AiG has no shame

I watched a bit of this video from Answers in Genesis, but couldn’t take much of it. Daniel Phelps had more stamina, and watched the hacks at AiG spout their BS about the shiny new space telescope. Danny Faulkner is their pet astronomer who rejects most of astronomy.

Their response was by AiG’s astronomer, Dr. Danny Faulkner, and their “rocket scientist,” Rob Webb. Their discussion was a rather weak critique of the JWST’s findings and funny and sad at the same time. Through most of their simulcast, one couldn’t hear what the NASA people were saying, but this may have been a technical difficulty. About 23 minutes in Dr. Faulkner and Webb bizarrely claim that light year distances don’t necessarily equal long time scales (thus not refuting a 6,000 year old universe). Soon after, Dr. Faulkner states his “theory” (not a scientific theory, but he doesn’t seem to know this) that we can see things billions of light years away in a 6,000 year old universe because of a “miracle.” His position is literally “then a miracle occurred.” This is reminiscent of the famous Sidney Harris cartoon found here:. Dr. Faulkner goes on to say that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden saw pretty much what we see today when looking at the night sky.

They do know that the Harris cartoon is not a recommendation, right? As soon as you resort to “miracles”, you’ve left science behind.

Not that that would bother AiG.

Not representing computer science well

Dumbass wannabe martyr

This is the time of year many of us are working on our syllabi, and one common feature nowadays is a land acknowledgment. For instance, I mention that UMM is on the original homelands of the Dakota, Lakota and Anishinaabe peoples; no big deal, recognizing our history and the identity of the people who have a legitimate claim on these lands. But what would you think of this peculiar acknowledgement by a computer science instructor at the University of Washington?

I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.

Labor theory of property? What does that have to do the brute fact of the reality of UW’s history? Then denying that fact is simply offensive.

The university asked him to take it down. They even offer a recommended alternative.

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.

It’s very silly to oppose a straightforward statement of fact like that, and offensive to post a denial. But Stuart Reges sees an opportunity to leap on the right-wing gravy train.

“University administrators turned me into a pariah on campus because I included a land acknowledgment that wasn’t sufficiently progressive for them,” said Reges in a press release issued Wednesday by FIRE, a nonprofit that supports free speech on campuses and elsewhere. “Land acknowledgments are performative acts of conformity that should be resisted, even if it lands you in court,” added Reges.

That’s it. The university asked an employee to refrain from offending students, which is entirely reasonable — academic freedom does not mean you can posture abusively and not be criticized. He has a job to do, and a meaningless but unproductive statement does interfere with that.

Of course, he is now suing the university, claiming his civil rights have been violated, which is why he’s partnering up with FIRE. Nothing has happened to him, except that his own actions have generated some adverse publicity; the university has not taken any material action against him. He’s not tenured, so the university is free to not renew his contract. I don’t understand what grounds he has for any kind of lawsuit. He’s just trying desperately to become yet another right-wing martyr, but the university hasn’t bothered to nail him up on any cross.

Of course, now he’s stuck his head up and made it obvious to the administration how stupid he is. He may have effectively screwed himself.

He’s tried this before. Would you believe he he published an article on Quillette, Why Women Don’t Code, in which he says I believe that women are less likely than men to want to major in computer science and less likely to pursue a career as a software engineer and that this difference between men and women accounts for most of the gender gap, and also tried to hoist himself on that cross again:

Saying controversial things that might get me fired is nothing new for me. I’ve been doing it most of my adult life and usually my comments have generated a big yawn. I experienced a notable exception in a 1991 case that received national attention, when I was fired from Stanford University for “violating campus drug policy” as a means of challenging the assumptions of the war on drugs. My attitude in all of these cases has been that I need to speak up and give my honest opinion on controversial issues. Most often nothing comes of it, but if I can be punished for expressing such ideas, then it is even more important to speak up and try to make the injustice plain.

Try and try and try again to provoke your employers so you can land that juicy lawsuit that will please the regressives who hate universities, and fail and fail and fail. That Quillette article did have the effect of getting his three-year contract getting demoted to a one year probationary contract. “Contract”. “Probationary”. That he has been straining to violate the terms of a probationary agreement for years seems to me to provide adequate grounds for letting him go while cancelling out any reason to sue his employers.

Are we surprised by this story about Dr Oz?

No, we are not.

Even without Fetterman’s highly effective campaign, this kind of quackery is why I don’t want Oz in the senate. He’s a dishonest fraud. So is Dr Phil. In fact, any of the stable of goofballs squirted out of the gullible brain of Oprah ought to be rejected if ever they appear on any political slate.

Noooo! Too slow!

I’ve been tracking the growth of individuals in my Steatoda triangulosa colony, and finally have a whole 3 time points so I can estimate the spider growth rate. Behold, the first preliminary chart!

The line is a linear fit, which is not likely to be what I see in the end, but it’s optimistic, and I can’t really make many assumptions with so little data. But OK, if aiming to raise these spiders to a length of 1 meter, that’ll only take, with that assumption, about…a century? Yikes.

