Does the U.S. have an Islamophobia problem?

It was “a great week for Islamophobia in America,” said Jack
Mirkinson in Salon.com. First, Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was
arrested, handcuffed, and interrogated by police in Irving,
Texas, for bringing to school a homemade clock that teachers
decided looked like a bomb; that absurd overreaction was later
defended by the town’s Republican mayor and conservative
luminaries such as Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Then,
at a town hall event for Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner
cheerfully promised to “look into” the concerns
of a supporter who called President Obama a foreignborn
Muslim, ranted about Islamist training camps,
and declared, “We have a problem in this country—
it’s called Muslims.” Finally, on Meet the Press, GOP
presidential candidate Ben Carson said that he “would
absolutely not agree” with putting “a Muslim in charge of this
nation” as president. Carson’s bigoted view of Muslims is actually
“a majority sentiment” in today’s Republican Party, said Jonathan
Chait in NYMag.com. As the primaries loom, brace yourself for
more nasty appeals to “right-wing Islamophobia.”
Islamophobia is a myth, said Kyle Smith in The New York Post.
Since 9/11, liberals have searched in vain for “evidence, any evidence,
that Muslims are facing deep-seated discrimination,” and
all they’ve come up with are nonstories like Ahmed Mohamed’s.
Ahmed’s “clock,” let the record show, was a “scary tangle of
wires” that looked very much like a bomb, and he chose to bring
it to school in a “zero tolerance” era in which dozens of students,
mostly white Christians, have been suspended or arrested for
drawing guns on paper, mentioning guns in homework assignments,
or even just wearing National Rifle Association T-shirts.
As for Carson, said Jonah Goldberg in NationalReview.com, all he
said was that he personally wouldn’t vote for a Muslim president,
not that Muslims should be barred from the office.
How is that different from liberals openly scorning
candidates with strong Christian beliefs? The truth is
that “a candidate’s faith is deeply relevant,” and liberals
think so, too, when they’re not feigning politically
correct outrage. Besides, Islam isn’t just a religion, said
Andrew McCarthy, also in NationalReview.com. It’s an
entire “political-social ideology” that sets out very clear,
strict rules for how people should live their lives. Whether
liberals like to admit it or not, Islam is opposed to the
separation of church and state, free speech, democracy, and
freedom of religion. Carson was right: “Islamic ideology is
inconsistent with the Constitution.”
“The overwhelming majority of Muslim scholars
would disagree” with that view of their faith, said Michael Gerson
in The Washington Post. So would nearly all American Muslims,
who live happily in a secular society. By painting all of Islam as
extremist, violent, and inherently un-American, Carson is siding
not only with “the worst elements” of our society but also with
the Islamic extremists themselves. “Ben Carson is right about
something,” though, said Dean Obeidallah in TheDailyBeast.com.
Religious extremism is incompatible with democracy and the U.S.
Constitution—and that conflict is not purely theoretical. There
are several religious extremists running for president this year—all
of them Christian. Carson, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and
Ted Cruz all have bitterly complained that the Supreme Court had
no right to contradict the biblical definition of marriage, and all
insist that Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ “religious freedom” trumps
her duties as a public official. So in accordance with “the Carson
doctrine,” all presidential candidates should be asked: Will you
pledge to place our Constitution above the Bible and your religious
beliefs? It will be fascinating to hear their responses.

Elephants and Trauma

Culling can cast a long shadow for elephants. Graeme Shannon and Karen
McComb of the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom studied a population
of elephants orphaned from culling operations and placed in South Africa’s
Pilanesberg National Park. They found that the practice, which involves killing
older elephants and relocating young ones, has a strong effect on the behavior
and social knowledge of surviving animals, causing symptoms similar to those
experienced by people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
South African wildlife officials used culling to control elephant populations
from the mid-1960s until 1995. To gauge the effects, Shannon and McComb
visited family groups in Pilanesberg and in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park,
where culling didn’t occur. They played recorded calls from elephants familiar and
unfamiliar to each, and of various ages. The Amboseli elephants responded as
expected: attentively bunched when they perceived high-level threats but relaxed
when the calls signaled low-level threats. Pilanesberg elephants responded
abnormally, showing no clear connection between threat level and reaction.
The behavioral ecologists attribute the abnormal responses to both the initial
trauma and the loss of role models that culling caused. “Fundamental aspects
of the elephant’s complex social behavior may be significantly altered in the long
term,” their study says. And because elephants transfer knowledge, this abnormal
behavior could be passed down for generations. —Lindsay N. Smith

