Time to get the popcorn ready!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Time to get the popcorn ready!
I’ve been deprived for so long. Our local movie theater has been showing the usual profit-making superhero movies and kids’ shows, so when I saw the announcement that they were showing something outside the norm — a norm I’ve become tired of — I had to go. I had a great time.
Cool. What a surprise! It’s a weirdly beautiful movie. The premise is that a hideously scarred Willem Dafoe fishes up a pregnant suicide (Emma Stone), and he transplants the fetus’s brain into the skull of the woman using fantasy 19th century Frankenstein technology. It’s then about this baby/child growing up in an adult body, and encountering a dream-world version of Europe. She has a super-power, though: as an innocent in an adult body, she discovers she has a button she can press to make herself very, very happy. There’s a lot of sex in the movie. But mainly it’s about discombobulating perspectives and a mind changing and becoming more aware over time against an exotic background. Stone took a lot of risks with this movie, but she pulled it off.
As I was leaving the theater, I was asked what I thought of it. My answer was “Peculiar!” That was high praise.
It was a relief to see a challenging movie in town. Morris residents better see it fast, though: it looks like next week we’re getting Madame Web, a confusing superhero movie tangentially spider-related, and Ordinary Angels, some uplifting dreck made by a Christian production company. I’ll be staying home next weekend.
It’s Friday, and that means that today I make all the students in my eco-devo class do all the work, while I sit back and observe. It’s too bad I can’t do this every day of the week, but I guess I have to do something now and then to earn my gigantic paycheck. Anyway, on Fridays I pick a paper relevant to the subject of the course, throw it to two student volunteers, and tell them to lead a discussion.
This week the paper is The Jaw Epidemic: Recognition, Origins, Cures, and Prevention by Sandra Kahn, Paul Ehrlich, Marcus Feldman, Robert Sapolsky, and Simon Wong. It’s about the fact that our jaws have been shrinking rapidly in some cultures, and speculating about why. The answer the paper gives is that it’s an epigenetic response to environmental factors, specifically diet but also respiratory phenomena. You might be able to see why this is of interest in an eco-devo class.
Some scholars, although they accept all or some of our narrative, still assert that part of the problem must be genetic or hereditary. They apparently do not realize that, because every attribute of all living organisms must to some degree be traceable to their DNA (or RNA), the statement is nonsensical. Nonetheless, some scientists continue to push partial blame for the epidemic toward genetic evolution while ignoring the etiology of jaw shrinkage and distortion. The success of some clinical techniques to normalize jaw growth in young children and abundant evidence that jaw shrinkage is a factor in both obstructive sleep apnea and the advancement of maxilla and mandible are key treatments, in addition to other surgical techniques. This further makes clear the largely environmental cause of the epidemic.
This confusion over etiology is a possible result of the genetic determinism that is characteristic of much of popular science. For instance, recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) studies aimed at orofacial issues have been focused on possible genetic factors involved in the variation in the eruption of third molars (wisdom teeth). But they in no way suggest that selection and widespread genomic evolution explain the rarity of impacted third molars in hunter-gatherers compared with their common occurrence in settled or industrialized human populations). Similar problems occur when “racial” differences in the occurrence of jaw-related disease are discussed. For instance, Weinstock and colleagues (2014) found that African-American children were about 20% more susceptible to pediatric obstructive sleep apnea than children of other ethnic groups. But, unhappily, possible key environmental variables such as allergen concentrations at home or the length of nursing were ignored, as were different head shapes in different human groups that could make some more susceptible to the impacts of environmental change. In short, despite the great attention paid to a possible genetic evolutionary cause of the jaw epidemic, precious little evidence of genomic change being a significant factor has been uncovered.
I hope this sparks some good conversation. It’s a bit over-the-top to call it an “epidemic” of jaw shrinkage, but the hyperbole might trigger some arguments.
P.S. Their instructor is no gigachad. I grew up with a horribly crowded mouth with crooked teeth every which way that was treated crudely, by just yanking out a half dozen teeth to make room — we couldn’t afford braces or any finesse. Also, I had painfully impacted wisdom teeth that required an oral surgeon to take a hammer and chisel to my face.
We can make all kinds of arguments about what defines or doesn’t define a sex, but it really doesn’t matter — especially when it’s from a stock vanilla cishet person like Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, or me. What we should be discussing is the lived experience of trans people who are better acquainted with the actual life in a trans body.
So they did.
The report, called the 2022 US Trans Survey, presents an early look at findings from a survey of more than 92,000 people who identify as binary or nonbinary transgender adults. It is the first such report since the NCTE produced a survey of more than 28,000 individuals in 2015. Individuals were asked a variety of more than 600 possible questions. No respondent received all questions.
Importantly, the transgender survey is large but is not random. Although surveyors weighted the responses to try to account for biases, people who took the survey might still be unrepresentative of transgender people living in the US as a whole.
The report found that 94% of transgender individuals who live at least part of the time in a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth – in other words, who “transitioned” – were either “a lot” (79%) or “a little more satisfied” (15%) with their lives. Nearly 98% of respondents were receiving some kind of hormone replacement therapy, which made them “a lot” (84%) or “a little” (14%) more satisfied with their lives.
I don’t think the report will convince the opposition to shut the fuck up, unfortunately. I predict two responses. One, they’ll focus on the 6% (although it’s actually less than 1% who were unhappy after hormone treatments or surgery) and shriek about their ruined lives while ignoring the majority of successful outcomes, and not bothering to ask what went wrong in that minority. Two, they’ll point to the study as proof that they were right all along, see how seductive the trans lifestyle is? I remember how the anti-gay people moaned about how appealing the self-indulgent, self-gratifying, sybaritic gay life was, and how we must ban all gay references to keep our children from falling into the trap. This is the same thing. They’re going to call this study trans propaganda and ignore the actual data.
The one thing I can say as a stock vanilla cishet person is that no, I’m not going to suddenly shed all my sexual preferences and change my interests because I see somebody else having a good time. I’m going to be happy for them. What’s the matter with those people who’d rather others were unhappy?
In a bit of happy news:
In a victory for climate scientists, jurors in Michael Mann’s defamation case against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn awarded Mann $1 million in punitive damages for defamatory comments made in 2012.
In a unanimous decision, jurors agreed that both Simberg and Steyn defamed Mann in blog posts that compared Mann to convicted sex offender Jerry Sandusky, former assistant football coach at Penn State University. They announced that Simberg will pay $1,000 in punitive damages and Steyn will pay the larger $1 million.
Before the free speech fanatics start whining, this is something more than a guy suing someone to stop them calling him names. Simberg & Steyn were trying to undermine significant scientific claims by using ad hominems (hey, I’m actually applying that logical fallacy correctly) against Mann by defaming him. They can’t defeat the science with evidence, so instead they accuse a scientist of pedophilia…with absolutely no evidence for that, either.
Mann’s lawyers pointed this out, too.
“One million dollars in punitive damages makes a statement,” he said in an exclusive interview. “This is about the defense of science against scurrilous attacks, and dishonest efforts to undermine scientists who are just trying to do our job.”
Mann also noted that the trial was about defamatory statements made in an effort to discredit scientists “whose findings might prove inconvenient to certain ideologically driven individuals and outlets.”
“It’s about the integrity of the science and making sure that bad actors aren’t allowed to make false and defamatory statements about scientists in their effort to advance an agenda,” he added.
More than a defense of Mann, this was a trial about defending science. Simberg & Steyn’s lawyers, though, simply resorted to more personal attacks against Mann. Even if those criticisms were valid (they aren’t), they wouldn’t have constituted a good defense of the climate deniers claims. It was just more ad hominem!
But in the trial, these questions about “tenor” around the time of so-called “Climategate” seemed designed to legitimize attacks on Mann.
Roger Pielke Jr., another witness for the defense, called Mann “thin skinned” and “quick to attack.”
Much of the defense testimony seemed designed to “victimiz[e] the victim,” Williams said in his closing argument. For those who oppose climate action, “Michael Mann has become a huge target.”
This strategy of “victimizing the victim” not only shifted days of trial away from Simberg and Steyn’s articles comparing Mann to Sandusky — it also gave the defense an opportunity to put the hockey stick chart, and climate science more broadly, on trial.
My one complaint would be that the award of $1.1 million was not adequate. The bad guys, Simberg & Steyn, are backed by a whole vast industry with deep pockets, and that much money is just loose change to them — they’ll extract that much from their sofa cushions.
It’s no reward for Mann, either. I’ve been through this particular wringer with one petty, low profile accusation, and it required paying a lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars to win. This was a big case — I imagine all Mann has won financially is more debt. But it was worth it!*
* At least, that’s what the lawyers say.
Some people in Minnesota have a dream to make a popular commute easier — the hour and a half drive from the Big City of Minneapolis to the Major Medical Hub of Rochester, where the Mayo Clinic is located. These dreamers want a whole bunch of money to research a proposal to build a…hyperloop.
Hyperloop? Are they kidding us?
Hyperloop is a fantasy built up by Elon Musk that has never been implemented successfully, and when tried, simply sucks up a huge amount of money for transportation infrastructure to kill more practical ideas for mass transit. People are still considering it?
…group of high-profile backers is seeking millions in funding from the Metropolitan Council to help get the proposed project up and running.
The largely theoretical rail technology, known as hyperloop, was popularized in 2013 when billionaire Elon Musk published a white paper on the subject. Though some have expressed skepticism over the mogul’s seriousness about Hyperloop, there are active efforts around the world and in the U.S. to see it come to fruition — and Minnesota is the latest proposed site for such a system.
A nonprofit called Global Wellness Connections — whose board members include the mayors of Edina and Plymouth as well as former Secretary of State Mark Ritchie — is asking the Met Council’s Transportation Advisory Board for “most of the $2.5 million” needed for a feasibility study of a Minneapolis-Rochester hyperloop.
Today, no full-scale hyperloops exist anywhere in the world. Musk’s test tunnel in California is gone. The man himself has become more enamored with endorsing antisemitic theories than solving the problem of car traffic.
The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling operation, is still digging underground passageways in Las Vegas — but for Teslas, not hyperloops. The future, it would seem, is nearly the same as the present.
They want $2.5 million for a “feasibility study”. I’ll do it for a mere million dollars! Here’s the report I’ll send: “No, it’s not feasible, and has failed everywhere. How about building a regular commuter train?”
Jeff Bezos’ pet newspaper actually posted something that would give the owner the heebie-jeebies — it reported that the economy is doing relatively well, that unemployment is below 4%, and the labor market is surging. Which even a billionaire would consider great, except that it reveals one of the mechanisms that is fueling the improvement.
Last year the public sector, which includes education, caught up with its pre-pandemic employment levels, after struggling for years with an understaffing crisis. More robust pay and benefits packages have made those jobs more attractive to workers.
Lindsey Rogers, 27, and her husband, Jared, public school teachers in Baker City, Ore., saw their household income double at the start of this school year, rising by around $48,000, because of mandated salary increases in their new union contract. Their school district in rural Eastern Oregon in previous years struggled to fill open positions, but started this school year without a single vacancy because teacher pay jumped significantly, said Erin Lair, superintendent of the Baker School District.
For the Rogers family, the pay increase means they can afford the $750-a-month child-care costs for their new baby.
“We sat down at a union meeting on Zoom, and they pulled up our new pay scale and it was life-changing,” Rogers said. “I was in shock. We were both in tears. We were going to be able to provide a great life for our kid. We were actually going to be paid like professionals.”
Shocking, I know. You mean people do want to work, they’d just like to get paid what they deserve? Revolutionary, if true.
You know, higher ed is also in the public sector, and I wonder when we’ll catch up. We’re understaffed and get occasional tiny pay raises that don’t keep up with inflation — I look forward to the day we get paid like professionals. That day will probably come the day after I retire, if at all.
We aren’t unionized, by the way.
I think there has been some cutthroat competition in the grocery business in my small town. When we first moved here, there were two grocery stores: the big supermarket, Willie’s, and a smaller store called Coborn’s. Coborn’s abruptly closed up, to everyone’s surprise — the story was that they were denied a liquor license to allow them to sell beer, and then they packed up and moved out. This town is dominated in some ways by the apostolic church, and they’re pretty strict on the blue law enforcement.
Then a few years ago, a new grocery store, Meadowland, opened up just a few blocks from Willie’s. It’s not a high-end place, it’s got a cheaper esthetic, has a substantial stock, but it’s all a hodge-podge of brands. You’d think it would fold up in the face of competition from the established store, but it’s hanging in there. It’s run by…the apostolic church, so it’s got that advantage.
There’s stuff going on behind the scenes, on the town council, in private meetings, and I know nothing about it. What I do know is that grocery prices have been steadily climbing, and there’s nothing I can do about it, because we’re a small town and competition isn’t much of an option. Buy from the supermarket which basically has a stranglehold on the county, or buy from the fundamentalist church-run business that would probably be even worse if they got a monopoly? What a choice.
Mike the Mad Biologist highlights a brief comment in the Washington Post:
But there is no immediate fix for policymakers. Grocery prices remain elevated due to a mixture of labor shortages tied to the pandemic, ongoing supply chain disruptions, droughts, avian flu and other factors far beyond the administration’s control. Robust consumer demand has also fueled a shift to more expensive groceries, and consolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high, economic policy experts say.
Yes, that’s our situation. We do not live in a food desert, other than the artificially constructed one. We are surrounded by farms — unfortunately, most of them are growing corn for feedstocks and alcohol — but we could do better. In the summer, we subscribed to a local farm service, and every week we got a big box of fresh produce. It was a bit overwhelming, since we’d get this diverse collection of unfamiliar vegetables and had to struggle to figure out what to do with it all, but there’s clearly a better alternative to all the pre-packaged overpriced stuff with get from the overly-familiar store.
I do wonder what Willie’s would do if local farms became a more popular source for groceries. We’d probably also be healthier.
Another social media app has opened up — you can now freely join BlueSky without waiting for an invitation. It was founded by the guy who initially created Twitter, which ought to give us all pause, but they promise to give us customizable control over the algorithm. We’ll see. I’m on most of these new social media apps, so I have opinions…amorphous, poorly formed opinions, because I’ve been distracted by too many apps.
So far, I like Mastodon best. It’s a bit of a tangled mess with the swarms of servers out there, but once you get settled in, it’s nice, especially since you don’t feel like you’re enabling some hidden corporate beast somewhere. I get reasonable engagement, the interface works, there’s a substantial volume of traffic since I’m promiscuous about who I’ll follow.
BlueSky is nice and slick and feels most like the old Twitter. Membership has been throttled for a year, and now that it has opened up, it may turn into the worst of old Twitter as the Nazis rush in. One nice feature is that early adopters included lots of scientists, who have built a lot of beachheads to science content.
You might already be on Threads if you have an Instagram account — they seem to be fusing into an unholy amalgam of text and photos. It is a stepchild of the wicked Zuck, so that’s a strike against it, but on the plus side, I am seeing more writing here — people telling stories over multiple posts, and actually taking care to build a narrative. It’s growing on me for that reason.
Of course, Twitter still exists, but I will look down on you if you continue to use it. Leave now. There are good alternatives available. We’re looking at a ‘Fall of the House of Musk’ scenario over there, and soon enough it’s going to be nothing but a crevasse populated with gibbering lost souls. (Well, it’s always been something like that, but you know what I mean, it’ll get worse.)
My recommendation for the people I used to follow: jump ship to BlueSky. It’ll be most familiar, and you’ll find ready-made groups with similar interests already building communities. Just be prepared to leap away if it becomes another xitter. You can’t make strong attachments in a time of chaos.
Do you have a friendly little feral spider in your house who will sometimes scurry up to you in the morning and wave a leg? You’re missing out if not.
The only bad thing is that they’re too busy living their own lives to stop and pose for a while. I do what I can with an unwieldy macro camera.
