Let’s end Spring Break for good

This year’s Spring Break is over, and it was a mess, as usual. The students got a full week of vacation, while I got nothing, other than a pile of grading and the need to do their lab work for them (admittedly, a small trivial bit of their work, because flies keep breeding no matter what the calendar says). Then we had a blizzard, which has disrupted everyone’s travel schedules — I have students who will miss class for the entire first half of this week, because airlines have been cancelling all kinds of flights into the upper midwest.

My modest suggestion is that in future years we abolish the tradition of Spring Break. Everyone just stays at the university working, and then we finish up the term a week early. Less chaos! More order! No more resetting unrealistic expectations by allowing them to escape to a warm sunny beach somewhere. No more youthful debauchery. Reality is cold, icy, white landscapes scoured by bitter winds, overseen by dour gray-bearded taskmasters. The sooner they get used to it, the better.

There may be some initial resistance, but everyone will eventually adapt, and I won’t have to go through this yearly ritual of having to modify course- and lab-work to accommodate these unserious childish hijinks.


No one is learning biology here.

How to kick a professor off campus

The bowtie makes me suspicious right away

I shouldn’t have to tell my students that I don’t regard their backpacks as urinals, but apparently some professors have issues.

A Macalester College student has accused her chemistry professor of pissing (“urinating,” to use the legal term) on her backpack last December, reports the Mac Weekly. That prof, identified in a police report regarding “fourth-degree intentional damage to property” (well that really removes a lot of the nuance from the incident), is Paul Fischer, who is no longer a Mac employee.

That’s a first to me. There is an official police report on the incident.

A report from the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) states that, on Feb. 6 at 9:41 a.m., a Macalester student informed SPPD officers that an individual had urinated on her belongings on Dec. 5, 2025, on Macalester’s campus. The report names former Macalester chemistry Professor Paul Fischer as the suspect in the case.

According to a statement SPPD spokesperson Alyssa Arcand made to the Pioneer Press, the student left her backpack unattended for several minutes in a classroom building and discovered urine on it when she returned.

So the event happened at the end of Fall term. Then, at the beginning of Spring term, Fischer is abruptly terminated.

On Feb. 19, chemistry Professor Keith Kuwata sent an email to all chemistry majors and minors, as well as biology majors with a biochemistry emphasis, stating that “Fischer is no longer an employee of Macalester College and is not authorized to be anywhere on campus.”

Kuwata’s email also notes that it has been “an unsettling time for many of you.” He stated that the department’s top priorities were student well-being and academic success.

My sympathies to the chemistry faculty at Macalester, that’s a rough decision to make, to suddenly drop a professor early in the term. I hope the students aren’t too traumatized by a professor suddenly losing his mind. That comment about “an unsettling time” suggests there is a lot more to the story, but they aren’t talking.

Apparently, Fischer started teaching at Macalester in 2001, not much different from me, starting at UMM in 2000. Do professors typically start falling apart around the 25 year mark? Should I be worried?

Again, I want to reassure my students that I probably won’t start pissing on everything.

Spring break surprise

Spring break is almost over, and classes resume on Monday, maybe.

So of course nature is getting its revenge. We’re under a blizzard watch from 7pm tonight until Monday at 4pm, as my students are trying to get back, but already I’m hearing from some that flights are delayed or cancelled. Classes are going to be under “reduced operations” on Monday, but they aren’t canceled, so I’ll be teaching over Zoom. Whee!

It’s already snowing.

Welcome back to Minnesota, gang!

Marcus Ranum is one scary guy

I’m reading his assessment of the Iran War to date (you should too, depressing as it is), and feeling the same despair I think he is. This is a massive clusterfuck with no good outcome, but Marcus makes a prediction anyway.

