobiography, My Cross to Bear. Reviewer David Kirby gives it a qualified thumbs-up, but is horrified by the drugs and drink ingested by Allmann and his band-mates:
At the height of their success, the band members walked onto the jet they’d just acquired to find “Welcome Allman Bros” spelled out in cocaine on the bar. Yet there’s none of the Dionysian cackling you hear below the surface of “Life,” Keith Richards’s monumental recounting of the Rolling Stones’ story. And while “My Cross to Bear” isn’t the most degrading account of a musician undone by narcotics (that honor belongs to “Three Dog Nightmare,” by the former Three Dog Night frontman Chuck Negron), Allman reckons he went into treatment 18 times before getting clean.
The band that gave us “Whipping Post” and “Ramblin’ Man” broke up in 1976, at least partly because of a bust in which he was spared after agreeing to testify against the road manager who’d bought drugs for him. Drinking up to two quarts of vodka a day didn’t help, and in 2010 Allman underwent a liver transplant. “I have had my fun when it comes to women,” he writes — O.K., but he married and divorced six of them, three by the time he was 30. . .
“My Cross to Bear” has all the earmarks of a text dictated by its subject and cleaned up by someone else, meaning it has too many ho-hum moments but also the charm of a real voice. In Allman’s case, that’s a lot of correct Good Old Boy usages (“you didn’t want to wear no pair of wool pants without no drawers on”) that may challenge readers not conversant with that tongue.
The sad part (for us) is that Allman finds God at the end. Well, if that myth helped him clean up, fine. I guess rock stars have reached the age when they write memoirs (Keith Richards’s memoir, Life, is supposed to be excellent), but it shows that we of the Sixties we’re marching toward the forward trenches.
At any rate, I often ponder what career I would have like to have had if I hadn’t been a scientist. The answer always comes up the same: rock star, preferably a multitalented one like Steve Stills or Eric Clapton. What a rush it must be to be up on stage before thousands of people entranced by your skills on an electric guitar, and to make loud, wonderful music, either in front of others or jamming with your pals!
Two days ago I wrote about the creationist exhibit at the Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre, a World Heritage site owned by the U.K.’s National Trust. This was obviously another attempt to inject religious viesw where they doesn’t belong, the result being the purveying of lies about science to gullible visitors. But in Northern Ireland!
My earlier report noted that the creationist part of the exhibit was installed after pressure by evangelical Christians, and has been warmly endorsed by the evangelic Caleb Foundation.
Obviously motivated by religion, right? As I always say, you can have religion without creationism, but you never see creationism without religion behind it.
Nevertheless, accommodationists will do anything to avoid blaming creationism on religion, ridiculous as that tactic is. The latest attempt is an article in by Nelson Jones in New Statesman, “Creationism and political power in Northern Ireland.”
What’s behind Causewaygate? According to Jones, not religion but politics:
The important thing to recognise is that this row is essentially about politics rather than science – and, specifically, about the politics of Northern Irish unionism. The Caleb Foundation’s claim to being representative of mainstream evangelical opinion may be open to debate, but it certainly has considerable political influence. Its vice-chairman is Mervyn Storey MLA, a senior member of the DUP and the Orange Order, and several other prominent DUP politicians also have close links to Caleb. According to Roger Stanyard of the British Centre for Science Education Storey, who has no scientific background, “appears to have set himself up as an authority on the geology of the Giant’s Causeway.”. . .
Another MLA, the late George Dawson, wrote in a letter to a Unionist newspaper in 2006 that he and Storey, along with DUP Westminster MP David Simpson,
…have been pressing government on the need to ensure that interpretation at the new Causeway interpretative centre is inclusive of the views expressed by Rev Dr Greer [a creationist who argues that the Causeway provides evidence of Noah’s Flood]… This is a matter of equality and tourism opportunity. In equality terms it is incumbent upon government not to discriminate against this equally scientific viewpoint and those who believe it.
