Proof of God #42: Laminin

No comment is necessary except to say that this man, Louie Giglio, was all set to deliver the benediction at Obama's upcoming inauguration until it was discovered that he hates homosexuals. For me, this video would have been enough to disqualify him.

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[Hat Tip: Hermant Mehta at Friendly Atheist: Louie Giglio, Who Thinks Laminin Molecules Prove Christianity is True, Will Deliver Obama’s Inauguration Benediction]

A New Era at Centre for Inquiry Canada

The Board of Directors of the Centre for Inquiry, Canada has mailed out the following press release. Unfortunately, nothing has been posted on the website [The Centre for Inquiry].

The Board of Directors would like to thank Justin for launching CFI Canada, growing it from one location in Toronto to across the country in short order. There are few individuals who possess the dedication, passion and tenacity to accomplish this. Justin was instrumental in making CFI the premier voice for reason, secularism and skepticism in Canada. We were fortunate to have him. Justin leaves CFI in good hands with our National Director, Michael Payton, and our incredible branch leaders and volunteers who are committed to continuing our growth and influence.

Justin, we look forward to watching you make further positive and lasting contributions to society, as no doubt you will.

Board of Directors, Centre for Inquiry Canada

I'm delighted that The Board and Justin were able to reach agreement on a new direction for CFI and usher in a new era under new leadership. I agree with the Board that Justin did an excellent job of creating CFI Canada and leading it through its formative years. I was happy to work with Justin and support him during those early years of building an organization (see photo).

In the past year I've been very critical of the CFI Board of Directors because I think they mishandled the firings and re-hirings that took place in 2011 and 2012. This time I think they've done the right thing during recent negotiations. Congratulations to Kevin Smith (President) and all the Board members for working hard to ensure the future success of CFI.

The email announcement also contained a letter from Justin Trottier to the Freehthinker members of CRI. It begins ....

Special Note from Justin Trottier, Founding National Executive Director, Centre for Inquiry Canada
To My Fellow Freethinkers,

It is with mixed emotions that I take this opportunity to announce the upcoming end of my leadership role with CFI Canada. March 15, 2013 will mark the end of my full-time position as National Communications Director; however, I will consider, if I am asked, continuing in part time or other status until no later than July 31. I am immensely proud of the contributions I've made to the organization over the last six years and plan to continue as a volunteer and active participant in CFI events and initiatives, but now it is time to start making the transition from CFI and pursue other interests and employment.

It has been a pleasure working with so many amazing people to form a unique Canadian educational charity and expand it into a national voice for atheists, humanists and skeptics from coast to coast. Leading CFI as it came to establish itself as the most visible, active and professional freethought organization in Canada, with employees, infrastructure and a growing budget will stand as one of the most important and certainly, matchless accomplishments of my life.

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I'm looking forward to rejoining CFI Canada in just a few months.

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Science vs IDiots: My Talk at Eschaton 2012

Here's a video of my talk at Eschaton 2012 in Ottawa (Dec. 1, 2012).

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More from the APA

GAINST THE HISTORICAL VALIDITY OF THE SO-CALLED LIST OF ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARIANS IN P.OXY. X 1241

JACKIE MURRAY

This paper challenges the historical value of P.Oxy.X.1241, part of which is the list of Alexandrian Librarians. It questions the basic assumption that the list at col. i.5 - ii.30 is in fact a list of the heads of the Alexandrian library. It calls attention to the fact that every single chronological statement needed to be emended and shows the fallacious reasoning behind the editors' influential conclusion that the papyrus is the most trustworthy of all sources pertaining to the history of the library.
In 1914, B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt published an anonymous 2nd cent. CE papyrus containing lists of famous artists, grammarians and historical/mythological inventors of weapons of practices of warfare. They observed its similarity to Hellenistic and Imperial mythographical catalogues and concluded: “Though the name of the compiler is unknown, the class to which this treatise is to be referred is thus clear; it is a characteristic product of Alexandrian erudition.” They, therefore, assessed the papyrus to be the most historically accurate source about the Alexandrian library. Their view has been accepted almost universally.