Prediction: the US won’t lose. Because the Iranians don’t have the logistics or means to reach us. We’ll declare victory and head home for a ticker-tape parade, etc. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv will get as flattened as Gaza. I’m not sure how I feel about that, so I have been employing a trick I have used for years, which is simply not to feel. My, how interesting. Israel finally managed to talk the US into attacking Iran for them, and it’s the most incompetent thing anyone has ever seen. That’s the problem with hiring stupid people. The US won’t lose, Iran won’t lose, but Israel is fucked – unless they can convince the US to help pay for their repairs. Which is so absurd, I ought to expect it. The economic impact of repairing the damage Israel has suffered is incalculable. In a rational world, this would actually be the end of Israel because most of the population would fuck off back to Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and Russia where they came from, “Well that didn’t work.” To me, this is one of the crazy things about politics: in a semi-rational world, that would actually be a possibility: 95% of Israel ups and quits, and the remainder go “time we learn to negotiate, huh?” The Israelis have thoroughly imploded their own myth that their government is tough and savvy. That might be good for them to realize.

That sounds about right. As we have so many times before, we’ll devastate a country and pretend we’ve won a great victory. It’s an interesting idea that maybe, finally, Israel has bit off far more than it can chew. We’re also sending in 2000 marines — I’m not sure what they can do against a population of 93 million riled up people with AK47s and missiles, but that sounded familiar, too.

I’ve read all the Flashman novels. They’re sitting on a bookshelf in my living room right now. In case you’re unfamiliar, they’re comedic historical novels about the rise of the British empire, centered on a character who is a bully and a self-serving poltroon who serves in all the major 19th century conflicts in Asia, Africa, North America, and even has a few escapades in Europe. He’s always a hair’s breadth from total disaster, but manages to pull through at the last moment, often at the cost of thousands of lives, including those of his fellow British soldiers.

Marcus is not a Flashman-like figure, but he does remind me sometimes of George McDonald Fraser, the author of the series, who is sitting back describing the horrors of these wars with some detachment. One of the themes of the books is the devastating incompetence of the British leadership, who can rescue their reputations by sending in masses of young men who will be ruined and wrecked by the experience, but can be praised by the generals as Heroes of the British Empire, who themselves escape scot-free and go home to their manors to sip brandy and tell war stories.

Pete Hegseth is setting up a few thousand noble sacrifices. You won’t be able to criticize him without besmirching the memory of the gallant marines who gave their all for their country, he thinks.

Marcus has also written a letter he would like to slip into the mailboxes of his neighbors who previously festooned their homes with Trump signs, since mysteriously taken down because they’re all chickenshits. It’s a good letter, honest and forthright, but I’d urge him not to post it. It sounds like a death threat to all Trump supporters. I agree with it — they’re all traitors and are responsible for everything our country might once have stood for — but this is not the time. They still have too much power. We need to tear down the right-wing establishment, and then we can bring their lackeys to a terrible justice.

Or more likely, like Flashman, they’re going to end up rich and praised, telling stories about grand victories that will be resolved by another century of idiocy.

A random elevatorgator appears! Roll for initiative


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.

What’s the point of having inside info if they won’t talk?

The US has depleted its Middle East defense systems to the point where they are stripping Asian defense systems, particularly in South Korea.

South Korean media has reported several flights of U.S. military transport aircraft at Osan Air Base since the Iran conflict started, noting that the C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster planes that were seen are used to typically carry Patriot systems and THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems.

The U.S. move to deploy Patriot defense systems in South Korea to the Middle East comes against the backdrop of reports that air defense systems used by Gulf nations were running “dangerously low” on interceptors to defend against Iranian drone and missile strikes.

IISS’ Kim said that U.S. missile supplies are already under significant strain, given that Iran continues to retaliate and the conflict is likely to be a prolonged one.

Interesting and worrisome. Then I realized, though, that I have an inside source that could give me fresh, juicy information. My son is a major in the signal corps, which handles all this tech and logistics stuff, and he’s stationed in Korea. They’re also in the middle of a huge joint exercise in the Pacific called Freedom Shield 26, in which he’s putting in long days coordinating various aspects of the exercise. He’d know about any strains and shifts in the conduct of the drill, and I know him well, and he even called me on my birthday. The perfect opportunity to get breaking news!

