Some data

From Pew:

From the report: “Nearly a decade after September 11, 2001, skepticism about the events of that day persists among Muslim publics. When asked whether they think groups of Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., most Muslims in the nations surveyed say they do not believe this.

There is no Muslim public in which even 30% accept that Arabs conducted the attacks.”

“Muslims continue to believe there is widespread hostility toward them in the West. More than seven-in-ten think most or many Americans are hostile toward Muslims in the Palestinian territories, Turkey, and Pakistan, and solid majorities feel this way in Egypt and Jordan.

Moreover, perceptions of American hostility have increased since 2006 in four of the five countries where trends are available”

“On balance, respondents in the non-Muslim nations surveyed believe Muslims in their countries want to be distinct from the larger society. Majorities or pluralities hold this view in Western Europe, the U.S., Israel and Russia. This opinion is particularly widespread in Germany (72%), Spain (69%), and Russia (66%).”

“Among the Muslim publics surveyed, those in Lebanon offer the most positive ratings of Christians; 96% express a favorable opinion of the religious group, which makes up about 40% of the Lebanese population. Majorities of Muslims in Jordan (57%) and Indonesia (52%) also rate Christians favorably; Egyptian Muslims are nearly evenly divided, with 48% offering positive views and 47% saying they have an unfavorable opinion.

In contrast, Muslims in Turkey and Pakistan offer overwhelmingly negative views of Christians. In Turkey, just 6% of Muslims have a favorable view and 82% offer negative opinions of Christians; among Pakistani Muslims, 16% have positive opinions and 66% offer unfavorable views.” [my emphasis]

“Ratings of Jews are dismal in the seven predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. About one-in-ten (9%) Muslims in Indonesia, and even fewer in Turkey (4%), the Palestinian territories (4%), Lebanon (3%), Jordan (2%), Egypt (2%) and Pakistan (2%) express favorable opinions of Jews.”

“In the Arab countries surveyed, large majorities of Muslims who say some religions are more prone to violence consider Judaism to be the most violent religion; 97% in Jordan, 93% in Egypt, 88% in the Palestinian territories and 77% in Lebanon share this view.”

“On balance, Muslims in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed are more likely to associate negative characteristics with Westerners than non-Muslims are to associate them with Muslims. For example, nearly nine-in-ten (89%) Jordanian Muslims use at least three of the six negative adjectives tested to describe people in Western countries, as do majorities in Egypt (81%), Turkey (73%), the Palestinian territories (71%), Pakistan (67%) and Indonesia (63%); only in Lebanon is this not the case.

In contrast, Spain is the only Western country surveyed where a majority (60%) of non-Muslims associate three or more negative characteristics with Muslims. At least three-in-ten non-Muslims in Britain (39%), the U.S. (35%) and France (30%) do not attribute any of the six negative characteristics tested to Muslims.”

The link has more.

Wikipedia articles of interest

1. Milankovitch cycles.

“Milankovitch theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth’s movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković, who worked on it during First World War internment. Milanković mathematically theorized that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth’s orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth through orbital forcing.

The Earth’s axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time the elliptical orbit rotates more slowly. The combined effect of the two precessions leads to a 21,000-year period between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth’s rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit (obliquity) oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year cycle. It is currently 23.44 degrees and decreasing.”

2. Gravity of Earth. Here’s more, somewhat related.

3. Histone.

4. Lake Victoria.

“With a surface area of 68,800 square kilometres (26,600 sq mi), Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake by area, and it is the largest tropical lake in the world. Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest freshwater lake by surface area (only Lake Superior in North America is larger). In terms of its volume, Lake Victoria is the world’s eighth largest continental lake, and it contains about 2,750 cubic kilometers (2.2 billion acre-feet) of water.

[...]

“The introduction of the Nile perch had a decisive impact on Haplochromis stocks which it favoured as its prey, affecting both their abundance and diversity. It is believed that the contribution of this species flock to the fish biomass of the lake has decreased from 80% to less than 1% since the introduction of the Nile perch,[18][33] and that some 65% of the Haplochromis species were driven to extinction in the process, an event which may well represent the largest extinction event amongst vertebrates in the 20th century.[17]

Freed from their evolutionary predators, populations of the diminutive endemic silver cyprinid Rastrineobola argentea (omena in Luo, mukene in Luganda and dagaa in Swahili), flourished, developing into huge shoals. In turn, Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) populations, that had hitherto fed on haplochromines, exploded in response to this new food source.[34] Similar and other impacts have propagated throughout the ecosystem.

[...]

