Trump praises his own, and Minnesotans’, “good genes”

 

Campaign image via Daily Beast, and many other sources

“You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.” – Donald Trump

“Donald Trump is now openly employing Nazi eugenicist rhetoric in his campaign of fear, hatred and bigotry. This has become a pure battle between good and evil.” – Michael Mann via Twitter. It is hard to disagree

But nothing here that should surprise us. Here’s a compilation of quotations that I first posted back in September 2016:

I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in

QUOTE: All men are created equal – that’s not true. When you connect two race horses, you usually end up with a fast horse. Secretariat doesn’t produce slow horses. I have a certain gene. I’m a gene believer. Do you believe in the gene thing? I mean I do. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in.

I have like a very very high aptitude

Trump shows us where his superiority is located (CNN)

Well I think I was born with a drive for success. I was born with a certain intellect. The fact is you have to be born and be blessed with something up there. God help me by giving me a certain brain. It’s this [tapping his head], it’s not my salesmanship. This – you know what that is? I have an Ivy League education [true, just about: he spent his last undergraduate year at Wharton, the business school of the University of Pennslyvania, which is Ivy League], smart guy. I have like a very very high aptitude.

 You know I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff

I mean, like, I’m a smart person. You’re born a fighter, and I’ve seen a lot of people who want to fight but they can’t. Some people cannot genetically handle pressure.

I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.

(We can’t pretend we weren’t told what he is and what he thinks about race. He told us)

Source: Yes I watched him say all this. Video at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-eugenics_us_57ec4cc2e4b024a52d2cc7f9

The Hate Crime Bill and the Bible

 

Letter in Dundee Courier; Watching out for religious hatred 

Sir, –

Atheists see some merit in Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Bill, as it will enable the prosecution of all Scotland’s religions and their Holy Books for spreading hatred.

It is utterly unacceptable that in progressive, social democratic Scotland that squalid, Bronze Age village disputes, as described in the Holy Books, about control of women, goats or water should give Scotland’s “Holy Willies” authority to spout out vitriol against atheists, agnostics, apostates, sceptics, non-believers, women, trans people and homosexuals.

We fully intend to monitor all Holy Books, sermons in places of worship and the social media accounts of the various religions and report any hatred to Police Scotland for criminal investigation.

Ian Stewart, Convener, Atheist Scotland, Park Avenue, Dundee.

Christian News  takes Mr Stewart very seriously:

If passed, the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill would criminalise words deemed “likely” to “stir up hatred” against particular groups. It would not require any proof of intent.

Simon Calvert, Deputy Director for Public Affairs at The Christian Institute, warned against “the dangerous new ‘stirring up hatred’ offences”, saying that “they will give politically-motivated complainants like Mr Stewart a powerful weapon against their ideological opponents.”

He commented: “The threshold of the proposed offences is so low that Mr Stewart might well be able to persuade a police officer that certain unfashionable Bible verses or sermons are ‘hate crimes’. Does the Scottish Government really want to expose church ministers to the risk of prosecution at the instigation of anti-religious zealots?

Mr Calvert also pointed out that “Thankfully, Mr Stewart does not represent all atheists.”

The organisation “Atheist Scotland” does not seem to exist. But “Ian Stewart” sounds like someone I would like to get to know. The pending Hate Crime bill would certainly give him plenty of scope to carry out his threat, since it creates an offence of abusive speech likely to stir up hatred, whether there is any intent to stir up hatred and whether any hatred is stirred up or not, against members of various groups. Using the definitions in the Bill, these groups would include believers in different religions from the speaker, believers in no religion, homosexuals, transsexuals, and cross-dressers, all of whom you will find vilified in the Bible, while the Westminster Confession of Faith condemns all non-Christians to eternal conscious torment and serve them right.

The reality of course is that all the UK’s major secularists and humanist organisations, as well as a coalition ranging from the Free Church of Scotland to the Roman Catholics, have called (see e.g. Free to Disagree) for this bill in anything like its present form to be scrapped. There is no precedent for such diversity of opinion uniting around a cause, and for this, if nothing else, the Justice Minister is to be congratulated.

