One of the worst things I can imagine happening in my world is the death of a student. These are our charges, we get to know them and feel responsibility for them, and the pain of loss is deeply felt. Even worse is when students die violently. They’re young, and should have a long life ahead of them.

The second worst thing would be for a teacher to be falsely accused of killing a student, especially when there is no evidence suggesting such a thing. It’s more than a civil and criminal accusation, it’s morally villainous.

In 2022, four students at the University of Idaho were brutally murdered. This was a heinous act without excuse. The man who did it was arrested, confessed, convicted, and was sentenced to life in prison. In the wake of the murders, though, a woman named Ashley Guillard was riding high on social media, claiming to know who the killer was on the basis of her psychic powers and making TikTok video after TikTok video declaring that the tarot cards told her that a history professor at the University of Idaho, Rebecca Scofield, had been having an affair with one of the victims and had had them all killed.

Before authorities arrested Kohberger in late December 2022 in connection with the victims’ brutal stabbing deaths, Guillard published videos on the TikTok platform baselessly alleging Scofield had engaged in a romance with one of the four people slain.

Guillard – who is a resident of Houston, Texas, and described herself as a psychic crime solver on her TikTok account – accused Scofield on camera of ordering the quadruple murder to hide her relationship with one of the victims. She cited tarot card readings as evidence to support her unfounded theory.

It was a ludicrous accusation. Flipping cards in Texas will not tell you who the perpetrator of a crime in Idaho was, but apparently making inflammatory accusations without evidence was Guillard’s only claim to fame, and she profited off the attention she got for lying about people. Her slanders finally caught up with her, though: Scofield sued and won a $10 million award from her.

In a June 6, 2024, order, a federal judge sided with Scofield, ruling that the internet personality’s statements were defamatory and based “only” on her “spiritual intuition about the murders” — not “any objective basis.”

The judge also noted that Guillard’s social media posts continued even after the Moscow Police Department issued a press release in December 2022 stating that Scofield was not a suspect in the murder investigation.

Now Guillard is crying and calling the ruling Unfair!. Too bad. Slap her down hard, teach her that you can’t profit off false accusation. If she wants to complain about anything, it’s that TikTok has incredibly lax policies about enforcing rules and rights online. If you enthusiastically charge into a wild wild West of lawlessness and you get gunned down in a shootout, you don’t get to blame someone else.

Let’s extend the verdict. Anyone making factual claims on the basis of tarot cards, psychic powers, or Bible prophecy are charlatans who ought to face the full weight of the law when their claims harm people. Stupid people babbling on social media are small potatoes — go after the people who claim that politicians have divine favor because a god whispered in their head that they must be supported in even their most damaging actions. Prosecute those who claim to wage holy war first of all.

Aww, pretty.

I wonder what it says inside?

[Read more…]

I was enthused about the Artemis 2 lunar flyby mission. I was. My interest is cooling fast, though, and I fear the worst for NASA’s weekend.

I was turned off by this article about Victor Glover, one of the Artemis 2 astronauts. It was published in the Daily Citizen, which in case you didn’t know, is a rag produced by Focus on the Family…right away you know, it’s going to be all about evangelical Christianity (I don’t recommend that you read further in that publication, a lot of it is about trans-hatred.)

It starts off OK.

After spending six months aboard the ISS, he returned to Earth and praised NASA for allowing him to take communion each week.

“I was able to worship in space,” he said, adding, “[NASA] supported me and my family’s desire to continue to worship and to continue our faith walk even while I was off the planet. That was really important to me.”

You don’t need to praise NASA for “allowing” him to practice his religion. That’s the default. Christians like to believe they are prosecuted for their faith, which sometimes means they pretend to be surprised that they get to pray, when no one, not even atheists like me, are saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to do the innocuous practices of their religion. Go ahead, pray! Take communion! Sing hymns! We aren’t going to complain unless you force your superstitions on us.