The papyrus is 6 columns with the list in question occupying col.i.17-ii.30. After a break of about 8 lines, the text picks up in the midst of a catalogue of grammarians, γραμματικοί, with a reference to “Philadelphus.” It is unclear who the grammarians in the first column were, but at the beginning of col.ii the text resumes with Apollonius of Rhodes, Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Aristarchus, Apollonius the Eidographer, Aristarchus of Samothrace, Cydas the Spear-bearer, Ammonius, Zenodotus, Diocles and Apollodorus.

The first observation is that the library or of the position of librarian is not mentioned. The position that is explicit in the papyrus, however, is royal tutor (διδάσκαλος to royal children), and only two grammarians in the list are singled out as having held it: Apollonius of Rhodes and Aristarchus of Samothrace. Thus, it is only an inference of the editors that the list refers to “head librarians,” an inference that is apparently based on a supposition that royal tutor = head Librarian. Yet, the link between these positions is merely one of correlation, and the main basis for this correlation is P.Oxy.X.1241 itself. Rather than following this circular logic with the editors who assert that the list is “an account of the Alexandrian librarians,” it is submitted here that the list is as it appears, a catalogue of grammarians connected to the Ptolemies, some of whom were known to be heads of the library.

Additionally, the unemended list is full of chronological errors. Indeed, the editors found it necessary to emend every single chronological reference in the papyrus in order to make it consistent with other sources. Particularly egregious is the case of Apollonius Rhodius. The unemended text says that Apollonius was the teacher of the first king, διδάσκαλος τοῦ πρ[ώ]του βασιλέως, Ptolemy I Soter (304 — 283 BCE). This is prima facie false. The editors, prompted by this error, emended the text to say τρίτου βασιλέως, “the third king,” which reflects the chronology of Suda and MS H of the Vita A of Apollonius. Hence, Suda and Vita A are the basis of the papyrus’ corrected chronology. Nevertheless, the papyrus’ singular report that Eratosthenes succeeded Apollonius is preferred to the Suda’s report that he was Apollonius’ predecessor. Apart from the fact that the papyrus is most likely only referring to the position of royal tutor, it is fallacious reasoning for the editors to base their emendations on one source, then to conclude that the emended text is more reliable than that source. Accordingly, left unemended the papyrus is useless because it is full of errors; whereas emended it must be regarded as the least reliable of our sources concerning the history of the Alexandrian library.


PAPYRI VERGILIANAE: CONTRIBUTIONS OF PAPYROLOGY AND THE READING OF VERGIL IN THE EAST (1-VI CENTURIES)

MARIA CHIARA SCAPPATICCIO

Moving from Vindolanda to Nessana, from Oxhyrhynchus to Narmouthis, from Masada to the Mons Claudianus, a spread knowledge and reception of Virgil’s works in the Roman Empire (and in its provinces, in particular) is documented through papyrus and parchment scraps, wooden tablets and ostraka, all containing verses from the Aeneid, Bucolics and Georgics.