So I asked him about it. He stonewalled me about it. Me! His own father! He wouldn’t reveal a single tiny secret, not even as a birthday present.

Maybe it’s because he sounded really tired and overworked, and because he was calling at 4am Korean time just before he started another long day, but I couldn’t get him to crack. I also didn’t try very hard, since if true, I imagine having big chunks of the military infrastructure yanked out from under one of the guys in charge of deploying said infrastructure in the middle of a multi-national exercise is a bit of a headache.

He’s a good boy. Don’t bother trying to extract info from him.

A graph of corruption

Trust me, I know that correlation is not causation, but damn, that is one sharp coincidence.

This corrupt Supreme Court has a lot to answer for. That graph comes from Paul Krugman

Amid the bloody shambles, one big question is, who put The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight in power? In an immediate sense, Trump was put over the top by low-information voters — defined by G. Elliott Morris as voters who don’t know which party controls Congress. But the groundwork for the MAGA takeover was laid well before by the Roberts Supreme Court and by right-wing billionaires that the court enabled.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Billionaires Gone Wild, the extraordinary influence acquired by a tiny group of ultra-wealthy men. I shared this chart on campaign contributions, based on estimates from Americans for Tax Fairness.

That data explains a lot about the current state of the nation.

So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt.

This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense.

How many billionaires, or even millionaires, are actually serving in the military right now or are even luxuriating in a hotel somewhere near where the missiles might fall? How many will be materially hurt by a rise in gas prices, the destruction of reliable information sources, the lack of availability of vaccines or healthy food?

If you can’t tell who the winners and losers are, you’re one of the losers.

Finally! A definition!

The UK plans to release new bank notes in a few years, which isn’t news at all. Countries do this every once in a while, you know.

Banknotes issued by the Bank of England will soon feature images of wildlife rather than historical figures, following a public consultation on the design of the next set of currency.

There is nothing too trivial to trigger the Right, though. And new we finally have a definition of “woke”!

The Bank of England is replacing Winston Churchill with a picture of a beaver on our bank notes.
This is the definition of woke.

You can always trust Nigel Farage to babble out some ludicrous nonsense.

I, for one, will welcome the new, much prettier UK currency. Can you also replace Farage with a more attractive animal? Something that doesn’t scream “gormless” when displayed?

This is what it feels like to be a rogue state

Think about this truth.

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 billion.
First 6 Days of Iran War Cost U.S. $11.3 Billion, Pentagon Says
David Ho

Anyone who wants to defend our war with Iran needs to justify the expense. The NSF provides a material benefit, discovers new knowledge, and enhances the reputation of our country. It is a net advantage to support the NSF; you could reasonably argue for a different kind of positive investment, an argument that goes on in congress all the time while they hash out the yearly budget.

The Iran war, on the other hand, is an illegal action triggered by one lunatic executive without congressional approval, that is destructive of human life and property, and does not succeed in it’s stated goal of reducing threats to Americans and others. For my selfish fellow citizens, it’s also going to raise the cost of oil. It’s also a war we cannot win, and that’s just the beginning of an escalation that will make that $11.3 billion look like a bargain.

It is a no-brainer to choose between those two alternatives.

Also, it wasn’t long ago that the president raged at a few congresspeople who put out an ad stating that soldiers don’t need to follow illegal orders. That ad did not go far enough. We need to pull a few generals into a courts martial and explain to them that the president does not have the authority to unilaterally tell you to launch your missiles at civilian citizens of a country we are not at war with. You must first be informed by congress that you are at war, which is the minimal requirement before military action can be triggered. Learn to tell the president to shut the fuck up and get authorization first.

The officers that ordered the pushing of the buttons are war criminals, and that’s how history will regard them.