If an astronaut wants to wear their lucky socks or carry a rabbit’s foot on board, I can’t imagine NASA complaining. Matters of personal belief are not issues that should be disallowed, although we should also be free to regard rabbit’s feet and communion wafers as silly.

Glover goes on to brag about another silly practice, prayer.

My career is fed by my faith, and you know, anytime I do something that’s pretty risky, I pray — before I fly, every time I fly. Definitely when you go sit on top of a rocket ship.

I have to shrug — yeah, go ahead and pray, just leave me out of it. I’m not impressed with sitting on top of a rocket ship, either. I think you owe more to the engineers who designed and built the machine, than to an imaginary being who played no role in its construction, and isn’t going to help you if something goes wrong.

But he just can’t shut up and has to blurt out a stupid saying.

“In the military, there’s a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. There aren’t any on top of rockets, either.”

Well, fuck you too, Victor Glover. There are and have been atheists in foxholes, and on top of rockets, too — but in our Christian country, their existence is ignored, if not belittled. Courage is not an exclusive property of soldiers and astronauts, and many of us feel no need for the crutch of superstition.

Every human being is mortal, and is guaranteed to experience events in their life that carry the threat of their imminent demise, without having to be on top of a rocket. I’d be more scared of riding in an automobile, since more people are going to have traumatic, terrifying events in one of those. Some may pray, some may call out to God, Allah, or their mother, but others will feel helpless acceptance or struggle to escape their situation without the magic mumbo-jumbo. I’ve had a few near-death experiences (I anticipate more in the distant (I hope) future as I get older, and there will ultimately be one that will require dropping the “near-“) but never have I given any thought to a divine being. It’s just not part of the way my mind works.

I’m not going to deny Victor Glover’s mind the ability to flit to thoughts of supernatural salvation when he’s frightened, and he shouldn’t be telling us how other people’s minds will work. Let us instead consider a counter-example, the astronaut John Young, who had an exceptionally accomplished career that makes Victor Glover look like a rookie.

John W. Young, now retired, had the longest career as an astronaut. He’s the only person to have been commander of four classes of spacecraft. He was part of the first two-man space mission. He’s the first person to have orbited the Moon alone. One of three people to have flown to the Moon twice. The list goes on and on. Oh, he’s also one of the 12 people in human history to ever walk on the Moon.

Young was asked about God, and he gave the kind of answer I would give, too.

Interviewer: Did you discovered God up there?

Young: No. I don’t think so.

Interviewer: No sense of awe? Wonder?

Young: No.

Interviewer: Why not?

Young: Because I think that the way things are in space are the way they are and I think that’s a good thing. I think that if people have to go into space to discover God, they have some other kind of problem.

According to Victor Glover, John Young shouldn’t have gone to the Moon. I repeat, fuck you, Victor Glover.

The writer for the Daily Citizen went further and opined even more idiotically.

Indeed, modern science increasingly supports Christian theism. Scientists have discovered that our universe is fine-tuned to support life – and many creatures within it appear intelligently designed. There is also increasing evidence that our universe began at a finite point in the past – raising the question of what – or Who – caused the universe to come into being.

No. Science does not support theism, Christian or otherwise. The fine tuning argument is bullshit — why presuppose “tuning” at all, the universe is what it is, and what life exists within it is by necessity compatible with its physical nature. We do not appear “intelligently designed,” we are constructs of chance and a few billion years of natural selection. Our universe is the product of the expansion of a singularity and we don’t know enough about the properties of that event to say anything about causation, or whether the universe is finite, so don’t bother pretending that science is propping up your creation myth.

Focus on the Family has no control over NASA, but I am concerned about the propaganda NASA will put out this weekend. It’s Easter weekend. They’re sending a ship on a flyby of the Moon. I remember in 1968, NASA sent another manned mission on a flyby of the Moon over Christmas, and they broadcast a reading of the book of Genesis. Having to watch that was one of the nails in the coffin of my religious upbringing, a gross disappointment that radicalized me and made Christianity look even more ridiculous.

