I’ve been shirking today

Yesterday, I got a text from Caliber Works Watch Repair, informing me that my great-grandfather’s pocket watch was ready to go after 18 months. The 18 months was fine — it’s an old family heirloom, it’s not as if I needed it right away, since it was just going to be displayed on a shelf. This watch was made in 1908, my great-grandfather the dairy farmer owned it as his work timepiece, it got passed on and mostly neglected. I did wear it on my wedding day, but then my grandparents took it back and stashed in a drawer. After they died, it bumbled about in various storage containers, neglected and ignored, and was damaged in major ways: the watch crystal was smashed, one of the hands was broken off, it had run down and was allowed to freeze up for decades. I got it a few years ago.

I wound it up and put it to my ear, and it worked! So I took it in to be restored and repaired. I was supposed to be grading papers today, but instead I drove all the way into Minneapolis and back — a 6 hour round trip — and got the watch back. It’s beautiful. I’m wondering now whether I should get rid of the iPhone and carry this robust, elegant piece of machinery instead. It wouldn’t ring and take calls, but that might be a positive advantage.

And here it is without my noise:

Now I better get to work on all those papers.

This post will probably make the infestation worse

A couple of us faculty at UMM are shopping for microscopes — we need to replace a dozen of the tired old student stereoscopes with snazzier models. I’ve sent out several inquiries by email to various vendors, but I left out an important requirement: now I want a car microscope, to keep up with all the YUSsies.

I’ve got a couple of quotes, but you know what else I’ve got? A flood of ads for microscopes. Every web page I visit that has ads is now a parade of microscopes marching down the page. I’m not complaining, it’s better than the “one weird trick” ads and the ads for useless supplements.

I have to roll my eyes when a creationist says information!

You can tell when you’ve encountered some gullible twit of a creationist who has swallowed the Discovery Institute line whole. Whenever they recite Stephen Meyer’s favorite line, that only intelligence can create information, you know you’re debating a fool.

It’s simply not true. Anyone who has studied genetics knows there are many natural processes that generate information, making the claim obviously false. It’s good to have Dr Dan present a short sweet refutation.

I’ve confronted people with this kind of explanation many times in the past. Just search PubMed for “random nucleotide sequences” (or amino acid sequences) and it’ll come back with page after page of articles on the subject — they’re fairly common tools for exploring the functional space. Notice that the first one on this list is from 1983.

The standard response I’ve gotten from creationists is that’s not complex information, and if you ask them to define “complex” they will waffle around, and eventually declare something about complex specified information, which just means information that was defined by a prior source, by which they mean “God”, because they sure as heck don’t have a primordial volume that dictates the modern sequences.

It’s really just a rabbit hole that they can lead you into. They don’t even have a grasp on the meaning of “information” — it just sounds sciencey to their ears.

Last gasp of Spring 2026

Today is my last class day — I have a 3 hour lab ahead of me. Only it’s not a “lab”, I’m opening up that time for lab report review, so I’m going to be sitting and reading drafts of their report and making suggestions. They’re due tomorrow, so that’s when I’ll be going the real grading.

Then I put together an online exam that they have to take at home. Today is the last day I have to talk with students, which isn’t great. But freedom until August is appealing, even if using it to get surgery isn’t.

Now…unto the breach!

NO KINGS.

This photo is disgusting. Trump is no king, even if he has royal delusions.

I thought that was bad, but then I read the speech Trump gave to welcome King Charles. It’s a lot of florid nonsense written by a very bad speechwriter.

Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts: moral courage, and it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea. For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men, women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride, and that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride.

The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

Notice the white nationalist theme; America is a nation of British, Anglo-Saxon people, and that’s what makes us great. Never mind all those other people who built the country, it was English destiny that forged this nation. Never mind the principles of representative democracy.

Yuck.

Anyone want to bet that Stephen Miller was the author? Total Nazi shit.

It’s knee day

I’m going in to the local hospital this morning to plan my ambulatory future. I’m getting some X-rays of my knees done, and meeting with an orthopedic surgeon to, I hope, schedule arthropedic surgery to patch up a torn meniscus. This has been pending for over a year — a long, miserable year of aching knees — but my initial treatment was canceled when I had a broken blood vessel in my eye. Clearly, it was too dangerous to operate on my knee!

So, fingers crossed. I really want this surgery to restore my mobility, all of my summer plans hinge on it. This doctor seems to be pretty quick to put off work on the slightest pretext, though, so I don’t have a tremendous amount of confidence that I’m going to be restored soon. I’ll know in a few hours.

