Don’t hold your breath, Moon. NASA is in the process of being gutted, and they haven’t finalized on a lander yet, so while there are plans to return in a few years, I’m not 100% confident we’ll follow through.
If you’re pining for company, though, China might send a few people sooner.
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?
Little hints, you know.
They’ve brought in Kid Rock to advise military leaders.
🤡!
It’s a little yellow one.
I have been privileged to witness the abrupt destruction of higher education in America. It’s been dramatic and dizzying — federal scientific institutions taken over by crackpots, research funding cut, politics inserted into the university system (well, it’s always been there, but not quite so overt), and condemnation of open-minded analysis in favor of puritanical, religious, cult-like dogma. I would rather not be seeing this.
The cool thing about it all is that it is quantifiable. We can measure the repression of our universities! The Academic Freedom Index assessed the autonomy of universities worldwide — universities are increasingly constrained by political demands. The US in particular is being hit hard.
Institutional Autonomy, Development for the US and the Average Peer Country in Western Europe and North
America from 2015 to 2025.
I don’t think we’ve hit bottom yet. It’s going to get worse, I predict.
For a crystal clear example of an oppressive reduction of university autonomy, we can look to Texas. This may be the future fate of the rest of the country, which really should be looking on Texas with horror.
A new memo at Texas Tech University establishes a sweeping and draconian censorship policy toward LGBTQ+ people, creating a campus equivalent of “Don’t Say Gay” in one of the most extreme anti-speech policies ever imposed at a public university. The memo bars professors from discussing LGBTQ+ topics in core and lower-level courses and eliminates entire fields of study across the five-university system. It even requires that if an industry-standard textbook includes content on sexual orientation or gender identity, instructors must skip over it and avoid discussion around it. Most troubling, however, is that the censorship regime extends beyond professors to students themselves: the memo states that “no degree-culminating student research within the TTU System will be permitted to center on SOGI [Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity] topics,” a total ban on LGBTQ+ mentions in dissertations or graduate thesis work.
The memorandum, which was issued by Chancellor Brandon Creighton—a former Republican state senator who authored Texas’s ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at public universities and a campus protest restriction law that a federal judge blocked as unconstitutional—went out to the presidents of all five universities in the Texas Tech University System this month. The system serves approximately 64,000 students across Texas Tech University, Angelo State University, Midwestern State University, and two Health Sciences Centers. Under the new policy, all majors, minors, certificates, and graduate degrees “centered on” sexual orientation or gender identity will be eliminated. Provosts at each university must identify every affected program and submit finalized lists to the chancellor’s office by June 15, 2026, at which point an immediate admissions freeze will take effect—no new students will be allowed to enroll in or declare any of the targeted programs. Currently enrolled students will be allowed to finish their degrees through a teach-out process, but once the last of them graduates, the fields will cease to exist at Texas Tech entirely.
I repeat, by authoritarian dictat, “fields will cease to exist at Texas Tech entirely”. Entire domains of research will be eradicated, not because the evidence makes them invalid, but because the narrow religious dogma of a small number of conservative zealots, and the social pressure from a deluded, ill-informed public, has decreed that they do not exist. The rest of the world will continue to study, measure, and analyze these very real sociological and psychological and biological phenomena, but Texas will close its eyes and ears and punish anyone who dares to acknowledge their existence.
A pair (not really a pair, they were of two different species) spent a few months on the International Space Station. The article about them says “Two ‘spidernauts’ were studied to see how they adapted to microgravity – with surprising results,” but doesn’t bother to say what the surprise was.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 29:at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on November 29, 2012 in Washington, D.C. Nefertiti, the Johnson jumping spider, has found a new home at the Insect Zoo in the Museum of Natural History, after a 100 day voyage in space as a resident aboard the International Space Station. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
I think the surprise was that there was no surprise — they adapted to microgravity easily, which is what I’d expect. These are two animals who go through life constantly tethering themselves to their environment with a silken dragline. Of course they were able to cope with a space environment. They orient themselves with tactile senses, and were probably just surprised at how much easier and more effective their jumping was.
Sadly, they did not last long on return.
The mission set a record for longest time spent in space by a spider (100 days). While Cleopatra died on returning to Earth, Nefertiti would also become the first spider to survive the voyage home, and successfully readjusted to gravity.
After her marathon mission, she was destined for a long, cosy retirement. She was put on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, where she was placed in a custom enclosure and died four days later.
Again, this is not surprising. Jumping spiders are not long-lived species even when not launched up into orbit on a rocket.
However, I do not appreciate hearing about death shortly after retirement, with my own retirement only a year away.
I learned about an interesting bird this morning, the American Dipper, a freshwater diving bird. I didn’t know they existed.
It was particularly fascinating to me because the narrator looks so much like my late brother, when he was younger. Also, he has a pleasantly casual narrative style — I’d recommend him to replace David Attenborough, in part because he sounds nothing like him.
Probably not what you think it means. To me, it means cold, a terrible chill in my lab that makes it uncomfortable to work there, just as I’m getting the freedom to work there. Every summer, when the physical plant starts working to cool the building, they seem to start with refrigerating my lab space. The whole building is out of balance, so while my lab is sitting at a chilly 15°C, the lab right next to mine is a feverish 27°C. It has been driving me mad for years, and nothing ever gets done to fix it.
It’s not good for the spiders, these Southern belles that were collected in Florida and dragged up to Minnesota.
They’ve all got heating pads under their cages, but there’s a steep gradient from the floor of the cage to the top, so no wonder they’re all huddled as low as they can get all the time. The babies are in incubators, so they don’t care, yet…but once they get to a size that demands more space, I have to move them out into the main lab.
It’s not good for me, either. I have to wear my winter coat every day to keep warm at the microscope and computer. I have to yell at the administration, but maybe you’ve noticed that I’m rather soft-voiced and apparently totally ineffectual.
My plan for this week, as my teaching responsibilities diminish, is to pack up all the adult spiders and bring them home. Don’t worry, I’ve already cleared it with Mary.
Maybe I should pack up all the microscopes and computers and bring them home, too. The university isn’t making the effort to create a livable working environment, so they can’t complain if I abscond with all the gear and instruments, right?
We have a president who is notorious for openly despising journalists. For years, he has been shunning the White House Correspondents Dinner, where, in the past, some speakers have mocked him, and where he would be surrounded by people who write rude things about him. He finally plans to attend. Gunshots ring out, secret service agents rush in, quickly bundle the politicians out, and the whole event was cancelled.
Dog help me, I’m suspicious that the police-led shutdown of the event was the whole point. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist, but it was all too pat — the establishment was looking for a pretext, and they found one. No one was hurt, they had a fun kerfuffle, and this year’s WHCD was silenced while the administration gets to claim persecution.
Afterwards, the president said nothing about how there are too many guns too freely available — instead, he spoke to the press about how this justifies his ballroom, which would be more secure and safe.
I hate thinking this way, but this country feels like it’s built on money, lies, and cheap stagecraft right now.