Undark: In Social Insects, Researchers Find Hints for Controlling Disease

Repost from UndarK:

In Social Insects, Researchers Find Hints for Controlling Disease

July 22, 2020 by Michael Schulson

Given that she infects ant colonies with deadly pathogens and then studies how they respond, one might say that Nathalie Stroeymeyt, a senior lecturer in the school of biological sciences at the University of Bristol in the U.K., specializes in miniature pandemics. The tables turned on her, however, in March: Covid-19 swept through Britain, and Stroeymeyt was shut out of her ant epidemiology lab. The high-performance computers she uses to track ant behavior sat idle, and only a lab technician — deemed an essential worker — was permitted to tend to the lab’s hundreds of black garden ant colonies, each housed in its own plastic tub.

With governments across the world now encouraging people to maintain space between one another to prevent the spread of the virus, Stroeymeyt drew parallels with her insect subjects. The current guidance on social distancing “rung familiar,” Stroeymeyt said, “because I’ve been seeing it among the ants.”

Such insights are at the heart of a burgeoning field of insect research that some scientists say could help humans imagine a more pandemic-resilient society. As with humans, fending off

Scots, PLEASE write to Holyrood Justice Ctee and to MSPs. Here’s how and why

The draft Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill is open for comment for just over one more week. It is a frightening attack on freedom of speech, and introduces a new offence of abusive speech, of which one can be guilty even without criminal intent, with penalties of up to seven years imprisonment. Fortunately, we still have time to persuade MSPs, of whom some even within the Government party have doubts. Links to the bill, other comments, and relevant email addresses are given below.

A person commits an offence if the person … communicates threatening or abusive material to another person, and … as a result, it is likely that hatred will be stirred up against such a group.

In brief, the bill is so broad, and its language so vague and inclusive, that it would be impossible to express oneself on a whole range of important issues without running the risk of offending.

The bill states that

A person commits an offence if the person … communicates threatening or abusive material to another person, and … as a result, it is likely that hatred will be stirred up against such a group.[Emphasis added]

The characteristics are age, disability, religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation, sexual orientation, transgender identity, variations in sex characteristics.

Notice that one can offend without intending to do so, even if no hatred is actually stirred up, and even if no member of the relevant group has actually complained. Strangely enough, when it comes to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins, there must be actual intent to stir up hatred. Why there should be this distinction is beyond my understanding, while expressions like “abuse” and “hatred” are so vague that there are a whole range of important current controversies (e.g. trans rights issues, the Palestine-Israel question, immigration, religious family law) were what some would regard as legitimate expression of opinion would risk being seen by others as abusive and stirring up hatred.

(Full text of the relevant sections at end of post)

Here’s what I sent to the Justice Committee at justicecommittee@parliament.scot, with copies to my Constituency and all my Regional MSPs:

As your constituent, I wish to comment on the draft Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill.

I welcome the abolition of the law against blasphemy, which I hope is in no way controversial, but an eight-word Bill would suffice for that.

I am a member of an ethnic minority group, and have been subjected to abusive speech likely to stir up hatred. Despite this, I am completely opposed to this Bill, which introduces a large number of necessarily ill-defined terms, and is likely to achieve the opposite of what is intended. I am particularly concerned at the creation of a new class of offence based on the extremely ill-defined concept of “abuse”, as well as the fact that it is possible to offend under this Bill with no intention of doing so.

If this Bill or anything at all like it becomes law, it will possible for me to offend without intending to do so by communicating material considered abusive, even if I do not consider it abusive, and even in the absence of complaints from anyone who is allegedly targeted, if it is found that it is likely (whatever that may mean) that what I communicate will stir up hatred, even if that was not my intent. I expect that many of us have offended multiple times by these criteria.

Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world (review; long)

Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world, Marcia Bjornerud, Princeton University Press, 2018/2020

There are many excellent overviews for the general reader of how life on Earth has changed over time (see, for a recent example, Neil Shubin’s Some Assembly Required, which I reviewed here recently. The history of the Earth itself has not been so well served, and Timefulness; How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, by Marcia Bjornerud, Professor of Geology and environmental Sciences at Lawrence University, is a welcome and timely addition to this badly under-represented genre. [1] The book is beautifully written, in plain language, with complex ideas explained with great simplicity and the use of strikingly appropriate verbal imagery. Behind this transparency of language lies a deep love and knowledge of her subject. The book should appeal to anyone looking for an overview of the Earth as the abode of life, or a perspective on our place in time, and how recklessly we are compressing the tempo of natural change.