That rate is perfectly appropriate if they max out at 10mm long, like their mommy, but it’s going to be hard to take over the world with tiny little spiders like that. I guess I’ll have to go for numbers.

First I’ve ever heard of a food company wanting to use a spider for PR

There is a spider, Araneus mitificus, AKA the Kidney Garden spider, that sort of vaguely resembles the mascot (?) of Pringles potato chips. Surprisingly, the Kellog company, which markets Pringles, has embraced this idea and want to make the name “Pringles Spider” official.

There’s a petition and a website. If the name change is approved, which they think they can do by persuading “the decision maker” with enough signatures, the first 1500 signatories get one free can of potato chips. Who is the “decision maker”? They don’t know.

Pringles has added a petition to Change.org with the hopes that the International Society of Arachnology, the American Arachnological Society, and other organizations will “do what’s right and recognize this very real spider as the Pringles Spider.”

How awkward. The American Arachnological Society does not determine nomenclature, neither does International Society of Arachnology. You can send all the requests you want to them, and they’re just going to give you the side-eye and block you as spam. There is an International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, but they have very strict rules about the assignment of binomial nomenclature, you aren’t going to change that. Common names are vague and often lazily defined by usage; you can call it the “Pringles spider” if you want, but it has no official weight.

There is absolutely nothing preventing Pringles from putting a photo of Araneus mitificus on all of their packaging and happily calling it the Pringles Spider. They could also make commercials with a smiling anthropomorphized spider touting their product, and get rid of the mustachioed cartoon man altogether. They don’t need a petition for any of that!

Go ahead, Pringles. I dare you. I double-dog dare you.

Spinelessness…confirmed

Go away, Chad.

Remember how Biden was going to appoint an anti-choice fanatic to a federal judgeship in a deal with McConnell, and we were so disappointed in his surrender to the Republicans? Good news!

The White House dropped plans Friday to nominate an anti-abortion lawyer backed by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for a federal judgeship in Kentucky.

I guess all those Democratic voters saying this was a really stupid deal, and that you can’t trust McConnell had an effect, right? Or maybe someone told him that the optics on this one were really bad.

Nope, neither.

The decision to back off the nomination of Chad Meredith came amid a split between McConnell and Republican Sen. Rand Paul, his fellow Kentuckian, over the selection.

Republicans are the only ones with any choice or agency in our government. I’m impressed at how Democrats can look bad even in victory.

What is the “trans question”, anyway?

This is a puzzling headline: The Tories are right to debate the trans question – it’s not a distraction. It doesn’t say what the “trans question” is…we’re just supposed to debate it. How? You can’t just say something needs to be debated without saying what the proposition is.

Or can you?

Here’s a question: rutabagas. Now go — DEBATE. Now. I need the rutabaga question resolved immediately.

There’s some vague something we’re supposed to discuss about the “trans question”, but nothing in this article helps me understand. There are odd hints that they’re trying to get to something deeper, but it’s almost as if they’re afraid to say it openly.

It is to the chagrin of many women on the left that Tory politicians are leading this overdue debate. Keir Starmer has been hopeless on the issue, ignoring letters from feminists and lesbians who are in despair about Labour’s refusal to give clear answers to questions about biological sex. I told him face-to-face in May about the harassment of feminists in the Labour Party, but he’s still trying to sit on the fence. And Labour is losing support among women as a result.

See what I mean? This author thinks there’s some key difference between Labour and Tories on “biological sex”. Does one side think it’s not biological?

OK, to clarify my earlier question about rutabagas: where do you stand on questions about biological vegetables? No, I’m not going to say what those questions are: you must simply debate rutabaga and biological vegetables.

I’m not being disingenuous. You have to be clear on what the issue is. For example, do rutabagas exist, or should they exist, or what is the best way to cut and cook a rutabaga, or is a rutabaga actually just a confused turnip, or was the hybridization of Brassica oleracea and Brassica rapa an abomination before god that must be prohibited by law? Those are proper questions. We could discuss those, except I fear that if the opposition made their issues clearly they’d look silly and their irrational hatred of root vegetables would be clear. (By the way, if this debate is between Tories and Labour, they’d probably call them “swedes” which would open the door to some ugly misinterpretations across the North Sea.)

I wonder if this is related to “the Jewish question”?

Fool me once…

Panic. We really need to worry — the Republicans are playing innocent and saying they wouldn’t do that.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling last month to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats are pushing to codify other rights that have been left vulnerable by the decision into federal law — including access to contraception, same-sex marriage, and potentially interracial marriage. “I do believe that we should move with urgency,” Hakeem Jeffries, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told Axios Wednesday.

But they may have an uphill battle: Such measures seem to have little appeal to the GOP, whose members insist that those protections are unnecessary because those rights are not under threat. “I’ll worry about hypotheticals at the time we have it,” Ted Cruz told Axios. “I have no reason to believe these precedents are going to fall,” added Lindsey Graham. “Nothing like that should even be thought about by anybody because it’s not endangered in any way,” Chuck Grassley told the outlet.

“I don’t know why people would come to that conclusion,” he added.

Here we go again. They’re going to ban contraception, same sex marriage, and interracial marriage. 100%.