Virgil has, actually, the leading role in Latin calligraphic exercises by Oriental scribes (PHaw. 24; POxy. 3554; PMasada 721), but – as we know reading about the Arusianus Messius’ quadriga, too – he is also the main ‘instrument’ to teach and learn Latin language both in grammatical treatises (PLaur. III / 504; PMich. 459) and though Latin-Greek glossaries (PNess. 1; PRyl. 478+PCairo 85.644+PMil. 1; PBerol. 21138; PVind. 62; PSI 756); he was stored in libraries and sometimes object of annotations (PAnt. 29) or simply copied in manuscripts in his original hexametric sequences, just to be read and studied (PNess. 2; PBerol. 21.299; PSI 21: maybe it is not something accidental that all these papyri have signs of lectio, made by ‘second’ hands, different from the scribe himself) and his verses were also the object of rhetorical exercises and rewritings (PSI 142, a real Vergilian progumnasma). Nowadays, we have more than thirty fragments with Virgil’s verses, more than the ones of any other author of Latin literature; and it is not something secondary, especially if compared to what we know through the modern editions of Virgil’s works.
The acquisition of papyrological data in the Vergilian recensio is something recent: Roger Mynors (P. Vergili Maronis Opera, Oxonii 1969) collated only the parchment fragments from the Ambrosiana in Milan, the Palin. Ambr. L 120 sup., while, before him, in a partial edition of the Aeneid, Arthur Stanley Pease (Publi Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus, Cambridge 1935) used in his apparatus only the PSI 21 and the bilingual POxy. 1099. It was in 1973 that Mario Geymonat mentioned eighteen Virgil’s papyri and these will become twentynine in his new edition in 2008 (Vergili Maronis opera, Roma 20082): the role of papyri has been vitalized and ‘pondered’ at the same time. It has been vitalized as it was the first time that all the know Virgil’s papyri were presented as witnesses of Virgil text (together with manuscripts) and all mentioned in the critical apparatus; it has been ‘pondered’ as papyri go into Textkritik as witnesses of Textgeshichte without giving particular attention to their ecdotical relevance (Geymonat writes: haec fragmenta nos perraro ad textum Vergilianum emendandum adiuvant (…), maximi autem momenti sunt ad haec studia apud antiquos illustranda et ad formulas rationesque scribendi vel Graecas locutiones explorandas, p. XIII n. 34). What has to be emphasised is that Virgil’s editors – including the Spanish équipe (L. Rivero García – J.A. Estévez Sola – M. Librán Moreno – A. Ramírez de Verger (edd.), Publio Virgilio Marón. Eneida. Volumen I (Libros I-III), Madrid 2009) and Gian Biagio Conte (P. Vergilius Maro. Aeneis, Berolini – Novi Eboraci 2009) – followed the papyri’s (sometimes really old) editions, sometimes in a not critical way.
The paper will present the results both in a palaeographical and papyrological and in a philological and linguistic dimension and will give a balance concerning all the Virgil’s papyri, once having made an autoptical examination of most of them: papyri give significant contributions to our knowledge of how Virgil was read and learnt – and so, spread, acknowledged and understood – in the pars Orientis of the Empire, from the I a.D. till Late Antiquity.

American Society of Papyrologists (ASP) Panel at the APA, Seattle, 2013

Ancient Lives: Greek Texts, Papyrology and Artificial Intelligence 
James Brusuelas


The “Ancient Lives” project is an international collaboration between multiple departments and institutions: The Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois, the Departments of Classics and Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and the Departments of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota.  Through the Ancient Lives website, the project continues to amass an immense database of crowd-sourced transcribed texts in order to assist in the classification, cataloguing, and identification of the tens of thousands of papyrus fragments housed in the Sackler Library of the Ashmolean Museum.  Consequently, a digital database of both previously edited and unedited Greek papyri texts exists for the first time.  In addition to the computerized assistance in cataloguing and identifying documents and known literary texts, the aim of this project is to build a computational interface to assist in the critical editing of Greek texts. 


Two of the principal goals are: (1) to refine and implement a consensus algorithm, adapted from those used in the study of DNA sequencing, that collates multiple transcriptions, producing a variety of meaningful statistical data and digitally searchable transcriptions that will be accessible to scholars through a unique graphical user interface (GUI); 

(2) based on the extant strings of Greek characters, to implement algorithmic meaning extraction to assist in the contextualization and identification of unknown literary works through an automated projection of possible linguistic/word scenarios.  We are also aiming at computationally repairing gaps/holes in papyri through an automated projection of characters that are not only dimensionally suitable but also contextually sound through linguistic parallels elicited from the searchable online databases of Greek texts.  The purpose of this paper is to report initial project results and to outline in greater detail our methodology for building this computational interface.  In sum, we are merging human and machine intelligence – automated algorithmic methods – to increase the accuracy with which Greek texts are edited.  We are transforming image data from Oxyrhynchus papyri into meaningful information that scholars can use – information that once took generations to produce.

Homer and Hesiod in P.Oxy.  4648: Reconstruction and Interpretation
Michael Haslam


This paper examines the intriguing piece published as P.Oxy.  4648, “Prose on Star-Signs Quoting Homer, Hesiod, and Others,” edited by Dirk Obbink.  Published a decade ago, it plainly calls for attention, but has received virtually none.  (Glenn Most took over Obbink’s version of the Hesiod section unameliorated in his Loeb Hesiod, as T151.) I attempt to reach a more satisfactory reconstruction of the text, one that yields a better understanding of what is being said both about Homer and about Hesiod, and along the way to elicit something of the significance that the text holds for ancient literary criticism of each poet.