Right now, the USA is an embarrassment to the world for a variety of reasons. NASA won’t be helping if they make a goofy-ass evangelical Christian the centerpiece of a major scientific mission, even if only for a day. I’m cringing at the thought that an astronaut is going to preach at us about a resurrection and an empty tomb on Sunday.

I won’t be listening. Victor Glover is reinforcing the spam-in-a-can stereotype, and will further diminish American prestige, what little of it is left. But at least when he lands he can announce that he’s going to Answers in Genesis! They love dumb-ass astronauts there.

Let’s begin with the mundane, normal response, because this is how I’d reply. Obama said in an interview that he believed aliens existed.

…former President Obama piqued the interest of many Americans when he said on a separate podcast last month that aliens were “real,” but he had not seen them, and they were not being held at Area 51.

Obama attempted to walk back his comments the next day, saying that he “saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” Obama said in a post on Instagram.

That’s not “walking back,” that’s just clarifying a statement that he had initially assumed no one would be nuts enough to misinterpret. I also believe that there almost certainly alien intelligent organisms somewhere in the immense universe. There’s nothing magical about life, or intelligence. But I agree with Obama that there is no evidence of aliens, and that it is only a hypothetical likelihood.

Every scientist I know would agree with it. Typically, only some religious cranks argue that it’s not possible for aliens to exist. Of course, there are other cranks who argue that aliens have been visiting us already.

President Trump pledged a few days later to direct the Department of Defense and other agencies to release their files about UFOs and “alien and extraterrestrial life” to the public, citing the “tremendous” interest.

He previously told reporters he did not know if aliens were real and that he “may get him out of trouble” by declassifying records, referring to Obama.

The White House registered the domain names “Alien.gov” and “Aliens.gov” earlier this month, drawing speculation that information could be released soon.

I eagerly await the news from aliens.gov. Not holding my breath though.

And then there are the total wackos who believe aliens exist, but that they are supernatural beings.

JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, said this weekend that he considers aliens to be “demons”.

With the war in Iran continuing, petrol and grocery prices soaring, and chaos continuing at US airports as a partial government shutdown endures, Vance appeared on the conservative Benny Show podcast, released on Saturday, to promise that he would spend time looking into what he called his “obsession” with UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors.

Johnson, who bills his show as the place for “cutting, behind-the-scenes insight into the global conflict for freedom”, wondered if Vance, who has been noticeably quiet about Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East that he is said to oppose, had yet looked at any of the files about unidentified flying objects – known these days as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) – which the president has promised to release.

“I actually haven’t,” Vance replied, mustering significantly more enthusiasm than for any previous question about the US-Israel military strikes on Iran.

“I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”

This is inarguable evidence that the intellectual ability of our political leaders declined precipitously between Obama and Vance.

Let’s make sure looney JD never gets to the presidency, OK?

I have a lot of different genetics texts, and I sometimes browse through them to get different perspectives, or in this case to get ideas for exam questions. I was skimming through Cummings’ Human Heredity: Principles and Issues when I ran into this surprising text box.

I fail to see what this would add to a student’s understanding of genetics: OK, lot of inbreeding among the Biblical patriarchs, I was entertained by the description of Noah that sounds more like Snow White, I guess Michael Cummings is revealed to have an interest in obscure Biblical text reconstruction, and it might appeal to theologically inclined students, but yeesh, I expect my students to have a better appreciation of the quality of the data.

I don’t think you can claim that Noah was an inbred albino on the basis of such slim evidence. This is a figure who is pretty well swaddled up in myth and legend, who is claimed to have lived through a global flood that didn’t happen, who lived, supposedly, to the age of 950, and who is claimed to have lived around 3000BCE, when your evidence is based on a text fragment from 200BCE. And now we’re going to deduce a detail of his genetics? No, thank you.

