Who ever heard of a liberal arts college as a setting for drama?

Netflix is putting together a new show about academics and the chair of an English department which, to be honest, sounds like it could be about petty, trivial conflicts and excessive over-reactions after prolonged over-thinking, which could be exhausting. But then I learn that two of the people behind the show are those overpaid jerk-offs, Benioff and Weiss, who drove Game of Thrones into the ground, which gives me hope. Anyone who watched any of the featurettes at the end of each episodes knows that those two are dull, dry pontificating twits, and therefore they know the material that has to make up the content of any show about academia. Also, it means the show will feature gratuitous nudity and bloody violence, two things that tend to be lacking around university departments, but which would definitely elevate our appreciation of events. Who hasn’t dreamed of crushing the skull of the departmental chair, or silencing that bore who won’t shut up at the planning meeting with a crossbow bolt? (Note: I am currently the discipline coordinator for biology here, and I’m sure none of my colleagues have ever had such a thought.)

Right now, they’re at the casting stage, and they’ve got Sandra Oh and are trying to hook Scarlett Johansson, because she has to be in everything. I’m going to recommend when they’re scouting locations that they check out the University of Minnesota Morris. Imagine an academic dramedy that takes place in an isolated antarctic research station; we’re the closest thing to that you’re going to get, academic life enclosed in a tiny, remote bubble. We’ve already got a wild cast of extras to fill in the gaps, and all you need to do is add a CGI shapeshifting alien, and the story writes itself.

Except the ending. I have no idea how it would wrap up, but with Benioff and Weiss behind it, who cares? We’ll just kill a few faculty and go hang out at the Old #1 Bar and be done.

Katherine Johnson has died

Aww, crap. I first learned about her in the movie Hidden Figures, which you should see if you haven’t already, where we learn that a black woman was a crucial element in doing the math that got men into space and to the moon. Now she has died after a long and distinguished career, at the age of 102.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, DC, Cape Canaveral, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Katherine Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after thirty-three years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she says. In 2015, at age 97, Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

You missed the party, but we’ve still got the hangover

Welp, we didn’t get the live YouTube stream of our celebration working, but Jason Thibeault was recording and has put it on YouTube now. One important announcement was that Allegedly: The Website is now up and running, which has all the information on our court case you could want. In particular, check out the timeline of events in the case — it has all the facts & details & links you could want.

Watch it now!

If you are moved to help us out, there are a few ways to make a contribution:

Exam grading done!

That was fairly quick and unexpectedly mostly painless, because I did something I haven’t done before, and that now I’m going to have to do every year. These are all first year students who generally have that deer-in-the-headlights look in class, and I have to coax them to participate. So this year I dedicated one class hour to how to answer an essay question. I told them that grammar and spelling matter, and that one simple recipe for a coherent answer is to describe a few facts and details, and then synthesize in a concluding statement. Facts without synthesis doesn’t mean much, and synthesis without outlining the basic things you’re explaining makes it sound like you haven’t been paying attention in class. We went through a bunch of examples in groups, and I’d evaluate and give them a likely score on the spot.

It worked! The quality of the answers went up — knowing that I had reasonably high expectations meant they took the questions very seriously and answered carefully. It made them much more pleasant to read.

The catch is that it’s expensive. This class only meets twice a week, and dedicating a class hour to something so basic meant that there were other things I didn’t have time to cover. I hope this is a skill they remember, though, so I don’t have to do it again in every class they’re in.

Sonic and Star Trek

Well, I was so fried yesterday that I went to see this new Sonic Hedgehog movie. Boy, was I disappointed. There was absolutely nothing about cell signaling, or the patched receptor, or midline development. It was all about the adventures of Baby Karl Urban and some electrically charged blue mammal battling a guy with five Ph.D.s, which made no sense at all. Why would you have five degrees? And none of them were in developmental biology or molecular genetics. He seemed to be some kind of robotics expert, although being a perpetual student who can’t land a credible job are not credible qualifications for much of anything.

You’re better off watching this balanced summary of Star Trek history from Mikey Neuman. I learned a few things, although this, too, is seriously lacking in the departments of developmental biology and molecular genetics.

Is my brain still fried? Yes, but it’s OK. I’m about to go lock myself in a coffee shop and grade first-year biology exams. After that, I’ll probably need to go drink.

The Boy Scouts of America have been ethically bankrupt for years

I have mixed feelings about it — my son Connlann was active in Boy Scouts for years, and I think he had great experiences there. I was on a couple of camping trips with him and the other boys, and I think they benefitted from a good scout leader who was tolerant and undogmatic…but you couldn’t trust that every scout leader was that way, and higher-ups were all conservative jackholes who believed that antiquated rules and judgments were a necessary part of being a boy growing up.

So now the organization is declaring itself financially bankrupt, admitting the reality. I’m not going to shed any tears over it, since they wallowed in religious and paramilitary bullshit for so long and refused to change. Let them die and better organizations rise.

A truce?

I got an odd request in email. Someone named jeffreydavidmorris wants me to take down an old post.

Hello can you please kindly remove despite ‘the law’ and request of removal re: privacy, misc – https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2017/02/11/i-have-concluded-that-i-am-a-natural-boob-magnet/.

I would appreciate it please, thank you. I’m not trying to be the bad guy here a truce if anything please.

This was 2 or 3 years ago, and I did not remember this fellow — I get so much of this nonsense. Normally, I’d consider this request, but then I looked back at what prompted the original post…and oh yeah, that guy was a major pest. He had to remind me. So…no.

Also, telling me that this was a “truce”, as if we have been battling back and forth, is annoying. I’ve had him blocked for years, haven’t engaged with him since that one post. Apparently he’s been seething over it for some time, but really, all that is doing him harm is publication of his own lunatic words.

Funding news!

Yes, I’ve got so much economic anxiety nowadays that I’m imagining voting for Trump. It’s the irrational solution. Good thing I’m not that irrational, so don’t worry, I’m voting for either Sanders or Warren, probably the former.

The rational solutions:

  • I’ll plug our Defense vs. Carrier SLAPP suit gofundme again.
  • I’ll remind you that we’re having a celebration of our victory on YouTube on Sunday, 23 February, at 6pm. There might be some begging for donations then, as well as ragging on Carrier.
  • I’ll mention the Pharyngula Patreon. By popular request, I’ve added a $1/month tier for people who can’t afford more than a small tip. I appreciate every penny! We’ve gotten over 100 patrons, which is great.
  • A couple of blogs here, like Affinity and stderr, have run occasional auctions to contribute to our defense fund. Right now, Affinity is giving away this lovely knife in return for the highest donation.
    Strangely, many of these kinds of auctions involve extremely sharp edged weapons.
  • If you can’t afford a regular donation but want to make a one-time contribution, there’s always paypal.me/pzmyers to toss me a few bucks.

Don’t worry if you can’t afford anything now — there is no degree of economic anxiety that will convince me to vote for Trump.