The text is written in a practiced bookhand, probably of the later 3rd century CE, reportedly on the back of a petition; there are remains of 33 lines of just one column, broken at either side.  What is under discussion is poets’ practical understanding of the constellations.  When our column begins, the author is discussing Homer; he moves on to Hesiod (appending mention of Aratus as Hesiod’s zelotes); then to Aeschylus and Sophocles; and there the papyrus breaks off.  I propose to deal with the sections on Homer and Hesiod, the first 23 lines.
 

The first tolerably clear (albeit largely restored) statement we meet is that Homer’s veiled meaning (αἰνιττόμενος) is that everything is controlled by the movements of the constellations.  I suggest that the author is here addressing a passage in the description of the Shield of Achilles, Il.  18.483-9 (485 ἐν δὲ τὰ τείρεα πάντα τά τ’ οὐρανὸς ἐστεφάνωται), and investing it with cosmological import, in line with Crates’ take on the Shield as a mimema tou kosmou.  Then, on my understanding of the text (different from Obbink’s), he proceeds to say that Homer conferred his astronomical knowledge on Odysseus.  Homer made advance arrangements (προοικονομῶν) for Odysseus’ skill at navigating by the stars in the Odyssey (5.272ff.) by endowing him with the ability to tell the time of night by the stars already in the Iliad (10.252f.), thereby lending plausibility to the Odyssey episode.  This implies that Homer wrote the Iliad with the subsequent Odyssey in mind, and tailored the prior poem accordingly, an interesting and unusual view of Homer’s compositional procedures.  I float the suggestion (without arguing the case) that the section on Homer may represent the Homeric criticism of Crates.


Then comes Hesiod.  Obbink took the papyrus’ “[X knew] these things likewise” to mean that Homer knew seafaring just as Odysseus did, but I argue that the sense is that Hesiod knew the workings of the constellations just as Homer did, this effecting the transition from the one poet to the other.  On this view the author is not differentiating the two according to their respective arenas of seafaring and farming (so Obbink, supplementing accordingly) but uniting them in their shared understanding of star-signs: he’s a lumper not a splitter.  (Cf.  H.H.  Koning, Hesiod: The Other Poet (2010), who unfortunately seems unaware of this text.) It is significant that the poet—Homer for Obbink, Hesiod for me—is introduced as ὁ ἡδυ]επής (suppl.  P.J.  Parsons ap.  Obbink, irresistibly).  I note the doubly allusive appositeness of conferring this distinctive epithet on Hesiod.  It is the epithet that Hesiod applies to his Muses (Cat.  1.1/Th.  1021, Th.  965); and in the later Greek and Roman tripartite classification of styles Homer’s Νέστωρ ἡδυεπής (Il.  1.247- 9) was the archetype of the “middle” style, the prime exemplar of which was Hesiod (Quint.  12.10.58-64, 10.1.52, cf.  Dion.Hal.  de comp.  23, Dem.  40).  I conclude by restoring coherence to the remainder of the Hesiod section, which defeated Obbink and Most.


Women’s Petitions in Later Roman Egypt: Survey and Case Studies
 Graham Claytor


Over 150 petitions from women survive from Roman and Byzantine Egypt.  Along with reports of proceedings on papyrus and imperial rescripts from outside Egypt, these constitute the best evidence we have for provincial women’s engagement with the law and help shape our view of the social position of women in the Roman Empire.  Taking the terminus of B.  Kelly’s recent study as a starting point, I first discuss petitions from women in the “long” fourth century (284- 400 CE) as a whole, and then examine the cases in which we can learn a little more about the women involved in litigation, in the context of archives.  I close by touching on the larger issues raised by Kelly and others, such as the agency of female petitioners and whether the legal system tended to undermine or reinforce traditional gender roles.