The author presents her book as an argument for what she calls timefulness, the perception of ourselves as living in and constrained by time, of time itself as having both extension and texture, of the acceptance of our own mortality, and of our own responsibilities. This she sees as severely lacking in our society. We expect people to know something about distances on the map, but

Cummings, an exegesis (or how to read a text) (with statement in full)

Reading #DominicCummings narrative as a work of fiction

This tweeted by Professor Rachel Muers, Professor of Theology, Leeds, who applies to Cummings’s text the same methods that I have seen applied to II Samuel:

Reading #DominicCummings narrative [full narrative attached as Appendix] as a work of fiction (which it is, even if it recounts true events) is interesting on a few counts, eg gender and agency

For most of the story the narrator stands alone, sole heroic agent. He alone is responsible for protecting “wife and child”. “I decided” he says.

The centre of Barnard Castle, County Durham (via Wikipedia)

But at the point of the drive to Barnard Castle the female voice enters the story. The wife, not the narrator, is fearful. So “we decided” and even “we drove”.

This sets up an odd image in the reader’s mind – two people each with one hand on the wheel? But that’s not the point. This is the part of the story where the narrator is anxious, uncertain, not in control, fearful of claiming responsibility

It’s a brief wobble and then the “I” is back in charge. Running the show.

What does Mt St Helens teach us about Noah’s flood? Almost nothing.

Young Earth Creationists (YECs) argue from the rapid and dramatic events observed at the Mt St Helens 1980 eruption to the conclusion that the Earth’s geological record, as displayed for example at the Grand Canyon, could be the results of the even more dramatic events associated with a biblical worldwide flood. Geochristian, in the post I link to below, dismantles specific examples of this claim, and goes on to challenge the view that the Bible describes Noah’s Flood as a worldwide catastrophe anyway. Illustration: Step Canyon, Mt St Helens; Google Earth via Geochristian

Regarding geology, the YEC arguments derive their rhetorical power from the all-or-nothing thinking that runs through all their positions. They claim that Mt St Helens demonstrates the correctness of catastrophism over geological gradualism. If all this much can happen so quickly, why assume that the Earth’s deep geology really required deep time? If the flowing ash and mud from Mt St Helen’s shows lamination and cross bedding, does that not destroy the geologist’s argument that the lamination and cross bedding of shales and sandstones are the result of slow deposition? If in a matter of days snowmelt carved a canyon in the Mt St Helens deposits, would not the waters of a year-long flood have sufficed to carve out the Grand Canyon? If the Mt St Helens eruption rapidly uprooted and re-deposited large number of trees, could not the Earth’s fossil fuel deposits have been formed in the same manner?

Geochristian discusses each of these claims in detail (spoiler; none of them will stand up to examination). What I want to point out here is how much they all have in common. They all depend on imposing absolute either/or divisions on reality, cherry picking similarities and ignoring differences, and imposing the simplest of models on complex reality. The dispute between catastrophism and gradualism, although repeatedly revived by creationists (see e.g. here https://www.allaboutcreation.org/catastrophism-versus-uniformitarianism-faq.htm ) was pronounced dead by TH Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog”,in his Presidential Address to the Geological Society in 1869 https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/SM3/GeoAd69.html. It’s simply a matter of perspective. Catastrophic events do happen from time to time, but not very often, giving the impression of gradualism over long periods of time. Cross bedding can occur catastrophically, in well-understood special circumstances, but geologists have never had any difficulty in distinguishing between what is found in sudden volcanic outpourings and the completely different wind-blown cross bedding observed in desert sandstones, including ironically the Coconino Sandstone within the Grand Canyon itself. Canyons such as Mt St Helens Step Canyon can indeed form very rapidly in uncompacted sediments, but the Step Canyon is straight, and carved on a steep slope through soft debris, while Grand Canyon has bends and is carved through extremely hard rock by a river flowing over a plateau with, overall, a gentle gradient. And the tree debris from Mt St Helens bears no resemblance, either in texture or in amount, to the world’s coal fields.

