More blurring between religion and government in America

June 21, 2012 • 4:51 am

The video below discusses a particularly pernicious decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001:  Good News Club v. Milford Central School.  Sean Faircloth, director of strategy and policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation, interviews Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.

Stewart found out that her children were attending a school where after-school programs of “Bible Study” were far more than that: they were attempts to brainwash children with evangelical Christianity and induce them to convert their peers.  The school prohibited the activity, which still continued for a year while the case wound its way through two lower courts, both affirming that religious speech of that nature did not belong in a public school.

But the U. S. Supreme Court (which, of course is stacked with right-wing faithheads), affirmed the right to have what is essentially a church service in a public school. This was done on the basis of the Constitution’s “free speech” clauses, holding that religious speech in public schools is a form of free speech.

It was a terrible decision, and further erodes the already-weakening wall between church and state in America, a wall erected by the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Here’s the summary of the case, and the Supreme Court’s decision, from Oyez, a website of the Chicago-Kent College of Law. 

Facts of the Case 

Under New York law, Milford Central School policy authorizes district residents to use its building after school for certain activities. Stephen and Darleen Fournier were district residents eligible to use the school’s facilities. They sought approval of their proposed use and sponsorship of the Good News Club, a private Christian organization for children. The Fourniers submitted a request to hold the Club’s weekly afterschool meetings at the school. Milford denied the request reasoning that the proposed use, including singing songs, hearing Bible lessons, memorizing scripture, and praying, was the equivalent of religious worship prohibited by the community use policy. The Club filed suit alleging that the denial violated its free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Ultimately, the District Court granted Milford summary judgment. In affirming, the Court of Appeals held that because the subject matter of the Club’s was “quintessentially religious”, and the activities “fall outside the bounds of pure ‘moral and character development,'” Milford’s policy of excluding the Club’s meetings was constitutional subject discrimination, not unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Question

Did Milford Central School violate the First Amendment free speech rights of the Good News Club when it excluded the Club from meeting after hours at the school? If a violation occurred, was it justified by Milford’s concern that permitting the Club’s activities would violate the Establishment Clause?

You can hear the oral arguments at the court here.
Conclusion
Decision: 6 votes for Good News Club, 3 vote(s) against
Legal provision: Amendment 1: Speech, Press, and Assembly

Yes and no. In a 6-3 opinion delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court held that “Milford’s restriction violates the Club’s free speech rights and that no Establishment Clause concern justifies that violation.” “When Milford denied the Good News Club access to the school’s limited public forum on the ground that the Club was religious in nature, it discriminated against the Club because of its religious viewpoint in violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment,” wrote Justice Thomas.

Have a listen to how Stewart describes the kind of “free speech” that the Good News Club was disseminating:

It’s going to take a long, long time before the appointment of religious, conservative justices to our Supreme Court will cease having a their pernicious influence on the U.S. government.

I keep hearing the ringing last paragraph of Judge Overton’s decision in McLean v Arkansas Board of Education, in which creationists tried to worm their way into science classes. It applies here, too:

The application and content of First Amendment principles are not determined by public opinion polls or by a majority vote. Whether the proponents of Act 590 constitute the majority or the minority is quite irrelevant under a constitutional system of government. No group, no matter how large or small, may use the organs of government, of which the public schools are the most conspicuous and influential, to foist its religious beliefs on others.

Bunnies at school!

June 21, 2012 • 4:23 am

It’s rabbit season at The University of Chicago, and the lagomorphs graze on the lawn early in the morning when I come to work. I encountered two of them today, and managed to get my camera out for a few photos and a (shaky) movie.  The rabbits were frozen, so I had to approach them to get them to move.

A photo:

The movie is shaky because I was excited and trying to approach them.  The white tail comes up at 20 seconds in.  Still, it’s nice to see a bit of wildlife on the way to work:

Best travel pics, 2011

June 20, 2012 • 4:53 am

Don’t expect deepities or god-bashing today (you can find histrionics and controversy elsewhere on the internet), or maybe not even biology, for Professor Ceiling Cat is hellishly busy.  I will do my best to provide some light entertainment for Hump Day.

The Guardian has given prizes in its 2011 “Travel Photographer of the Year” contest.  The images will be on view at the Royal Geographical Society from this Friday to August 19, coinciding with London’s Olympic games (information on the exhibit is here).

There’s a gallery of 14 of the winning photos on the Guardian website, and I’ll reproduce just three here (click to enlarge):

Winner – Best Single Image in a Spirit of Adventure portfolio White Sea, Karelia region, northern Russia. A curious and playful beluga whale swims near a scuba diver under the broken ice. Photograph: Franco Banfi, TPOTY

While travelling in India, I’ve ridden on trains that were close to this several times—people on the roof, hanging out of windows, etc.:

Winner – Best Single Image in the Exotic portfolio category: Tongi/northern border of Dhaka/Bangladesh. During the Muslim congregation, local residents arrived at and left the congregation by train. They climbed to top of the train and squeezed into every space they could find. Photograph: Yeow Kwang Yeo, TPOTY.
Highly Commended – Natural Elements portfolio A group of kiang (Tibetan wild donkeys) running free through the Himalayan plains around Paryang, west Tibet. Photograph: Matjaz Krivic, TPOTY
Winner – One Shot Wild Moments (single image category) Kaieteur Falls, Guyana. Photograph: Stuart Dunn, TPOTY.