I focus on the “long” fourth century for three reasons.  First, Kelly’s study on petitioning and social control ends in 284 CE, the traditional papyrological divide between “Roman” and “Byzantine” Egypt.  R.S.  Bagnall, however, has shown that the real break was from the late fourth century on, when evidence for female petitioners is much scarcer and largely restricted to wealthy, educated widows (Bagnall, “Women's Petitions in Late Antique Egypt,” in Denis Feissel and Jean Gascou (eds.), La pétition à Byzance [Paris, 2004], 53-60).  The fourth century evidence continues to be marked by Kelly’s two “ideal types” of female petitioners: one, the woman isolated from male support through death, divorce, or other circumstances; the other, the woman of relatively high standing whose economic engagements brought her into legal conflict (Kelly, Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt [Oxford, 2011], 235ff.).  Thus, we can study these petitions in close comparison with the earlier period and in contrast to the later period.

A second reason is the prominence of female petitioners in the period 284-400.  From about 15% of total petitioners in the period 30 BCE - 284 CE, the percentage of female petitioners rises to over a quarter in the ‘long’ fourth century, then falls to about 10% after 400.  This paper explores the reasons behind this apparent surge, which is paralleled also in imperial rescripts, and argues that it represents a real rise in women’s participation in the legal sphere and independence, at least during the Tetrarchic period.
Third, the archives of this period offer the opportunity to learn more about the family situation and economic engagements of certain female petitioners.  I focus on the archives of Isidoros, Sakaon, Aurelia Demetria, and the descendants of Alopex in Panopolis.  The first archive presents a pair of sisters, Taesis and Kyrillous, whose engagement with litigation came early in life due to the deaths of both parents: their coming of age is marked by a struggle against their uncle for the control of their inheritance.  In the archive of Sakaon from Theadelphia, Artemis the daughter of Paesios and Heros uses the legal system to protect her children’s property after the death of her husband.  Finally, the archives of Aurelia Demetria and the descendants of Alopex give us valuable details from urban settings.  In Hermopolis, Demetria petitions about a disputed sale of land, and in Panopolis, we meet the oil-seller and landlady Theodora, whose business interests lead her to petition the prefect about a defaulting debtor.


This period offers us unparalleled evidence for women’s engagement in legal processes.  Through both a broad survey and a microhistorical approach, I argue that women in the ‘long’ fourth century actively engaged in legal processes to achieve their own goals and that this period of transition witnessed a slight relaxing of traditional gender roles.  Both trends were halted by the end of the century and reversed in the centuries to follow.


Outsourcing Army Duties: Foederati in Late Roman Egypt 
Anna Kaiser


This paper seeks to examine the status of foederati in Late Roman Egypt.  One hundred years ago Jean Maspero wrote an essay on 6th century CE foederati and soldiers (“Φοιδερᾶτοι et Στρατιῶται dans l’armée byzantin au VIe siècle,” BZ 21 [1912] 97-109).  Since then many more papyri have been edited that allow a better view of the Roman military organisation of Egypt in general and the question of foederati in particular.
The main focus of this paper is the status of foederati and their duties in Egypt, one of the more peaceful parts of the Late Roman Empire.  Included among these duties might well have been the screening of the road system in the Eastern Desert, formerly a well-known duty of Roman soldiers.  The Principate saw Egypt’s Eastern Desert dotted with small Roman outposts guarding the road system and important quarries.  By the 3rd century CE there is almost no evidence for them anymore.  This may give the impression that the roads through the Eastern Desert were unprotected, although they were seriously threatened by the Blemmyes, Egypt’s neighbours in the desert.  The continuing trade with Berenike and Myos Hormos should have mattered enough to maintain the military road screening system (cf.  O.Claud.  I-IV; O.Krok; O.MyosHormos; S.  Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route, Berkeley 2011).  Papyrological and literary evidence together seem to suggest that those patrol duties formerly carried out by Roman soldiers were outsourced – to people and tribes living near the Roman borders.  These tribes may have even included the Blemmyes, a group that engendered a great deal of fear in the Egyptian inhabitants during the 5th and 6th centuries CE.  But both Eusebius and Abinnaeus, the praefectus alae of the ala V Praelectorum in 4th century Egypt, mention Blemmyan envoys in Constantinople, and Procopius refers to the retraction of the Roman frontier in 298 CE and gold delivered to the Blemmyes.  Some tribes of the Blemmyes therefore seem to have been Roman foederati (Eusebius, Vita Constantini 4, 7; P.Abinn.  1; Procopius, De bellis I 19, 27-37.) Another tribe appears to have formed the 6th century CE numerus of Pharanitae, which was stationed at Bau, a famous monastery, in the Thebaid.  The soldiers of this unit were first recruited in the Sinai peninsula, from a tribe living near the city of Pharan, not far from the famous Monastery of St.  Catherine (Ph.  Mayerson, “Pharanitai in Sinai and in Egypt,” BASP 47 [2010] 225-29).  The Latin word numerus, or its Greek equivalent ἀριθμός, was used for any kind of troop in Late Roman Egypt; the term does not distinguish between Roman soldiers or federates.  The Pharanitae may therefore provide another example of foederati in Late Antique Egypt – an example worth examining in more detail.

