Pedantry Corner -- Evolution Deniers

In the 12th September (2009) issue of UK weekly political magazine The Spectator, (Vol 311, number 9,446, fact fans) Rod Liddle wrote an article entitled “Do we really need Hitler to warn us about Aids?”

What follows is about a somewhat throwaway remark in Liddle’s article, which was concerned, primarily, with something entirely different (though related).

The article currently under advisement is about, as the Speccy subs (one assumes) put it in the strapline, how, “the advertising world has plumbed new depths of macabre tactlessness.” (I.e not about, as we’re going to come on to, the specific subject of “evolution deniers”.)

One of the examples of the advertising world's egregiousness in Liddle’s article is, as he puts it “a long and pornographic” advert on the perils of AIDS shown in Germany, in which (I haven’t seen it) Liddle says:

“an attractive naked woman whinned and yelped her way towards sexual climax,”, whilst being “rogered from behind” by someone who turned out to be “Adolf Hitler.”

The subtext, says Liddle, is “that Aids is universal, a great leveler like TB, and we are all at risk.”

“To deny this,” he goes on, “is akin to denying the Holocaust, -- to being a ‘Holocaust denier’.  Much as, these days, one can be a ‘climate change denier’– a deliberate allusion, on the part of our eco-warriors, to Holocaust denial, and in their eyes, every bit as grave a charge.  Calling people ‘deniers’, with that obvious allusion, in very au contrant – I notice Richard Dawkins has started calling people who disagree with Charles Darwin ‘evolution deniers.’”

Whoa.  (To quote Alan Partridge, that’s English for “stop a horse!”)  This suggests (surely) that Dawkins is jumping on some sort of recent bandwagon, and that the label “evolution deniers” is a sort of empty, politically correct, label.

To be honest, I’ve not got the energy to do a massive amount of research on this, but, five minutes rummaging amongst books I actually own have revealed:

Dawkins’s most recent book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, suggests that:

i] his preferred term is “history deniers” (or “40-percenters”) – see, for example, the Appendix, or, indeed, page 7 (of Chapter 1!) of the UK hardback of Greatest Show; and;

ii] other books I own suggest that the term ‘evolution deniers’, is, though perfectly apt and interchangeable with, in this case, ‘history deniers’ it is not only not au contrant, but at least 12 years old. (And I’m sure there must be earlier examples.)

In his marvellous book Why People Believe Weird Things (1997), Michael Shermer spends considerable time demolishing the arguments of both holocaust and evolution deniers.

Not only, as Shermer correctly made clear (in the last century!) is “‘evolution deniers’” a “more appropriate term than ‘creationists’”, the comparison with ‘holocaust deniers’ is valid for at least three reasons (this and all following quotes are from p. 132 of the 2000 WH Freeman and Co. paperback (3rd printing) of Shermer's book):

1]   Holocaust deniers find errors in the scholarship of historians and then imply that therefore their conclusions are wrong, as if historians never make mistakes.  Evolution deniers find errors in the science and imply that all of science is wrong, as if scientists never make mistakes.

2]  Holocaust deniers are fond of quoting, usually out of context, leading Nazis, Jews, and Holocaust scholars to make it sound like they are supporting Holocaust deniers’ claims.  Evolution deniers are fond of quoting leading scientists like Stephen J. Gould and Enrst Mayr out of context and implying that they are cagily denying the reality of evolution.

3] Holocaust deniers contend that genuine and honest debate between Holocaust scholars mean they themselves doubt the Holocaust or cannot get their stories straight.  Evolution deniers argue that genuine and honest debate between scientists mean even they doubt evolution or cannot get their science straight.

As Shermer says, the irony of this is that Holocaust deniers can “at least be partially right” (for example: as new discoveries have been made, as Shermer rightly says, the best estimate of the number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz has changed over the years).

On the other hand, not only does each new discovery reinforce the evidence for evolution and render “disagreeing with Charles Darwin” (one presumes Liddle doesn’t mean about his choice of favorite breakfast) ever more fatuous, once, as Shermer so rightly says:

“you allow divine intervention into the scientific process, all assumptions about natural law go out the window, and with them science.”

In other words, whilst people are of course at liberty to imply that “disagreeing with Charles Darwin” is in some way remotely sensible, it’s sadly and continuingly necessary to point out how obviously daft such views are...

[Slightly edited for clarity since first posted -- MW]

Titan...