“Equally scientific viewpoint and those who believe it”? That could have come from American creationists!
According to Stanyard, “a core of, maybe, around half a dozen very senior politicians within the DUP” have been involved in promoting Young Earth creationism in the province and that “the evidence over the last few years suggests that there are very strong pressures within the party to get creationism into schools.” . .
It may not be a coincidence that creationism has grown in importance in Ulster politics as the peace process has advanced. The politics of creationism may partly be a replacement for the more overt sectarianism of the past.
Teaching creationism alongside evolution in school science lessons is the ultimate ambition of these campaigners and politicians. Getting creationism acknowledged in the Giant’s Causeway visitors’ centre, even tentatively, counts as a minor victory towards this goal. It helps to establish creationist views as mainstream.
Creationism motivated by political considerations, such as those wanting to appeal to a religious base is still creationism. And there’s no reason for this kind of “politics” except to promote religion. At bottom, the problem is not political but religious.
Absent Christianity, this would not be happening. Absent the DUP, it probably would still have happened.
Just in case you thought the Church of England practiced Sophisticated Theology™ , have a gander at this 2007 article in The Telegraph, which gives the church’s theological and scientific explanation of recent flooding in England. It’s wickedness, and sodomy, and the gays!
The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God’s judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.
One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.
While those who have been affected by the storms are innocent victims, the bishops argue controversially that the flooding is a result of Western civilisation’s decision to ignore biblical teaching.
The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, argued that the floods are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society’s moral decadence.
“This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way,” he said. “We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused.”
The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.
“We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate,” he said. . . .
Shades of Pat Robertson!
“People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God,” said the Rt Rev James Jones [he obviously hasn’t read the Rt. Rev. Dow]. “However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences,” said the bishop, who has previously been seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York.
“We have a responsibility in this and God is exposing us to the truth of what we have done.”
Isn’t it enough to blame humans for causing the depredation of our own environment? Why do they have to drag God into it? And really—the gays?
I wonder if Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, ever condemned this?
Yesterday we registered for the big meeting and had the obligatory social (2 free drinks per person). Today I’ll be attending a group of talks on speciation and genomics—a topic that didn’t exist when I got my Ph.D.
So far the organization of the conference seems smooth and efficient: kudos to my friend Howard Rundle at Ottawa for running this immensely complicated conference, in which five different evolution societies meet: he European and Canadian societies for evolutionary biology, the American Society of Naturalists, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and my own home, the Society for the Study of Evolution.
Last night the estimable Larry Moran of Sandwalk took several of us around, including skeptics and scientists, for a food tour in nearby Quebec, centering on the indigenous dish poutine (look it up) followed by a visit to a local bakery. It was a lovely evening and I’ll post the photos on my return (advance warning: nobody is to “inform me” of the health dangers of poutine).
Here’s a photo of three generations of evolutionary geneticists (l to r): me, my first student Mohamed Noor, a professor at Duke, and his student Daniel Ortiz-Barrientos, a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland. Both Mohamed and Daniel spoke in the speciation-genomics symposium. The “thumbs-up” sign is Mohamed’s signature gesture (he’s an optimistic lad), one that he swore he’d abandon when he got tenure. He lied.
OMG, I almost forgot it was Saturday, and had I forgotten I would have broken a three-year continuum of Saturday cats. Fortunately, I remembered, and here are two videos of cats in water. Some even seem to like it!
And here’s Neo the Swimming Cat, who despite his owner’s asseverations doesn’t really seem to like the bathing experience:
I manage a Dive Resort in Indonesia, and my cat has had to be able to swim. Neo goes for a swim every two days in the ocean. Afterwards we give him a hot bath with shampoo to wash off the salt water. He never complains, never tries to scratch us, never tries to run away.
Enjoy Neo, the Swimming Cat!!!
I would like to add that we have had many guests staying with us who are vets, and none of them thought he was ever upset, annoyed or scared. We would not do this if we thought it was causing him any harm or discomfort.
h/t: Jim