Best goal so far

June 20, 2012 • 4:20 am

Matthew Cobb sent me this goal, from last night’s match between Sweden and France in the European championship (Sweden 2-0), labelling it as “the best goal so far.” Here Sweden’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic scores with a terrific bicycle kick.

Despite that, Sweden is out of the championship.  Matthew’s terse report on the championship:

 Sweden were chucked out though, despite stuffing France (who were woeful and will be thumped by Spain in the 1/4s)

And, in response to a reader’s note below, I’ve found Danny Welbeck’s winning backheel goal in minute 78 of the England vs Sweden match (3-2).

Can natural selection create the “perfect pop song”?

June 19, 2012 • 9:59 am

Alert reader Ron called my attention to a piece in the Telegraph with the intriguing title, “Scientists create ‘perfect’ pop song though natural selection.”  It’s about an experiment that used a process analogous to natural selection to produce the “perfect” song. The description starts off a bit wonky:

Just as the strongest and healthiest plants and animals pass on their good genes to future generations, researchers claim music evolves as musicians copy the best aspects of other artists’ work while filtering out their less popular traits.

This means that every time someone buys a song, they are contributing to the “natural selection” process by which the best songs are rewarded with success and the worst ones fade into obscurity, the scientists said.

Well, yes, musicians do copy each other’s work, but it’s not necessarily true, at least to me, that the best songs are amalgams of all the good stuff that has gone before.  Some of the greatest pop music of my era was almost sui generis, produced not by a process of copying and improvement, but more from brand-new conceptions in peoples’ heads.  I’m thinking, for example, of albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or groups like Steely Dan and The Band. And while great jazz like that of Charlie Parker or the early Louis Armstrong may have drawn on earlier influences, there is added value far beyond copying the best bits of other musicians’ work.

Anyway, some researchers, including developmental biologist and science popularizer Armand Leroi, did an experiment in which they continually reshuffled tunes that people liked until they produced an “optimum” pop tune. It worked like this:

The researchers, from Imperial College London, tested their theory by combining a series of random noises into 100 eight-second loops, before asking 7,000 internet users to listen to them and rate how much they enjoyed them.

A computer programme picked out the most popular clips, then paired them up in various combinations to produce a set of new “offspring” loops which incorporated some aspects from each of their “parent” tracks.

Prof Armand Leroi, co-author of the study, said: “That’s how natural selection created all of life on Earth, and if blind variation and selection can do that, then we reckoned it should be able to make a pop tune. So we set up an experiment to explain it.”. . .

The experiment was repeated thousands of times before a group of volunteers was asked to rate how enjoyable a series of tracks were, without knowing which “generation” each clip came from.

Music loops from later generations were consistently rated as better than those from an earlier stage of the experiment, suggesting the music was steadily improving, the scientists reported.

You can listen to the process, and the results, at the Telegraph site: the clip is 3 minutes and 8 seconds long.  You can hear more, and participate in the selection process, at the Darwin Tunes site. The paper describing the process has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (reference below).

While the process is analogous to natural selection, with “mutation,” “recombination” among different clips, and a criterion of “fitness” (listener appeal), it’s also different, in that each person has a different criterion for “quality.” In contrast, there’s only one criterion for success in a real evolutionary process: how well a gene makes copies of itself.  This amalgamation/mutation/public vetting process produces, in the end, a gemisch dictated by the average taste.  It’s “perfect” in the sense that big-box-office Hollywood movies are perfect: they appeal to the most people.  (It’s no surprise that people liked the later clips better than the earlier ones.)  But to my ear the result, at least as heard on the Telegraph site, is bland and uninteresting.  Perhaps the best music arises not through a “natural selection” process, but by musical “macromutations”: huge advances on what has gone before (rather than gradual improvements) created by those musicians who hear the world in a different way.

I’m not even sure what the point of this exercise is, for you could do it with anything: art, automobiles, and so on.  What you’ll get is something that many people find appealing, but some people dislike.  Give me the visionary rather than the compiler.

Anyway, as the Telegraph notes, the “perfect song” bears an uncanny resemblance to The Who’s 1971 song Baba O’Riley.” Check it out yourself:

This reminds me of attempts to create the most beautiful faces by amalgamating attractive features from various well-known people. Here’s the results of one attempt to create the world’s most beautiful woman by combining the traits of many celebrities and actresses:

Again, I find this bland; it’s a face with beauty but no character.

I couldn’t find the equivalent for males, but for those who prefer the XY gender, there’s a compilation of the 33 most handsome movie stars of all time.  Guess who’s #1?