...is over a billion kilometers away, and yet we can still take photos of it, like this:

[Image from NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org. who say: “This mosaic of Titan's surface was made from 16 images. The individual images have been specially processed to remove effects of Titan's hazy atmosphere and to improve visibility of the surface near the terminator (the boundary between day and night). During Cassini's first close flyby of Titan in October 2004, many clouds were seen near the south pole; in the December flyby many clouds were seen at mid-latitudes (see http://photojournal. jpl.nasa.gov/catalog /PIA06157). During this flyby, only a few small clouds near the south pole were noted. Imaging coverage during this flyby included improved looks at territory to the north and west of Xanadu, the large bright white area. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of polarized infrared light and were acquired at distances ranging from approximately 226,000 to 242,000 kilometers (140,000 to 150,000 miles) from Titan.”

Isn't it inspiring, as, indeed, is this artists impression (from the same source) of Huygens floating in the Titan night...:

Film 79: Who Watches The Watchmen?

Pausing only briefly to note my inability to avoid an obvious title, let us say, “Well, I do, now that it’s out on DVD” (though admittedly, in the UK, only thus far in a “Ha-ha, buy it again at Christmas with the extra footage and all the Black Freighter stuff edited in, you hopeless suckers” version.  Boo.)

Anyway. (And, spoilers.  And, a certain amount of comic-geekiness.  Look away now if you haven’t (especially) read the comics.)  

As I sat down to watch the UK single-disc edition (as usual, Alan Moore didn’t want to be associated with the film version so the credits rather grandly say it’s based on “the graphic novel co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons”) I made a bet with myself that Leonard Cohen’s marvelous song “First We Take Manhattan” would appear on the soundtrack.  Happily, I collected from myself, even though I had to wait long enough into the closing credits that I’d almost given up...Indeed, the soundtrack (well, mostly: the use of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” over the sex scene, is, I’d aver (and by no means originally) a bit heavy handed and misjudged) is one of the best things about this in many ways brilliant film, even without Elvis Costello’s “Absent Friends” over The Comedian’s funeral...

Prologue

Not the least astounding thing about this film is the quite extraordinary open letter David Hayter (who, with Alex Tse, is one of the two credited screenwriters) wrote after the first reviews were in, which I somehow feel compelled to state I only came across after I’d seen the film.  Addressed to the “fanboys and fangirls” it says, inter alia:

All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story.

[...]

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally.

Jesus H. Christ.  (On a bike.)  [And then some.]  This goes straight into my Top 2 of Times When Authors Really Should Have Kept Quiet, along with Anne Rice’s absurd rant on Amazon.com after the publication of Blood Canticle.  (Sorry, I really can’t be arsed to check if the full thing is still there...)

The Film

Before continuing, it’s only fair to say that Hayter apologized, saying, for example:

First off, let me apologize for my metaphor. I am certainly not advocating violence against women of any kind. My sole intent was to reference one of the most complex, controversial and interesting issues in the story...

But, not a good start, is it?

Talking of which, why make a film of something so quintessentially a comic in the first place?  It seems mad, although Zack Snyder, director of comics-adaptation 300, surely one of the maddest films ever made, was surely the man for the job if it’s going to be done, and often, most especially in the credits sequence set to Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changing”, this is quite brilliant, and almost absurdly faithful.

If anything, though, this (in many ways utterly admirable) faithfulness (often it seems as if he’s literally shooting the comic panels) serves to highlight the things you miss (in particular the lack of the Black Freighter stuff (see “boo” above) perhaps make Veidt a more generic-obscurely-motivated bad guy than was the case in the comics) and to make you obsessively compare the film version to the comics.  (And, parenthetically, to note just how much more violent faithfully transposed fights from comics panels seem in a live action format...)

For example, the transposition of Dr Manhattan’s remark that, “A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles, structurally there’s no difference” from Chapter I of the comic (during his conversation with Rorschach at the Rockefeller Military Research Centre) to his TV interview (Chapter III of the comic), so the subject of the statement is no longer The Comedian but rather (amongst others), Wally Weaver, perhaps make the character seem self-obsessed and, well, a git, rather than simply distant; as does the film’s version of his redemption on Mars, which here comes without Laurie’s remark in the comics that if she’s a “thermodynamic miracle” then so is the birth every human being on earth, an addition which Dr Manhattan admits is the whole point.  (On the other hand, the loss of Laurie’s rather just to be sure line: “Did the costumes make it good?” from Chapter VII doesn’t seem to matter...) [Christ, I seem to be taking issue with Alan Moore’s writing with this last one.  I certainly don’t mean to: he’s one of the few people I’d seriously think of applying the word “genius” to.  Heigh ho.]

Epilogue

As for the ending, initially I preferred the edgy, paranoid ending for Dan and Laurie of the comic, but the more I think about it, the less decided I’ve become...

I don’t know, I’ll make my mind up after the proper edition comes out, I think. 

[Oh, what a cop out! :-)]

Oh, and despite the rather C. Bale Batman-esque gravelly voice stuff, Jackie Earle Haley is brilliant as Rorschach...

