Tim Minchin is an Australian née British musician/composer/songwriter/comedian, particularly known for his outspoken skepticism. All the best humor can be found overseas; here we think Saturday Night Live is humorous, apparently since not very many people learned in school what “humor” actually means. It’s not fair.
Anyway, one of his most popular works is the beat-poem, Storm, later animated. I usually can’t stand beat-poetry, but this isn’t a bad example at all, and of course, I’m easily swayed by the subject matter. The scenario is all-too-familiar to those who promote critical thinking: some flaming nitwit drones on in public from a state of self-impressed ignorance, but it’s considered impolite to inject an empirical perspective. We have weird standards in our cultures, and Tim, among others, would prefer to see these become a bit different. That’s enough setup; watch the video.
It’s not just the act of contradicting someone publicly – skepticism itself is often considered to be mean, taking cherished beliefs away from people who, it seems, are emotionally delicate. The argument that such beliefs “don’t harm anyone” is heard pretty often, as if that’s the only standard that matters.
Or as if it’s even been established in the first place. Actually, many forms of ‘cherished beliefs’ have been demonstrated to be harmful in numerous ways – we cannot hide behind the shield of ‘opinion,’ since opinion informs our decisions. There’s a difference between what color we might paint our walls, and what we decide to do when our child is sick. It’s not opinion that’s the key factor, but consequence.
Here’s a portion of the difference between an outspoken skeptic and the hypothetical ‘polite’ person. Not speaking up, not correcting misapprehensions, not daring to create the cracks of doubt in the façade of self-assurance, has consequences too. The potential for real harm weighs rather heavily against the possibility, or even guarantee, that someone might get upset. What kind of person places the pleasant nature of their dinner party higher in importance than effectively treating a future illness, or guiding legislature towards useful purposes, or even just the hint that expecting some ‘spiritual purpose’ to guide one’s life is a waste of both time and intelligence? At best, it’s someone who pretends the correction, the better information, will occur someplace down the road before harm can be done. Mostly, however, it’s cowards – afraid of confrontation and believing that if no one gets upset, everything is just fine.
But, here’s an important bit: the skeptic does not have to be confrontational when providing their input, and this is where Storm is seriously misleading. Minchin goes off on a rant, clearly frustrated over seeing too much of this, and openly derogatory. But this is self-indulgent itself, alleviating frustration in a way virtually guaranteed not to have much of an effect; he even notes this himself in the poem yet, to all appearances, credits this to the intransigence of Storm rather than his own approach. While his overall points have plenty of well-grounded facts behind them, the delivery is as emotional as those who revel in ‘spiritual’ and ‘holistic,’ and such an approach is more a contest of wills than a discussion of relative merits. In most cases, a matter-of-fact approach is incredibly disarming; non-confrontational, non-judgmental, non-emotional – just, “this is how it is,” with supporting details as needed. This won’t work for everybody, but imagine those others at the party, listening to the discussion between a calm, lucid person and a dramatic, emotional one – who do you think they’re likely to pay more attention to? Who will provoke the consideration that perhaps there’s more to be learned? Who, to be blunt, seems to be working from solid info rather than a dogged commitment to what they want to believe?
Let’s not forget that no one ever concedes defeat in an argument, except dismissively or sarcastically. The goal cannot be to win, only to start the process of examination – the change will take time. Make your point and let it go.
The title of the poem has a secondary meaning – not just the name of the antagonist, but Minchin’s own thunderhead building to a climax. Storms often make people cower, however – the goal is to slide in under their umbrella, like a… damn, I can’t close this metaphor thematically. But you know what I mean anyway.
I’ve seen before the kind of dancing she did while grounded, and knew as she returned to another branch that she’d caught something. In this case it was a small 
Richard Dawkins used it extensively in 
Protective herds are, of course, a behavior that has been selected for, as are the protective instincts of the parents – these evolved right alongside all other traits, and each one has an impact. What this means is that survival of the genes relies on many points of convergence, so any one selective factor – predators, food sources, climate, etc. – has only a partial effect on the process. What selection produces is not an ideal organism, but one that balances both environmental influences and the random genetic changes that occur into something that, on average, works better than before. It’s actually pretty haphazard and slow, which is what’s fascinating about it, because the species we see now had to be shaped by millions of causes over long periods of time.
