That’s an interesting way to lose tenure

Michael Palmer was an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Waterloo who was promoting some seriously cranky conspiracy theories. Here he is explaining that the pandemic was fake, that the virus was artificial and was supposed to be more lethal, that the tests were all fake, the vaccines are toxic, and that the entire scientific/medical literature has been corrupted. He’s a loon.


Palmer.mp4 from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

But, you know, professors are allowed to spout nonsense — it’s all part of the principle of academic freedom. Sure what he’s saying is complete bullshit, but you can’t get fired over that.

On the other hand, announcing that you will not follow any of the safety regulations set by the university is substantive grounds for concern.

This letter is to inform you that I categorically refuse to comply with any of the COVID vaccine-related mandates imposed on its employees by the University of Waterloo:

  1. I will not declare my COVID vaccination status, although you may be able to guess (see also point 3 below).
  2. I will not attend any of the virtual COVID re-education camps organized by UW’s or the province’s quack doctors and public health shamans in-chief. As an MD with board certification in medical microbiology, I consider myself sufficiently informed on the subject.
  3. I will not let myself be injected with any of the ineffective and poisonous concoctions that are misrepresented to the public as COVID vaccines.
  4. I will not ask for any “accommodation” or “exemption,” because doing so would only legitimize the lawless measures imposed by UW officials.
  5. I will not play for time by asking for medical leave due to distress or anxiety. I thankfully am in good health and retain my usual capacity for work.

I fully expect that my decision will result in sanctions against me, as spelled out in the weekly reminder so thoughtfully sent out by “UW Communications:”

Expectations met: he has been fired. Good riddance!

Also, an interesting addition from Jeffrey Shallit:

Palmer wrote a whole book on it, which you can read online. I don’t understand why it would have been faked, since we clearly had the technology, horrible as it is, and the US had clearly shown no hesitation in creating massive civilian casualties. I skipped to the end of his book to find his rationale…and it’s all a gigantic failed conspiracy to create one world government, just like the 9/11 attacks, which, by the way, were actually perpetrated by the CIA and Mossad. Did you know Oppenheimer came from a Jewish family, but he seems to have been preoccupied with oriental religious ideas? Also, Japan colluded in the effort to fake the atomic bomb.

Firing Palmer was clearly a win:win for the University of Waterloo. Again, you can’t fire a tenured professor for writing a schlocky book about an imaginary conspiracy theory, but when you proudly announce that will flout all health precautions, it’s goodbye Michael. He’s not going to get another job as a chemist anywhere, but at least he has now achieved martyrdom and will be hopping on the grifter’s gravy train.

Seriously, Georgia? Is this the man you want representing you?

Herschel Walker is trying to win the Republican nomination to the senate from Georgia. He’s popping into churches to reach his electorate.

Ooops, wrong clip.

He actually said that. Walker trotted out the most busted-ass, dead stupid, ignorant pony in their whole stable of broken-on-arrival, crippled, brain-damaged nags the creationists have, and the pastor praised him for getting too smart for his audience.

At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not? Walker asked Chuck Allen, lead pastor of Sugar Hill Church, during Sunday’s event.

Every time I read or hear that, I think to myself, ‘You just didn’t read the same Bible I did,’ Allen replied.

Walker continued: Well, this is what’s interesting, though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.

You know, now you’re getting too smart for us, Herschel, Allen responded.

“You know, morons,” I finished for him.

He’s probably going to win the nomination.

The standard of humor on YouTube must be really low

A guy decided to do a “prank” in a university classroom, I presume to get clicks. I was curious to see the level of humor behind this prank, and here it is:

He walks into a lecture hall as if he is an enrolled student (he isn’t), pulls out a typewriter, and starts banging on it while occasionally yelling at the professor to speak up.

After leaving the lecture hall to retrieve his typewriter, Adams then entered the room a second time. He continued to type loudly and shouted, “Professor can you repeat that last part real quick?” A woman speaking from the front of the room, whom The Harvard Crimson identified as a professor named Hopi E. Hoekstra, could be seen telling Adams, “You’re being incredibly disrespectful and incredibly disruptive of this class.”

Adams’ bag and typewriter were confiscated again by the professor, and when Adams left the room, he was told by a second man that university police had been called to the scene.

Adams could then be seen walking outside the building when he encountered a man who appeared to be a campus police officer. The man asked Adams if he was a student at Harvard. When Adams said he wasn’t, the man said, “You shouldn’t enter any Harvard buildings if you’re not affiliated.”

The Harvard Crimson reported that Berry asked staff to call the Harvard University Police Department, who arrived after the YouTuber had left the lecture hall.