Ashes Stats

Well, England won the Ashes, and several pints of hooray for that...On the basis that England played better in three Tests and Australia two, I’d say it was a fair result, but you can certainly have fun with the overall series stats...

Apart from the Australians dominating the most centuries and most wickets lists, there is the telling fact that after Captain Strice’s 474 runs, England’s next most prolific batsman was wicket keeper Matt Prior who scored 261: this is less (or do I mean fewer?) than not only Clarke, Ponting, Haddin, North, and Katich, but also the mostly desperately out of sorts Mike Hussey...(On the converse side of the bullpen, when England won in 2005, Pietersen, Trescothick and Flintoff all scored more than 400 runs, and Strice and Vaughan both got more than 300...)

In fact, if you take Strice out of England’s numbers, the rest of the top six (Cook, Bopara, Bell, Pietersen, Trott, Collingwood, and Prior) scored 1,291 runs at an average of 29.3 with one century.  If you take Australia’s top scorer (Clarke) out of their numbers, the rest of their top six (Punter, Watson, Hughes, Katich, North and Hussey) scored 1,666 at 42.7 with five hundreds.  It’s like they had an extra player in the middle order...

Of course, there’s a bit of skewing going on – of those 5 hundreds that the Aussie “Top 6 minus Clarke” scored, three were at Cardiff (as was one of their others – Haddin’s) and England’s two half-way decent scores at Headingley (Broad and Swann in the second innings) were scored outside the top six.

At the end of the day though, to coin a cliché, it’s no good scoring nearly 700 in Wales if you can’t take a wicket in 12 overs at Anderson and Panesar and then go on to collapse a couple of times on perfectly reasonable tracks later in the series.

Perhaps it’s telling that one stat England were ahead on was instances of bowlers taking five wickets in an innings, where we led Australia 4-2.  At crucial times, like Flintoff finishing things off at Lords, or Broad taking all those wickets in Australia’s first innings at the Oval, someone stepped up; and, collectively, we got most our ineptitude for the series over in one match of madness in the Headingley debacle.

Great series though.  Shame it’ll now be followed by the endless pointless tedium of interminable one-day games, but that’s a bit of chuntering for another day.

For now: “Hooray!”, again...

Bury My Beers At Wounded Knee

So, four more Tests at the most for the hard-hitting, fast-bowling, beer-swilling, earth-quaking, pedalo-wrecking, MBE-winning Freddie Flintoff, before he calls it a day in the premier form of the sport. 

Hardly much of a surprise, and I certainly don’t blame him.  (I was quite surprised, looking up his career stats today, at quite how many matches he’d managed...)

We could argue exactly where his performances place him in the pantheon of great English all-rounders such as Derek Pringle and Jimmy Anderson, but I saw Flintoff play a couple of times and he was certainly one of those players that made you put your pint and jar of pickled gherkins down and watch more intently: Test Match cricket needs as many of those sorts of players as it can get at the moment, and the game will be poorer without him...

And, though we English are apt to hopelessly overplay these sorts of things, them not being as expected (or even routine) as they are to Australians, there will always be 2005...

Keatsian Cento (partly)

“In the summer,” as Lord Tennyson nearly wrote, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

Not being, currently, quite as young as I used to be when I was, well, younger, mine tend to turn instead to thoughts of spending less time in front of the computer listening to Magnum’s splendid new album Into The Valley Of The Moon King, and more, especially in an Ashes summer, towards spending more time, when it's not raining, in the garden listening to the cricket.

Before I disappear for a bit to listen to England fail to regain the Ashes, however, for months now I have been trying to construct a Keatsian Cento.

(As you well know, Professor, a Cento is a ‘collaged’ poem, whose individual lines are stitched together from various genuine lines from, often, the same poet.)

It’s instructive and diverting and even fun in a crosswordy sort of way, but, I’ve found, harder than it looks.

Almost immediately, I decided I wanted my patchwork to end with lines from (in order) the 1817 dedication to Leigh Hunt, Esq.; Book IV of Endymion; and the last verse of “I Stood Tiptoe Upon A Little Hill”, viz:

But there are left delights as high as these;

Over wide streams and mountains great we went

To see the brightness in each others eyes.

And yet, despite picking out other lines of Keats’s iambic pentameter which seemed promising, e.g. What when a stout unbending champion awes from the sonnet addressed to Haydon, or When the fire flashes from a warrior’s eye from Specimen of an Induction to a Poem, or All of the shades that slanted o’er the green from Little Hill again, or Across the lake; sequester’d leafy glades from Calidore, A Fragment, etc. etc. I’ve never (yet) been able to find exactly something Keats wrote [damn him! :-)] that exactly leads to the ending above...

Heigh ho, I should really get out more, I guess...

England Retain The Ashes!

Well, it’s not often we get to say it in this country...