I shake my shaggy head at yet another creationist

I know that I need a haircut, and I was losing my voice here, and that this Matt Powell character is an awful little pipsqueak who doesn’t deserve any attention, but I wanted to throw together a little video because I was bemused by the fact that he was using those claims about aliens by Wickramasinghe to condemn all of evolutionary since. When he started incredulously yelling that “THIS IS WHAT EVOLUTION TEACHES,” that squid piggy-backed on asteroids to populate the planet, I just had to point out that this is most definitely not what evolution teaches, and that it was plain bad science.

I think I’m far more pissed off at those phonies affiliated with panspermia, and their long-running infiltration of the science establishment, than I am with a not-very-bright loudmouthed kid babbling about Jesus.

And if I’m mad at those wackos, you can’t imagine how furious I get with those frauds promoting evolutionary psychology.

I’m a backslider!

I’m uploading a new video right now which will be posted first to Patreon, and tomorrow to everyone else, and it chewed up my whole day. I futzed around way too long trying to do the editing under Linux, and was tearing my hair out — I’m not exactly skilled at the video editing thing at the best of times, but trying to use all new software which was full of Linux geekiness was just too much. So I gave up and did it on my Mac. The whole workflow is so much simpler and more comfortable there for an amateur.

I’ll continue to try and master my Linux-fu, but I’m not quite there yet on the video front.

So that’s what the University of Minnesota is doing in the fall?

It’s a plan suggested by our board of regents, I guess.

We recommend the resumption of in-person instruction and opening of residence halls, dining facilities and other campus services in a manner consistent with public health guidance. This will include adjusting capacity levels for classroom occupancy, residence halls and dining capacity, and other inperson experiences.

While faculty retain the autonomy to determine the modality of their teaching, and how to best achieve their learning objectives, classroom capacity constraints will limit how many classes may be offered inperson and when. Faculty will be strongly encouraged to develop courses that are multi-modal, to accommodate the flexibility described above, and will be provided support to aid in this development.

Labs and other experiential learning components of classes may be “front-loaded” in order to ensure they can be completed in-person in case of an outbreak or an early pivot. We have developed, and are committed to offering, a fully-distanced first-year curriculum for international students who might not be able to arrive on campus in the Fall, or for other incoming students who prefer to advance their education in that manner.

So we assume everything is normal, but we have to stand ready to shut down labs and switch to online teaching at a moment’s notice. I’ll probably enforce distancing in seating in the lecture hall, and request that students wear masks in lab (I’ll wear one too), though. I’ll prepare online lectures, just in case.

I have a feeling this whole plan might fall apart even before the start of the term, but we’ll see. The board is more confident than I am.

They’re also planning to adjust the academic calendar so the semester is over by Thanksgiving. I’ll have to see what that looks like — we have a fall break (2 days) and Labor Day (1 day), but turning those into work days won’t quite get us to the end. Finishing by 25 November leaves us 10 teaching days short of the scheduled end of classes on 11 December. We’re going to have to find an extra week and a half in the calendar, I guess. Start classes a week early? Add in some teaching on Saturday? Steal the Time-Turner from Hermione? It’s going to get interesting.

Treacherous physicality

I’ve got plans. Big spider plans, involving day trips to rough country. Unfortunately, one of my knees has decided to rebel and flatten me out. My right knee, you know, the sneaky one as opposed to the left knee, which is the wicked one, is all swollen and sore and gimpy. So no tromping about the rolling hills and lakes of Western Minnesota is on hold until maybe next week.

Stupid joints.

Yes. I need more limbs.

When we were talking to my daughter the other evening, she was struggling to manage a phone in one hand and a busy baby in the other, and I told her she just needed a third. Surprise! Science provides with a wearable robotic “third arm” that can punch through a wall. The “punch through a wall” feature seems particularly useful in the context of child care. Except, I’m sorry, the video makes it less than useful.

Nice gadget, but it requires one person to wear it, and a second person with two arms to control it remotely, effectively requiring four arms to enable three-armed activity, in which one of the three arms is rather clumsy. It’s going to require a better control mechanism, something with a neurological link to the wearer. As long as we’re doing that, why stop at three? Why not…eight? I am ready for my robotic exoskeleton that will let me climb walls and punch through walls and destroy walls any day now.

Oh, and do more efficient childcare, I guess.

Liberal Arts FTW!

Never tell me that an art history degree is useless.

Art history doesn’t usually have much to offer in the way of practical, directly actionable lessons. But Sarah Parcak, a renowned professor of Egyptology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, recently plumbed humanity’s cultural past to offer some very concrete advice. On Sunday, she posted detailed, step-by-step instructions on Twitter (including a helpful diagram) for how to tear down an obelisk, culled from her research into ancient Egypt. (For every 10 feet of monument, you need 40 or more people; use rope attached to a chain; everyone should wear gloves; pull hard in unison from either side.)