At the end of the video, Adams said, “I feel like that went as horrible as it could have and also as best as it could have,” adding, “I literally didn’t do nothing. I mean, I guess I was being annoying, but I’m always annoying.”

That’s it. Is that funny? It sounds like a guy disrupting a class, nothing more. It barely even constitutes a “prank”.

I found his video about this “prank” on YouTube.

3 million views.

Fuck me. It’s just monetized assholery.

Texas is racing Florida to the bottom of the slime pit

While Florida is eager to out vulnerable kids, the Texas Attorney General has decided to deny them health care.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a new interpretation of state law that says medical care for transgender children is abuse, a dramatic change contrary to medical standards that could make Texas one of the most aggressive states in targeting trans youth access to health care.

On Monday, Paxton issued an opinion stating his office believes gender-affirming health care for transgender youth – including common treatments like hormone therapy and puberty blockers – is a form of child abuse. The move comes despite opposition from the top medical and child welfare groups, who for months have urged Paxton not to take this step.

That last bit…yes, all the doctors and experts say this is a bad move, but Texas Republicans are going to go ahead and do it anyway. Why? It’s politics.

Paxton’s opinion comes as Republican politicians, jockeying for power ahead of one of the most competitive re-election seasons in years, increasingly put transgender children under the spotlight.

How else can Republicans demonstrate their evil bona fides other than by torturing small children who are a little bit different from their aryan Christian ideal? They’ve got to make sure they keep the hater voter focused on supporting them.

Why is Florida so awful?

I don’t get it. What is the secret ingredient that makes Florida politics so toxic? The worst stuff seems to emerge from Florida (and Texas, to be fair), and I don’t understand what makes a few Southern states such stewpots of bad ideas.

The latest is Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill.

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which is scheduled for a floor vote in the Florida House today, would create a hostile environment for LGBTQ students. The bill prohibits any discussion of “sexual orientation or gender identity” through the third grade and any discussion “that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students” in other grades. This would prohibit younger students with same-sex parents from discussing their families in class and make it difficult for any student to learn about the Stonewall Riots or Supreme Court cases like Obergefell v. Hodges.

The bill, as it is currently drafted, also requires schools to out LGBTQ students to their parents in most cases. The bill would require schools to “adopt procedures for notifying a student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student.” This would include information school officials learn, through counseling or other programs, about sexual orientation or gender identity.

Let’s keep the kids as ignorant as possible, so they’ll continue to elect stupid representatives like this one. Is that it? Because that bill, as bad as it was, wasn’t evil enough, so the Republicans are amending it.

The original bill, however, has one nod to the well-being of LGBTQ students. It would allow schools to “withhold such information from a parent if a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.”

But now, the sponsor of the bill in the House, Florida Representative Joe Harding (R), has offered an amendment. The proposed amendment would require schools to out LGBTQ students, even in cases where school officials believe it would result in “abuse, abandonment, or neglect.”

The school principal or his or her designee shall develop a plan, using all available governmental resources, to disclose such information within 6 weeks after the decision to withhold such information from the parent. The plan must facilitate disclosure between the student and parent through an open dialogue in a safe, supportive, and judgment-free environment that respects the parent-child relationship and protects the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of the student.

I’m impressed with the double-speak. They’re going to safely, supportively, and without judgment protect the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of students by exposing their sexual orientation. Kids are going to die thanks to this bill; others are going to be tormented and bullied and abused. What’s important, though, is that the information about kids be made public, while the information that might make kids better informed is to be withheld.

Joe Harding, by the way, is the hypocrite who campaigned on gun rights and denying women choice. He claims Our most vulnerable citizens – the preborn, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled – deserve the dignity of equal personhood, unless, of course they’re LGBTQ. Then it’s fair to strip them of dignity and equality.

Most people would agree we don’t come from monkeys, and we didn’t Big Bang, right

Flerfer.

Trump guy at a Trump rally, talking about flat earth:

Let’s go Brandon!

Jesus fucking christ, I’m just going to put my head down and work on genetics now.

Crank up the stupid to warp factor 11!

I despair. Since I watched that Dan Olson video about crypto, and really learned how stupidly deep the rabbit hole goes, I’ve started regularly checking David Gerard’s blog, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, every morning. This is too much. After a few decades of dealing with the ludicrously inane garbage creationists spew, and living under Donald Trump, and then having to wallow in the idiocy of Jordan Peterson, now I’m going to pay attention to criminal grifting NFT-bros? Brain, stop it.

At this rate, every last bit of my confidence in the fundamental goodness of humanity is going to be eradicated. We apparently have no vestige of any kind of survival instinct left.

Will this finally kill Jordan Peterson’s career? No, it will not.