Elevatorgator
small, mindless undead
chaotic evil

Armor class: 14
Hit points: 1d4
Speed: 10ft

Attacks: annoying whine
Weaknesses: die at a touch from any female party members

Yesterday, I was complaining about the low information content and tedious predictability of most atheist content on YouTube. It was only a matter of time — less than 24 hours — before some regressive numpty chimed in to blame women, trans people, and Atheism+, claiming that atheism has turned into a religion. He hasn’t learned a thing in over 15 years.

@SmilingSynic
The atheist content on social media peaked fifteen or so years ago, until the introduction of Atheism Plus made the movement “jump the shark.” Indeed, the welding together of atheism (and other expressions of anti-theism) with social activism and progressive ideology turned much of the movement a quasi-religion holding laughably anti-scientific, mystical positions on, for example, human sexuality, in the form of gender identity. Atheism as a movement even adopted tactics found in religions/cults, including the shaming of those like Richard Dawkins who questioned, rightly, the basis of the transgender movement (in scientology, Dawkins would have been identified as an SP, or Suppressive Person, lol). Atheism used to be AGAINST religion, until the movement was hijacked by some who actually turned into something much LIKE a religion. I have zero interest in modern atheism as a movement, and am now embarrassed that I used to listen to podcasts on the topic.

No, Atheism+ was a great idea, ahead of its time, and most atheist organizations have adopted its principles to some degree. It was merely howled out of open existence by regressive twits who harrassed the organizers, joined it to undermine its membership, and who were appalled at the idea that mere women could fight back against a hierarchy that denied them a proper role.

Dawkins has since identified himself as sympathetic to Christian religion — he just hates those wicked Muslims. If anyone has become a religious proponent, it’s the supporters of an authority-based belief system that exists to oppress outsiders.

I think Modern Atheism As A Movement is now embarrassed that dull-witted trolls such as @SmilingSynic now claim to be the only True Atheists, in opposition to those bad anti-scientific atheists who think that women and gender identity and progressives are real.

Via Mano, I am reassured to learn that not all scientists were taken in by Epstein. Sean M. Carroll represents what I’d regard as the best response to the blandishments of a perverse, corrupt weirdo trying to seduce scientists with money.

His host interrupted the meal to call Epstein and then handed Carroll the phone.

“It was a 2-minute conversation, and frankly, it didn’t make much of an impression on me at the time,” Carroll says. “As best I can remember, we talked about the Big Bang and dark energy and things like that.”

But Carroll says when he told others about the call, including his wife, science writer Jennifer Ouellette, we “were rolling our eyes.” In a recent blog post, Carroll said Epstein came off as a “standard, fast-talking charlatan who trotted out lots of big words with no real understanding [of them].”

A few months later, Carroll received an email invitation to a scientific conference at Epstein’s home on his private Caribbean island. “It was billed as a workshop of scientists from different fields, something that I usually find appealing, and it sounded like fun,” he says. But he declined after learning a bit more about the arrangements.

“Jennifer was also invited,” Carroll recounts. “But when we asked if she would be a participant, they said ‘she could go shopping with the other wives.’ And we were repulsed by that sexist attitude.”

“I had no idea through any of this that he was a convicted sex offender,” Carroll adds. “That would have made it a much easier decision for me. But in 2010 he was not a famous person. If I had tried really hard, I could have found out about [his criminal record], but the thought that I would really have to try hard never entered my mind.”

Carroll says the lure of possible funding wasn’t an issue for him. “I’m not desperate for money,” he says. “And besides, at the end of your life, who you are is the accumulation of the things you did. It’s not just how much money you got.”

“standard, fast-talking charlatan who trotted out lots of big words with no real understanding [of them]” is a pretty good summary of the the Epstein spiel. Keep that in mind when you read about scientists who were taking rides on Epstein’s plane — they had to be either stupidly naive or criminally greedy.