Next, Geochristian attacks the YEC interpretation of Genesis. In particular, the word “eretz”, describing the territory immersed in the flood, can mean either the Earth, or a more limited region. Here his motivation is to preserve faith in the text, while rebutting the interpretation that requires the flood to be worldwide. My own approach would be rather different. In the biblical narrative, God sets out to destroy mankind, apart from the virtuous relic represented by Noah and his family. This could hardly have been accomplished by a merely local flood, though one could well argue that the author(s) of Genesis did not make a clear mental distinction between local and worldwide. However, the entire problem disappears if you regard the Genesis narrative (or, rather, fused narratives) in context within a much more ancient Mesopotamian literature, and I argue https://paulbraterman.wordpress.com/2018/11/12/noahs-flood-and-how-to-talk-to-creationists-about-it/ that this is actually more respectful of the text than supernaturalist literalism. However, in my experience discussions between those who do, and those who do not accept a supernatural origin for Scripture are rarely productive.

So why I am I, an unbeliever, re-blogging Geochristian’s material at all? Because as I see it, the crucial gulf is not between religious believers and unbelievers, but between those who are willing to accept reality in all its complexity, and those who prefer to impose their own dogma. And this does not affect only such matters as evolution and the age of the Earth, but such intensely practical matters as conservation, global warming, the regulation of market-based economies, and, right now, our reaction to one particular virus that happens to have mutated and evolved.
h/t Michael Roberts https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2020/05/19/what-does-mt-st-helens-teach-us-about-noahs-flood-almost-nothing/

 

 

 

GeoChristian

All I got from Mt St Helens (MSH) in the days following its May 18, 1980 eruption was a few pretty sunsets. I was an undergraduate student in my first year at the University of Utah, and most of the ash cloud passed far north of Salt Lake City. MSH became more significant for me a few years later as a geology graduate student at Washington State University, where my research project involved analysis and correlation of Cascade Range tephra (volcanic ash) layers buried at various levels in the Quaternary Palouse Loess of eastern Washington. Some of these tephra layers correlated to ancient eruptions of MSH, dated around 13,000 and 36,000 years ago.

Fortieth Anniversary

Credit: USGS, Robert Krimmel, public domain

Due in part to easy accessibility, the 1980 eruptions of MSH have been studied more closely than just about any other explosive volcanic eruption in history. Geologists have learned…

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My Passover message

Where rocks touch: geologic contacts

Another delightful posting from my friend Marli Miller.Thanks, Marli. I’ve blogged here earlier myself about the famous unconformity at Siccar Point, and the depositional contact at the Giants Causeway between a later lava flow, and the paleosol formed by weathering of the one before it.

geologictimepics

Geologic contacts are the surfaces where two different rocks touch each other –where they make contact. And there are only three types: depositional, intrusive, or fault. Contacts are one of the basic concerns in field geology and in creating geologic maps –and geologic maps are critical to comprehending the geology of a given area. For those of you out there who already know this stuff, I’ll do my best to spice it up with some nice photos. For those of you who don’t? This post is for you!

Depositional contacts are those where a sedimentary or volcanic rock was deposited on an older rock (of any type). Intrusive contacts are those where igneous rocks intrude older rock (of any type). Fault contacts are… faults! –surfaces where two rocks of any type have moved into their current positions next to each other along a fault.

In a cross-sectional sketch they may…

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Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin (review) [Long]

Some Assembly Required, Neil Shubin, Pantheon/Penguin Random House, March 2020, ISBN 978-1101871331, publisher’s price HB $26.95, £20.72. Publication date March 17

A shorter version of this review has appeared on 3 Quarks Daily.

This book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in the way in which evolution actually proceeds, and the insights that we are now gaining into the genome, which controls the process. The author, Neil Shubin, has made major contributions to our understanding, using in turn the traditional methods of palaeontology and  comparative anatomy, and the newer methods of molecular biology that have emerged in the last few decades. He is writing about subject matter that he knows intimately, often describing the contributions of scientists that he knows personally. Like Shubin’s earlier writings, the book is a pleasure to read, and I was not surprised to learn here that Shubin was a teaching assistant in Stephen Jay Gould’s lectures on the history of life.

Shubin is among other things Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. He first came to the attention of a wider public for the discovery of Tiktaalik, completing the bridge between lungfish and terrestrial tetrapods, and that work is described and placed in context in his earlier book, Your Inner Fish. The present volume is an overview, from his unique perspective, of our understanding of evolutionary change, from Darwin, through detailed palaeontological studies, and into the current era of molecular biology, a transition that, as he reminds us, parallels his own intellectual evolution.

18 March 2020, this just in:  https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/world/fish-finger-fossil-scn/index.html Fish finger fossils show the beginnings of hands;