The Nile perch ‘boom’ was to accelerate and massively expand this process. It coincided with an emerging European market for high-quality white fish meat, prompting the development of industrial fish processing capacity along the lake’s shores in Kisumu, Musoma, Mwanza, Entebbe and Jinja.[40] The export of Nile perch has since expanded away from the European Union (EU) to the Middle East, the United States and Australia, and now represents large foreign exchange earnings to the lake’s riparian states. In Uganda, indeed, its export is second only to coffee in the rankings of export earnings. In 2006, the total value of Nile perch exports from the lake was estimated to be US$ 250 million. [...]

With such high demands for Nile perch, the value of the fishery has risen considerably. Labour inflows into the fishery have increased along with growing demand. In 1983, there were an estimated 12,041 boats on the lake. By 2004, there were 51,712, and 153,066 fishermen.[38] The fishery also generates indirect employment for additional multitudes of fish processors, transporters, factory employees and others. All along the lakeshore, ‘boom towns’ have developed in response to the demands of fishing crews with money to spend from a day’s fishing.[Note 4] These towns resemble shanties, and have little in the way of services. Of the 1,433 landing sites identified in the 2004 frame survey, just 20% had communal lavatory facilities, 4% were served by electricity and 6% were served by a potable water supply.[38]“

5. Flesh-fly.

“Flies of the Diptera family Sarcophagidae (from the Greek sarco- = flesh, phage = eating; the same roots as the word “sarcophagus”) are commonly known as flesh flies. Most flesh flies breed in carrion, dung, or decaying material, but a few species lay their eggs in the open wounds of mammals;[1] hence their common name. Some flesh fly larvae are internal parasites of other insects. These larvae, commonly known as maggots, live for about 5–10 days, before descending into the soil and maturing into adulthood. At that stage, they live for 5–7 days. [...]

The family contains three subfamilies, the Miltogramminae, the Paramacronychiinae and the Sarcophaginae, containing between them 108 genera. Flesh-flies are quite closely related to the family Calliphoridae, which belongs to the same (large) infraorder, the Muscomorpha, and includes species such as the blowfly that have similar habits to the flesh-flies. [genus/genera is the taxonomic level one step above species. There are a lot of different kinds of flies like this and they are quite successful.]

Mansfield Park

I’m currently reading this. If you’re able to read stuff like this online (I’m not), the entire book is available here. A few quotes from some of the first chapters:

i) “there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.”

ii) “‘I must tell you another thing of Fanny, so odd and so stupid. Do you know, she says she does not want to learn either music or drawing.’
‘To be sure, my dear, that is very stupid indeed, and shows a great want of genius and emulation.’”

iii) “Lady Bertram did not at all like to have her husband leave her; but she was not disturbed by any alarm for his safety, or solicitude for his comfort, being one of those persons who think nothing can be dangerous or difficult, or fatiguing to anybody but themselves.”

iv) “Being now in her twenty-first year, Maria Bertram was beginning to think matrimony a duty; and as a marriage with Mr Rushworth would give her the enjoyment of a larger income than her father’s, as well as ensure her the house in town, which was now a prime object, it became, by the same rule of moral obligation, her evident duty to marry Mr Rushworth if she could.”

v) “‘If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.’”

vi) “‘I pay very little regard,’ said Mrs Grant, ‘to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.’ [...] ‘I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly; I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.’”

vii) “‘An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done.’”

viii) “‘Girls should be quiet and modest.’”

ix) “‘Captain Marshall? You have a large acquaintance in the navy, I conclude?’
‘Among admirals, large enough; but,’ with an air of grandeur, ‘we know very little of the inferior ranks. Post captains may be very good sort of men, but they do not belong to us.’”

…

Almost 200 years have passed. Reading books like Austen’s makes it much easier to appreciate just how much modern societies stand to lose by not defending their values and their culture. Treat women like crap? We’ve already been there. We’ve almost always been there. And it took a lot of hard work and fights to go ‘someplace else’. How much work it took is easier to appreciate once you realize how new many of the ‘default positions’ of people with a Western mindset today are, and how revolutionary they must have been when they were first introduced into the collective meme-space.

It’s always somewhat problematic to draw any kinds of wide-ranging conclusions about ‘societal matters’ based on fictional accounts, I know, but I still think it’s worth remembering that there are many people today living in Western countries who have attitudes towards women that likely would(/’ve) be(/en) considered barbaric by the people quoted above – by people for whom it is completely natural that a female’s main role in society is and ought to be to i) look nice (like a piece of furniture) and behave nicely in order to ii) get married to someone rich, or at the very least ‘a proper match’, and iii) get some children; and for whom a ‘natural result’ of an ‘imprudent marriage’ might be for a young girl to break off contact with her own sister and pretty much never talk to her again. That’s how far some of them have to go. If we allow individuals like those to dictate how we treat women, we’ll have a very long way to go too before long.