_______

MacCallum R. M., M. Mauch, A. Burt, and A. M. Leroi. 2012  Evolution of music by public choice.  Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA: published early online June 18, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1203182109

Kitteh contest: Spot and Peanut

June 19, 2012 • 8:01 am

Reader Cameron presents his two cats contemplating a bubble, but gives us the extra bonus of turning it into a LOLimage.  Now I wouldn’t have known what the picture meant, since I’m the only American who has never seen Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Angel—much less any of the Star Wars or Star Trek movies.  Fortunately, some inquiry among my friends enlightened me.  Those of you who follow Buffy and Angel will no doubt get it; the rest of us can admire the kittehs.

I made this for my wife. She got a big kick out of it and suggested I forward it to you. These are our cats – Spot and Peanut. We were making kitty-friendly bubbles for them.

I don’t watch Buffy or Angel, but it’s my understanding that in both Buffy and Angel series, the Orb of Thesulah is used in a Gypsy ritual by the Kalderash clan to restore a vampire’s soul, most notably Angel.

And remember, though the Kitteh Contest is long since over, I’m always receptive to readers sending me photos of your cats, which must be accompanied by a paragraph of winsome prose about the moggie.

FYI: the real thing:

My wisdom tooth

June 19, 2012 • 5:50 am

Until yesterday I had one wisdom tooth (third molar) left, and on my last cleaning the dentist recommended extraction since it was crowding the second molar.  It was a completely painless procedure including the two injections, the extraction, and post-extraction recovery (there was virtually no pain, and I didn’t take painkillers or antibiotics).  At the end I had this souvenir:

Gross, isn’t it?

After it was out, the dentist peered into the bloody socket and said, “Holy cow, there’s a small abscess in there.” Peering more closely, he said, “Nope, that’s a BIG abscess!” I was a bit unnerved, of course, but he just reached in with some tweezers and, with judicious manipulation, pulled out the abscess as a whole. It was a perfectly spherical capsule, about a centimeter across, filled with fluid, white blood cells (aka “pus”) and granular material.  I much regret not having photographed it, but you can understand that the last thing I was thinking of at the time was my camera. I won’t make that mistake again.

The dentist told me that the abscess wasn’t visible on the X-ray, and asked me if I had had any sinus problems (the tooth was on the upper right side). I said, yes, for a couple of years, and had had an expensive and futile operation to correct them.  It turns out that although they’ve abated, they could have been caused by this undetected abscess blowing bacteria up into my sinuses.

Apart from my personal medical woes, there are two evolutionary lessons here.  The first is that the wisdom teeth are vestigial organs: they are a remnant of the time when our ancestors had larger jaws and needed the full set of 32 teeth to process a diet consisting largely of vegetation.  Our jaws are smaller now and can’t fit those four back teeth, with the result that they are often impacted—that is, they don’t erupt properly.  This can cause a whole host of problems, including infections, cysts, and even tumors.  As Christopher Hitchens used to argue, many of our ancestors probably died from infected teeth, particularly before there was extraction. As the link above notes, “the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons estimates that about 85 percent of wisdom teeth will eventually need to be removed.”  Others take issue with this figure.

Here’s a Wikipedia photo of a severely impacted wisdom tooth (CT scan); I’ve added the arrow:


Finally, like many vestigial traits, wisdom teeth are variable in both expression and numbers. One paper shows tremendous variability both within and among populations:

This study contains information on the occurrence of agenesis of one to four third molars among the population and ethnic groups of Europe, North America, Africa and Asia (Japan), based on the results of investigations carried out by dozens of authors. Recent discoveries have been supplemented with corresponding data concerning the skeletal remains of the jaws of individuals living from the ice age to the middle ages. The results show unbelievably large diversities as regards the frequency of agenesis [non-appearance] of third molars in different populations from practically zero (Tasmania) to nearly 100% (Mexican Indians).

Finally, the abscess. I was amazed that the whole mess was enclosed in a spherical membrane. This was new to me, as I haven’t really paid much attention to abscesses. It turns out that the abscess is a capsule formed by normal tissue to try to prevent an infection from spreading to other parts of the body.  This is almost certainly a result of natural selection. My periapical (root) abscess was completely painless, which is why, combined with its invisibility to X-rays, it was not detected.  Here’s a more severe abscess, again from Wikipedia:

Deepak generator!

June 19, 2012 • 4:46 am

Via Unreasonable Faith we find that there is a robotic program, “The Wisdom of Chopra,” that can generate Deepak Deepities.  Before going there, try the Unreasonable Faith quiz: which of these four statements was actually said by Chopra, and which were generated by the program:

“Perception is inherent in cosmic possibilities”;
“Interdependence inspires quantum life”;
“Hidden meaning is serving your own evolution”;
“Freedom heals self-righteous knowledge”.

I have no idea, but I suspect the first one is Deepak’s.   At any rate, here’s how the program works:

It has been said by some that the thoughts and tweets of Deepak Chopra are indistinguishable from a set of profound sounding words put together in a random order, particularly the tweets tagged with “#cosmisconciousness”. This site aims to test that claim! Each “quote” is generated from a list of words that can be found in Deepak Chopra’s Twitter stream randomly stuck together in a sentence.

And the result of my first try: