Grrrr, physicists!

This comic is not funny.

It’s totally wrong. It’s from the Ernest Rutherford school of science stereotypes. Biology involves “less knowledge”, however that is defined, than physics? Nonsense. Ask my students. There’s constant tension in my classes between understanding the general principles and mastering all the details, and both are hard. Biology needs to be moved upward, above physics, on this graph.

As for the potential for evil…I’m sorry, there’s no comparison. Physics specializes in the spectacularly abrupt termination: bullets, bombs, lasers, “Mr Bond, I want you to die!” sorts of things. Biology is all about the slow, lingering, agonizing death that is simultaneously a mechanism for transmission to others; biology turns people into walking engines of death. And cancer! What’s more evil than cancer? Nothing, I tell you. So the cartoonist really needs to move biology way, way out to the right.

It vexes me that physicists are always brainwashing their students into thinking biology is less evil than they are.

Why we need a crash research program in time travel

babytrump

Is everyone mad? Do you not see the obvious concerns?

I’m a scientist! I can put two and two together and get the obvious answer: Baby Donald Trump is in great peril if grown-up Donald Trump should get the nomination and be elected president. After a few years of a Trump presidency, swarms of physicists (who are mostly Democrat, I should note) will be rushing to develop a time machine with the specific purpose of killing a baby.

That’s why we need to develop a time machine immediately, to protect innocent Baby Trump. I expect pro-life groups all across America to immediately drop whatever else they are doing, and instead funnel all of their money into physics research. Not only will it protect one baby, not only will it defend trillions of past potential future human lives, but I suspect that most of them are Trump voters who want him to be president, anyway.

I anticipate a few concerns about this program.

Why do we need a crash program? It’s a freakin’ time machine. Because, obviously, if the baby-killers get it first, they will erase Donald Trump and all memories of Trump. Our researchers would be working away at our time machine, and then suddenly they’d be wondering why they’re doing this — they’d know nothing of the horrors of Trump, and would be baffled at why they’re developing a machine to kill Baby President Kardashian. We must be first.

What are your specific plans on how to use your time machine? Clearly, we must invest in a long-term defense: defending only Baby Trump could be defeated by murdering Toddler Trump, or Obnoxious Adolescent Trump, or Spoiled Twenty Year Old Asshole Trump. What we’re going to have to do is send back a robot to protect Trump from pre-birth to presidential candidacy. This has the advantage that sending back an emotionless cybernetic automaton to guide him through his youth might also enhance his empathy.

Wait. Why do you want to protect Donald Trump? Well, I don’t actually. I think he’s a nasty polyp on the colon of the body politic, and nipping him in the bud might be a good idea. But I’m also an SJW, and you know how we defend the right of the most odious people to exist, and he’s pretty dang odious.

But really, I just want a time machine. Once we send the robot back to the mid-1940s, I’m setting the dial to the Cambrian and going on an ancient metazoan collecting trip. (Where I will meet an army of robots tasked with defending primeval chordates? Only time will tell.)

My daughter’s contribution to world peace

My daughter, Skatje, was having a semi-public discussion with my niece, Rachael, about making lefse, and she shared her recipe. I have stolen it and now post it publicly, because the world — nay, the universe — needs this information. Use it wisely.

lefse1

8 cups riced potatoes (a 5lb bag should cover it)
3-4 cups flour (depending on wetness of the potatoes; aim for as little flour as you can get away with without being too sticky. Don’t overcook the potatoes or they’re just gonna be a mushy wet mess)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1tbsp salt

(This is definitely more lefse than the posted recipe is for, but who doesn’t want more lefse?)

But for the past several years I do a vegan version that you would never guess is vegan and everyone seems to be a huge fan of. For that, I substitute the butter for Earth Balance margarine. For the heavy cream, I take a 1/2 measuring cup, fill it a little more than half full of cashew milk and then add margarine until it fills up to the top.

As far as directions: Boil potatoes for around an hour (until they seem that mashable level where you can stick a fork in really easily). Drain, stick in fridge until tolerable temperature to work with. Rice them (pack down the measuring cups for that) and mix in everything but the flour. Refrigerate again until good and proper cold (like overnight). Add the flour until it’s not very sticky. Put back in fridge until cold cold cold.

My current setup for rolling it is great but often you have to work with a less ideal setup. I have the rolling space on the counter in the front (kept well-floured), the grill to my left, and the fridge on my right. I keep the dough in the freezer during it. Just reaching in and grabbing a small handful each time. I can roll out this whole batch in about 45 minutes. Flour the board/table, roll roll roll a bunch, flip, scatter some flour on top, roll roll roll, lift up with stick and shake as much flour off as possible before putting on grill. If you get quick enough, it’ll be time to flip the one you’re rolling at the same time as you need to flip the one that’s on the grill.

But the unideal setup is where you have to roll it out somewhere a good ways away from the fridge. In this case it may be sensible to do it in batches where you take a break to chill the dough back down again. Cold temperature is key for getting it not too sticky to roll and not needing so much flour so that the taste becomes more of a sad flour-y flatbread than delicious soft potato-y lefse.

Tools are important too. You need one of those weird grooved rolling pins. I’ve made a lot of lefse without a cloth rolling board, but can hands down say that that is SO necessarily to get paper thin lefse and overall makes things less of a pain in the ass with it shrinking or sticking to the table underneath. You need some sort of grill/skillet thing that can get up to 500 degrees. If someone tells you to oil said skillet (as this recipe does), that person needs to be cooked until lightly brown on each side.

Lefse is a holiday tradition in my family. My grandmother would make huge quantities every fall, and share them out to everyone. I used to make it for my kids, but it was never as good as my grandmother’s, and I wasn’t consciously aware of a lot of the information above, so my results were inconsistent. Skatje has, through practice and the inheritance of family tradition, become the Zen Master of Lefse, the Lefse Buffy, and everyone should heed her words. Especially the bit about cooking anyone who tries to fry their lefse. Ewww.

This is why I’m an atheist

There’s this new movie coming out, Gods of Egypt, which looks like a horrendous fecal splatter of CGI with Egyptians played by Canadians and Scotsmen. I’m serious. I expect poutine and bagpipes, with pyramids in the background, and testimonials from Ben Carson on the historical accuracy of the movie.

KILL ALL GODS. ALL GODS MUST DIE.

Every social expansion is first seen as a disruption

He missed at least one: the telephone! People had mixed feelings about this strangely intrusive object in their homes.

“… Most people saw telephoning as accelerating social life, which is another way of saying that telephoning broke isolation and augmented social contacts. A minority felt that telephones served this function too well. These people complained about too much gossip, about unwanted calls, or, as did some family patriarchs, about wives and children chatting too much. Most probably sensed that the telephone bell, besides disrupting their activities, could also bring bad news or bothersome requests. Yet only a few seemed to live in a heightened state of alertness, ears cocked for the telephone’s ring – no more, perhaps, than sat anxiously alert for a knock on the door. Some Americans not only disliked talking on the telephone but also found having it around disturbing, but they were apparently a small minority. Perhaps a few of the oldest felt anxious around the telephone, but most people … seemed to feel comfortable or even joyful around it. … Sociologist Sidney Aronson may have captured the feelings of most Americans when he suggested that having the telephone led, in net, to a ‘reduction of loneliness and anxiety, and increased feeling of psychological and even physical security’.” (Fischer, 1992, p. 247)

My own kids were coming of age as the cell phone was becoming popular, and we had reservations, too: “what do you even need a cell phone for?” and “watch out, bad people will get your phone number and say terrible things”. Nothing bad happened after all.

So I’ve learned my lesson. When the direct brain implants become available, and my grandkids (if I have any) start whining for the gadgets, I’m not going to lecture them on the dangers of imbedding electrodes in your skull. No, sir, I’ll just whisper “Don’t tell your mom” and whisk them off to the local clinic for the top-of-the-line Apple NeuroMesh with the MicroRetinal Interface.