Jumping for Joy

Jerry Coyne has posted a video of a happy young antelope jumping up and down in a style called "pronking" or "stotting" [Antelope pronking].

If you're a certain type of evolutionary biologist you will immediately ask yourself what kind of selective advantage could have led to the fixation of stotting alleles in antelopes? Here's a list of possibilities that Jerry offers ...

• It allows an animal to jump out of high grass to look for predators
• The behavior startles the predator, giving the gazelle more time to escape
• It’s an alarm signal (like bird alarm calls), alerting herd members that a predator is nearby. This would probably evolve only if herd members were closely related, so the behavior could evolve via kin selection (assuming it’s individually maldaptive, which isn’t proven).
• It’s simply play behavior. But not only the young do it: adults pronk too when they’re chased by predators.
• It’s a way, in young gazelles, of letting the mother know the baby has been disturbed. This may be one function, but doesn’t explain stotting in adults.
• It confuses the predator. Presumably a herd of gazelle, all pronking, would puzzle a pursuing cheetah or wild dog, making it hard to pick out a given individual to chase. I don’t believe this for a second; predators aren’t that dumb, and in fact a predator would probably either learn to or evolve to concentrate on the stotting individuals because they might be easier to catch. (This “confusion” explanation was once used to explain zebra stripes: it might be hard to single out one zebra in a mass of fleeing stripey equids. But see my earlier post on another explanation for stripes.)
• It’s a way to attract mates, possibly by showing how fit you are. Sage grouse in the western U.S. form “leks” in which males group together and jump up and down for hours (making loud noises at the same time) while the females watch from nearby. Invariably it is the males who jump the longest that are chosen as mates. Females want a fit father for several reasons. This doesn’t wash for gazelles since both sexes do it, and not in a sexual context.
• This is a favored hypothesis: the “honest signal” theory. This posits that the behavior is saying to potential predators, “Don’t bother trying to catch me as I can bounce really high, so imagine how fast I could run if I wanted to!” In other words, the behavior deters the predator from attacking that individual.
• This is the hypothesis I find most credible: stotting warns the predator that it has been seen, thus discouraging it from pursuing the stotting animal. (Predators like to sneak up on a prey, getting as close as possible before they’re detected.) That is, stotting evolved via individual selection. Remember that predators often don’t go after a whole pack of quadrupeds at once, but single out certain individuals—often young or weak ones—to pursue.

Here's another example of animals jumping up and down in a stylized manner. Surely there are specific alleles that make them behave this way? And the alleles must have become fixed in the Maasi population by natural selection. In other words, it has to be an adaptation, right?

How many just-so stories can you think of?

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Beat Australia!

The Atheist Census is a project of Atheist Alliance International. You have to answer a few questions but it won't take more than a minute or two.

Please fill out the form if you are Canadian because the reputation of our country is at stake. So far the top ten countries are ...

1. United States of America: 51,541
2. Brazil: 10,971
3. United Kingdom: 10,683
4 Turkey: 9,795
5. Australia: 7,593
6. Canada: 6,852
7. India: 3,100
8. Italy: 2,948
9. Iran: 2,797
10 Poland: 2,679

Do you see what's happening? Some upstart British colony from the bottom half of the world is beating Canada! We can't let that happen. If you are Canadian get yourself over to Atheist Census right away. If you're from Australia you can get your vote counted at Atheist Census for Australians. (Agnostics need not apply.)

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[Hat Tip: Veronica at Canadian Atheist: Canada Versus Australia.]