It was a successful meeting: I am scheduled for knee surgery on the 16th of May. Hip hip hooray! Or should that be knee knee hooray?

Capitalism has lost the plot

Stephanie Stirling has been right all along. She’s always insisted that video game company CEOs were heartless, greedy monsters, and now one of them has stepped forward go confirm their well-deserved reputation. The CEO of a company called Ustwo, Maria Sayans, made a speech declaring what she thinks is the future of her business.

We’ve been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security. I think that got us into a place where, reaching the heights of Monument Valley 3 [production], contractors were always a relatively low percentage of our employee base. I think that’s something we’re looking to change going forward.

I think going forward, we’ll see that we’ve got a core team and any growth will come through contractors, which is something I hate about the industry. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and those of us who joined in the early 2000s, we had it very good. You want to be able to give that kind of stability […] but I think that’s a shift in how we want to work with people going forward.

There’s the capitalist ideal: the company is an empty shell that houses CEOs who get extravagant salaries, but no employees. The actual work, the output the company produces, is to be farmed out to external contractors on the cheap. A game, the purported purpose and product of this company, is to be produced by an executive with an MBA who has no artistic talent, no creative talent, and definitely no ability to code.

Instead of getting rid of the employees, how about firing all the CEOs?

Ken Ham is easily triggered

A few months ago, I wrote a short post forwarding information that Daniel Phelps had sent to me. Answers in Genesis is shrinking, with declining attendance at his dismal little theme park. Furthermore, more of the labor of writing for their website is falling on Ken Ham’s shoulders, which is peculiar given that he’s getting pretty old and ought to be thinking of the succession — as someone of roughly that age, I can say that we ought to be planning our retirement and thinking of fun and relaxation in our sunset years (call me, Ken, we can plan a retirement party!) But no, Bodie Hodge has sailed away, and Martyn Iles lost little time bailing out. Recently, their “paleontologist”, Gabriela Hynes, jumped ship abruptly, leaving AiG for ICR. The Ark is looking a bit leaky and wobbly, as Phelps has documented, and there must be all kinds of drama behind the scenes.

Ken Ham completely ignored the meat of my post and instead wrote a long entry obsessing over one thing I said. He quoted my final paragraph and didn’t bother to link to it, which is unsurprising. He never links to his critics. I wrote,

That’s a problem with authoritarian cults. They are ruled for life by unpleasant, weird people who alienate everyone around them, and maybe instill in them the ambition to be in charge on their own. I hope I outlive Ken Ham, because I’d really like to see the chaos that will follow on his death.

We’re already seeing hints of the chaos, because Ken is an unpleasant, weird person, and it will get worse if he dies. I think that fact makes him uncomfortable.

Instead of addressing the uneasy state of his legacy and discussing the stability of AiG, Ken was more concerned with my mention of our mortality and my hope to outlive him, so he fulminates at me and fires a bunch of Bible verses at me.

As we know, God’s Word states that,

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die. (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2)

So when any one of us dies is not up to what some atheist professor wants. God is in control of both Myers’ life and ours.

I disagree. God has nothing to do with it. Genetics and lifestyle and chance are what will bring us both down, eventually. I do agree that I will not have anything to do with Ken Ham’s inevitable death.

But this pagan university professor, who has continually blasphemed and mocked God and Christians, needs to wake up and take note of God’s warning:

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment. (Hebrews 9:27 LSB)

And if Myers continues in his willing ignorance and rebellion against God, he will suffer a second death after the first death:

But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8 LSB)

Cowardly? Not particularly. Not especially brave, either.

Unbelieving? Yes! Score one point for ol’ Ken.

Abominable? I get along fine with most people. Ken has the prerogative to find me personally loathsome, if he’d like.

Murderer? Nope, never have.

Sexually immoral? I’m sorry, I’m more sexually conventional and always have been.

Sorcerer? Very cool. I wish, but no.

Idolater? I worship no one or no thing. Another miss.

Liar? I won’t lie and say I’ve never lied, but it’s not a particularly prominent feature of my personality.

But Ken…are you planning to gloat about your violent god setting me on fire? That’s not very nice.

I would ask us to all pray for P.Z. Myers as he is well on his way to a Christless eternity. He is 68 years old (younger than me), but God could end his earthly life at any second.

We all live in a Christless universe, so that threat has no muscle behind it at all. I agree that any of us could die at any second, but it won’t be at the hand of Ham’s impotent, faceless, invisible god.

Hey Ken: rather than raging at me with your imprecatory Bible quoting, maybe address the issues I brought up: is your throne listing uneasily? Are you struggling with an internal mutiny?