SAMSUNG Galaxy S6 Edge+

VERDICT
In the absence of the Note 5, the S6 Edge+ is the best Android
phablet around, but at current prices it’s just not good value

WITH THE GALAXY Note 5 currently missing
in action in the UK, those after a big-screen
Samsung phone now have only one handset
to turn to: the Galaxy S6 Edge+. As the name
suggests, it’s essentially a larger version of
Samsung’s existing curvy flagship, the Galaxy
S6 Edge, adding a sizeable 5.7in display that
towers over the smaller phone’s 5.1in screen.
Big-screen phones don’t suit everyone, of
course, but the double-edged curves do make
the Edge+ one of the more manageable
phablets. It’s smaller than the iPhone 6 Plus,
despite having a larger display. It’s more
comfortable than the Galaxy Note 4, too, as
its slender, narrower frame provides more
purchase. The glass back is a touch slippery,
but there’s no denying that the S6 Edge+ is a
stylish handset. It uses the same premium
materials as the S6 Edge, and demands
attention when you take it out of a pocket.
As desirable as the S6 Edge+ is, though,
there’s very little to set it apart from the rest
of the S6 family. It even shares the same
2,560x1,440 resolution as the smaller phone.
With the same number of pixels stretched
over a larger screen, pixel density is actually a
fraction lower, at 515ppi compared to the S6’s
576ppi. However, this is still very sharp, and
you’ll be hard pressed to notice the difference.
As a result, the S6 Edge+ is essentially a
carbon copy of the S6 Edge, making the 0.5in
bigger screen its main distinguishing feature.
The large display provides more room when
browsing or using two apps simultaneously in
Screen mode.

The 5.7in, 2,560x1,440 display is excellent,
with the Super AMOLED panel displaying
full 100% sRGB colour gamut coverage.
Contrast also returned a ratio of infinity:1, as
peak black levels are a perfect 0.00cd/m2.
Admittedly a peak brightness of 388.7cd/m2
isn’t huge, and AMOLED panels are
traditionally much dimmer than their LCD
counterparts, but this figure shoots up to
around 600cd/m2 when you’re outside to help
combat screen glare.
Thankfully, the larger screen doesn’t
impact the phone’s battery life, as it managed
a respectable 13h 23m in our continuous video
playback test. While this is almost two hours
less than the standard S6 Edge, it’s only 10
minutes behind the regular S6, so you should
still get more than a full day’s use out of it
even if you’re a heavy media user.
The S6 Edge+ continues Samsung’s streak
of best-in-class performance, too. The
octa-core Exynos 7420 processor comprises
two quad-core chips, one running at 2.1GHz
for more intensive tasks while the other runs
at 1.5GHz to save on power when the phone is
idle. The S6 Edge+ also has the benefit of 4GB
of RAM over the S6 and S6 Edge’s 3GB, giving
it an extra boost while web browsing.
Its huge score of 1,549 in Futuremark’s
Peacekeeper test is the highest we’ve seen,
beating both the S6 and S6 Edge by a clear
300 points. Naturally, surfing the web is as
smooth as could be, with no signs of stutter
or jerky animations whatsoever. The extra 1GB
of RAM made less difference in Geekbench 3,
though, as its respective scores of 1,463 and
the single- and multicore tests are
less identical to those of the S6 Edge.
S6 Edge+ also didn’t fare any better
GFXBench GL’s offscreen Manhattan
test, with 1,514 frames (roughly 24fps)
putting it just behind the smaller Edge’s
score of 1,537 (or 25fps). In real terms,
though, the S6 Edge+ is still a highly
competent gaming machine.
The S6 Edge+ uses the same
megapixel sensor as the S6 and S6
Edge. It can produce clear, bright-looking
photos even in overcast weather conditions,
it banishes the gloom to make sure your
photos still look great even when the sun’s
not shining. Our test shots all had plenty of
detail, and Samsung’s excellent noise
reduction effectively eliminates all traces of
noise and grainy artefacts. Low-light
performance is equally brilliant. Noise was
practically non-existent, and colours remained
rich and vibrant throughout. The flash can be
a little harsh at times, though, as the warm
colours in our non-flash shots all but
disappeared when we switched it on.
With top-class performance and a superb
camera, the Galaxy S6 Edge+ rightly deserves
its title as the best Android phablet since the
Note 4. However, it is undeniably expensive
for what essentially amounts to a relatively
middling set of minor software tweaks and
some serious style points. It simply doesn’t do
enough to make it stand out from the rest of
the S6 family, so while it may be the best
Android phablet you can buy today, at its
current price it simply isn’t good value.