Which brings us to the gene level, where deliberate language is a major factor of confusion. Genes do not do anything except spark the development of proteins under certain conditions; they are far less active than a grass seed that germinates when surrounded by adequate moisture and nutrition, and are much more like an alarm clock that rings at certain times. Their propagation in any species relies on the survival of the individual that possesses them, and the lottery that may just drop them out in favor of the gene from the other parent, or the rare mutation that occurs. When a new gene mutation provides some slight advantage in survival or reproduction, it stands a better chance of getting to offspring, and in multiple generations of this process, it can become more prevalent in the gene pool of the species, first in a local group, and eventually in time throughout the entire population. The gene does not try to survive; it does not survive at the expense of others; it does not compete. Natural selection sees that tiny advantages can add up over time – again, on average. Note that it is not just the singular gene that propagates from any advantage it might provide to an organism – every gene that the organism possesses at that time, including the detrimental ones, gets selected and is along for the ride. The detrimental ones may also prevent the beneficial ones from propagating as well; it all depends on what the nature of each trait is, and whether it has a significant effect on the reproduction of the individual.
I think it snowed early this morning just to offer a counterpoint to the pics from yesterday morn. This is the first of the season here, and no, I don’t really count this as snow; not from having grown up in central New York, and not in comparison to many other parts of the country right now. We have often had much heavier snowfalls than this by this time of year, so it just reflects how lucky we’ve been here. I’m not gloating, even though it’s true that I moved south largely to escape winter weather. While I’m not fond of cold, I can hack it reasonably well. It was the expectation that inclement weather was supposed to have no effect on school or work that was most disagreeable, and after several years, multiple minor vehicle damages and one major one, and having to pull a faulty pump from our well in arctic conditions, I figured it was time to get out.
Most (perhaps all) bird species congregate in flocks, primarily because they gain a huge protective advantage from the multiple opportunities to spot danger and alert all others, additionally because their food sources tend to come in large amounts of seeds, berries, or even schools of fish, so there is more benefit from feeding among the others than competition from doing so. They also have to care for their young in the early stages, so often form parental bonds to share the workload. Birdsong is largely related to territory, part of the competition that they do face amongst themselves, which is reproduction. And this reproduction produces an extensive behavior all its own, that of selecting a mate that appears better than the rest, which fostered various displays of fitness in the form of plumage, shelter construction, and the song repertoire of an experienced survivor. People familiar with pet birds can usually see this difference in sociability, often misinterpreted; birds like their heads and backs scratched mostly because their new feathers itch and cannot be reached there, and prefer to perch on shoulders because it’s a dominant position.
Almost anyway. The image above is actually edited to remove the faint evidence of the nature photographer’s bane: electrical lines. There are actually very few places in the US that are free from wires, poles, and towers, making any kind of landscape shots tricky, and this is especially true for the front yard – I’ve done no small amount of repositioning in an attempt to get something interesting in the sky without those damn wires. Seen here is the untouched version, with faint but noticeable streaks on the left side. Wielding the smudge tool in Photoshop was enough to hide them, though if you compare the two, you can still see some hints – without the comparison they really don’t attract attention. While I was at it, I did a slight color tweak towards red. But go back to last winter’s image and notice how the background looks so much better here; this is why I wanted to redo the shot.
Sunrise also brings another bane of landscape photographers in many parts of the country: jet contrails. Between the sudden surge of departing flights and the light angle that makes them stand out starkly against the sky, you can almost forget about including the sky in images taken from some locales. I think most times people tune them out while taking photos and never notice when they’re in the frame, but they provide a strong contrast element that is immediately noticeable in the resulting image. I shot this one just as an example of why I can’t work from the yard too much, even when I have nice foreground subjects. Soon afterward, the cold air had dropped the power curve in the batteries too low to be effective and the camera died. I could have swapped them out for a warm, fully charged set, but I had already lost the light quality and those contrails were only going to increase in size and number.
This image, or at least the background thereof, is heavily edited to remove both reflections and the rest of the aquarium showing through the back of the tank, but the cuttlefish is untouched (perhaps unretouched, whatever that means) and that green belly is indeed glowing. My understanding is that this is a mating display, the cuttlefish equivalent of an open shirt with gold chains, but likely far more effective – maybe this means guys should hang a lightstick around their neck in clubs? This might work only on the women that resemble cuttlefish, so your call on the value of that.
While typing this, it occurs to me that a certain amount of how appealing cuttlefish are comes from those eyes. They’re as wide open as any fish, but the peculiar shape of the pupil gives them a mostly-closed appearance, pretty mellow and easygoing – with the intense, startled look of a round pupil, we’d very likely be interpreting the actions and intentions of these cephalopods entirely differently, since we’re a species that finds it crucial to read emotions through eyes. Give them a prominent supraorbital ridge like raptors have, glaring at everything indiscriminately, and they’ll become an apex predator and far less cute.