That’s quite a list of critics of the Rogan/Peterson circle jerk. All these people with relevant, advanced degrees in climatology are explaining that Peterson is childishly inaccurate and foolish, as if maybe at some point people will wake up and realize that he is a lying incompetent.

Dr Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick:

“He seems to think we model the future climate the same way we do the weather. He sounds intelligent, but he’s completely wrong.

“He has no frickin’ idea,” she said.

Dr Gavin Schmidt:

“Guys, for the love of everything holy, please, please, have somebody on who knows what the heck a climate model is!!!”

Schmidt told the Guardian he was reminded of a quote from the famous British statistician George Box.

“Peterson has managed to absorb the first part of George Box’s famous dictum that ‘all models are wrong’ but appears to have not worked out the second part ‘but some are useful’,” Schmidt said.

Prof Steve Sherwood:

Peterson was “making the ancient climate sceptic error of mixing up weather and climate”.

“Anyone who has taken an introductory course in climate or atmospheric science would spot this problem,” he said. “Errors in a weather forecast indeed accumulate such that after a couple of weeks the forecast is useless.”

But with climate, Sherwood said, the models work differently to project how the climate will respond to different factors, such as higher levels of CO2.

“[Peterson’s] argument is like saying we can’t predict whether a pot of water on a flame will boil, because we decide in advance what variables to put in our model, and can’t predict each bubble.”

Prof Christian Jakob:

Peterson’s comments were “ill-informed” and that he’d “mixed up weather prediction with climate projections.

“People are entitled to their opinions, but science and climate modelling isn’t about opinion. If you’re not well informed about how something is done then it’s not right to make comments about it on a large platform.”

Prof Michael Mann:

Peterson’s comments – and Rogan’s facilitation of them – was an “almost comedic type of nihilism” that would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Peterson’s claim that the climate was too complicated showed “a total lack of understanding of how science works” and could be used to dismiss physics, chemistry, biology, “and every other field of science where one formulates conceptual models”, according to Mann.

“Every great discovery in science – including the physics that allowed Peterson and Rogan to record and broadcast their ridiculous conversation – has arisen through that process,” he said.

Prof John Abraham:

the episode was “a word salad of nonsense spoken by people who have no sense when it comes to climate.”

“To say that climate model errors increase like compound interest is laughable. Jordan Peterson displays a near complete misunderstanding of climate change, and the tools climate scientists use to understand what is happening to our planet.

“It’s as if someone, with zero expertise and knowledge, made comments about something he knows little about.”

You know, people have been blasting this message since he first squelched his way into the public consciousness with his wrong interpretations of an anti-discrimination law, his wrong explanations of gender, his wrong ideas about evolution and neuroscience, his wrong notions of epidemiology and disease, all undergirded by his wrong opinions about religion and supernatural phenomena, and his foundation in the wrong ideas about psychology (his profession!) built on a bizarre Jungian framework. His audience doesn’t seem to care. They just seem to like that he’s blissfully confident about his wrongness, and that’s what they love about him.

Dear god, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson are such pompous know-nothings

Behold, two idiots talking.

There is no such thing as climate. Climate and everything are the same word. That’s what bothers me about the climate change types. It’s like — this is something that bothers me about technically, it’s like climate is about everything. OK. But your models aren’t based on everything. Your models are based on a set number of variables. That means you reduce the variables, which are everything, to that set. Well, how did you decide which set of variables to include in the equation if it’s about everything? That’s not just a criticism, if it’s about everything, your models aren’t right. Because your models do not and cannot model everything.

  • Climate is not about “everything”. Let’s look it up on Wikipedia, since Peterson didn’t even do that much.

    Climate is the long-term pattern of weather in an area, typically averaged over a period of 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorological variables that are commonly measured are temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, and precipitation. In a broader sense, climate is the state of the components of the climate system, which includes the ocean, land, and ice on Earth.

    So not “everything”.

  • Yes, climate is modeled. The relevant variables are assessed by knowledgeable experts, not muscle-bound blatherers or disgraced freaky Jungian psychologists.
  • Models are constantly assessed against ongoing observations and measurements. Predictions are made and tested. That’s what we use to measure their validity.
  • No model can include “everything”. That’s why it is a model. You can’t just make a blanket dismissal of all models solely because they’re models. That’s like throwing out psychology because it doesn’t account for every neuron and every variable in physiology.

Remember: Spotify paid Joe Rogan $100 fucking million dollars to broadcast on their network. Peterson was getting paid $200 fucking thousand per month for just his clinical practice, which I presume he gave up because he’s earning more from his speeches and books.

Fuck both of these guys.