After she shared the sketch, she added, “There might be one just like this in downtown Birmingham! What a coincidence. Can someone please show this thread to the folks there.”

You’d be surprised at what you can learn with a little education.

Also, while protesters failed to totally destroy the monument, the mayor of Birmingham promised to finish the job, which has prompted the state of Alabama to sue the city. Don’t worry! Liberal arts students are also fearless!

The police can no longer rely on extortion to get support

With every budget year, there are factions in Minneapolis that call for more police, in the mistaken belief that more police equals more safety. It’s never true, but they tend to get their way. As we can rather clearly see this year, the police are a destabilizing, violent institution that has grown over-confident in their untouchability.

Five decades ago, police departments operated under the authority of city governments, most notably serving as enforcers for corrupt political machines. That was then. With the decline of the machines in the ’70s, the police emerged as the most powerful section of municipal governments, more influenced by Homeland Security, regional fusion centers, and a police equipment industry aggressively pushing the latest in weapons and surveillance systems.

While politicians turn over every few years, the police have built an enduring base of support, unwavering in its belief that more cops mean more safety. As a result, their numbers, budgets, and clout have steadily increased over the years, as racial and economic inequality have grown.

Elected backers of police expansion like Minneapolis City Council members Linea Palmisano, Lisa Goodman, and Alondra Cano seem to believe they would be supporting a community-oriented police department spearheaded by Chief Medaria Arrodondo. That department is a mirage. They would be better off investing in a unicorn park. Reformist chiefs have at best a fleeting impact on their departments, their effort—what former Minneapolis Police chief Tony Bouza called his “futile attempt to reform the police”—erased within a year or two of their departure.

That’s changing. Right now, Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police. I doubt it will be as radical as it should be — they’ll probably just end up stripping them of some functions and putting them in the hands of more responsible organizations — but it’s a first step.

Now the council members are listening to a city that is wounded, angry, fed up with decades of violence disproportionately visited upon black and brown residents. Various private and public bodies – from First Avenue to Minneapolis Public Schools – have essentially cut ties with the police department. Council members are trying to figure out what their next move is.

Their discussion is starting to sound a little more like what groups like Reclaim the Block and the Black Visions Collective have been saying for years. On Tuesday, Fletcher published a lengthy Twitter thread saying the police department was “irredeemably beyond reform,” and a “protection racket” that slows down responses as political payback.

“Several of us on the council are working on finding out what it would take to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and start fresh with a community-oriented, nonviolent public safety and outreach capacity,” he wrote.

You can peruse that thread in its entirety here.

Please, please make it happen. Remove this malignant force from our cities. All the money spent on cops and their toys and the prison system that feeds on police action would be far more effective if spent on correcting the root source of much of our crime: poverty.

How to recognize a fool

Well there’s our problem. When wingnuts see a man with swastikas tattooed on his body, they think that’s antifa. Sorry, guy, that’s just the fa.

Although it should be said that the guy with the tats has seen the error of his ways, and has repudiated Naziism. You can’t judge a man by the mistakes of his past, I guess.

This, by the way, is Chris Loesch. Scraggly bearded, skimpy mustached Chris Loesch, who is so vain that he thinks curling a sparse few hairs with wax makes him look good.

That’s just an ongoing mistake. I’ll forgive him after he apologizes for his deeper crimes against humanity.

I learned today that my county has spent a million dollars on a “mine resistant vehicle”

Little ol’ Stevens County, Minnesota, population 10,000 (dropping to between 8 and 9 thousand when the students go home) has been busy militarizing their police force.

Right. We needed one of these things:

I vaguely recall reading a while back that there was a small coalition of a couple of rural counties to put together a mighty task force of super-soldiers to handle Big Crime; they may have made the news for an assault on a motel in Sauk Center. So maybe it “serves” a slightly larger population, where “serves” is a rather dubious verb.

I’m having a tough time imagining the circumstances in which local law would need a monster troop transport. A meth house catches fire, and the gangly, toothless desperate addicts start puking on the lawn? Another cat lady refuses to allow animal services to break up her 50 cat swarm? The corn revolts? Maybe they’re getting ready for a hypothetical “Red Dawn” scenario.

There is a petition to defund the Minneapolis police. Maybe we should all be looking closer to home, too, and asking what kind of ridiculous expenditures our local police are making. This is basically Mayberry — we’ve got some modern challenges, but nothing that requires a tank.