As a person who mostly skipped any engagement with comic books in the 80s and 90s (my sons got into them a bit during that period), this short video seems to perfectly encapsulate my experience with them. Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane are shown creating a new superhero character while Stan Lee kibitzes. The amazing thing is how Lee zeroes in on the deficiencies of their creation — all flash and glitz, no story and no character — and closes with words of prophecy.
“The kids like it!”
After our long, long drive yesterday, I thought this would be a good day to rest and recover. I forgot that I’d brought Mary home. She was out in the garage at 7:30 fueling and oiling the lawn mower, eager to get to work cutting grass. I was not. I have more sedate plans.
I was up at 6 tinkering with computers. I’ve mentioned before that my Mac is on its last legs, with keys falling out and mysterious errors cropping up now and then, but the price of replacing it was prohibitive, especially since my disposable income, which wasn’t much to begin with, is flowing outwards to deal with legal debt. After a few days in my daughter’s Reality Distortion Field, in which she pointed out that I could get a high-end Linux machine for a thousand bucks less than my Mac upgrade, I decided to tinker. I installed the free Pop!_OS on an old Windows machine that I found intolerable — Windows is an ugly abomination — and brought it back to life. I’m going to work with it for a while to see if my old brain can readjust itself to use Unix instead of the MacOS, which I hate to say has become increasingly ugly over the years. I despise iTunes almost as much as I do Windows.
I’m going to spend some time in the lab this morning giving loving attention to my spiders, who have been neglected now for almost a week. Baby want a snackums? I have some nice flies for you.
I will obey my mistress after the spiders are made content. She has assigned me the task of cleaning out and sterilizing the car we spent 14 hours in yesterday. This may require fire.
I’ve got this working Raspberry Pi with a NOIR camera that we had set up to take pictures, and I’ve got this spider cage here at home, and now I have to figure out how to mount the camera above it at a reasonable distance that encompasses the whole field of view with reasonable resolution. Alternatively, I may have to build a dedicated cage of smaller size that will compromised between freedom of movement for the spider and adequate field dimensions for this camera. I’m thinking ring stands, tripods, hot glue, and popsicle sticks, because I’m focused on cheap and easy.
Mary has been looking at this bachelor pad I’ve been occupying with a glint in her eye. Who knows what she’ll order me to do next?
I’ve got some weekend cooking to do. I’ve been frustrated by the lack of garam masala in Morris, so I’d ordered a bunch of it online. Yes, I have a 5 lb bag of garam masala now, in case anyone needs to borrow a cup of it. I hope Mary likes curry.
I’m back! We drove home from Colorado today, and now I’m all worn out.
You know, the grandparenting thing is great because you don’t have all the responsibilities of a parent, but the bad part is that it breaks your heart to leave, and Mom & Dad won’t let you smuggle the baby home in your luggage.
Would departments where you sit and observe spiders, or other non-humans, also count?
A reader informed me that I was mentioned in a British magazine, and sent me a scan of the relevant bit. It’s not so much my brief mention that interested me, as that it’s another example of the Panspermia Mafia in action. It’s an article about a recently elected Conservative MP, Jamie Wallis, who has a science degree…or does he?
Dominic Cummings has bemoaned the fact that many MPs “did degrees such as English, history, and PPE. They operate with…little maths or science.” Thankfully, Dr Jamie Wallis, the new Conservative MP for Bridgend, is that rarest of things: an MP with not just a science degree, but a PhD in “astrobiology” to boot.
Where it gets interesting is that he obtained a PhD from, I presume, Cardiff University, which was NC Wickramasinghe’s former affiliation, although he has since ensconced himself at the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology. There is reason to doubt that Wallis actually did the caliber of work we expect in a PhD thesis.
Completing a PhD while co-directing several companies is quite an achievement. Wallis’s thesis, “Evidence of Panspermia: From Astronomy to Meteorites”, is devoted to the niche and widely rejected theories of his supervisor, one NC Wickramasinghe. Notoriously, Wickramasinghe maintains not only that life on earth arrived on comets, but that organisms continue to regularly arrive by this method. (Just last week, he wrote to the Lancet helpfully suggesting the novel coronavirus COVID-19 arrived in China from space.)
Why does the Lancet, or any respectable journal, continue to publish crank letters from Wickramasinghe? But OK, I think it’s established that Wallis’s degree was somehow earned under the supervision of a well-known fringe kook, and that it’s questionable how much work he actually invested in the project, which sounds like some kind of review involving no independent research.
But why do I call this the Panspermia Mafia? They use their connections to promote a small family of fellow travelers.
Appropriately, given that the theory of cosmic panspermia is about origins, involvement with Wickramasinghe seems to be a Wallis family affair. A typical thesis might produce several publications. Wallis Jnr’s thesis lists an astonishing 21 with him as an author — mostly not in peer-reviewed journals — 16 of which include his dad in the author list. And of the eight publications that supposedly have been peer-reviewed, six are in the highly dubious Journal of Cosmology. Wickramasinghe is the “executive editor” for astrobiology for the journal, described by US scientist PZ Myers as the “ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics”.
Yeah, that’s about it — it’s so inbred that it relies on the one guy who has a name and connections but very little credibility, Wickramasinghe, to promote the members of his cabal in a roster of fake journals. This article didn’t examine them in detail, but I suspect that all 21 of the articles are rehashed, recycled, barely rewritten examples of frantic self-plagiarism. To say you got a degree with Wickramasinghe is the British equivalent of saying you’re a colleague of Kent Hovind.
Isn’t it nice that he provides a pipeline for Conservatives to claim they have the authority of science? Just in case you’re wondering, no, they don’t.
Norma McCorvey, who fought for the right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade, and then flipped to crusade against abortion under the influence of evangelicals, flipped again before her death — she was bought and paid for by the Religious Right.
In the final third of director Nick Sweeney’s 79-minute documentary, featuring many end-of-life reflections from McCorvey—who grew up queer, poor, and was sexually abused by a family member her mother sent her to live with after leaving reform school—the former Jane Roe admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was “all an act.”
“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.” “Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. “Well,” says McCorvey, “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.”
The two jackhole Christians who ran the scam are both horrified, but split: one because the end justifies the means, the other because he actually has some moral principles.
Reverend Schenck, the much more reasonable of the two evangelical leaders featured in the film, also watches the confession and is taken aback. But he’s not surprised, and easily corroborates, saying, “I had never heard her say anything like this… But I knew what we were doing. And there were times when I was sure she knew. And I wondered, Is she playing us? What I didn’t have the guts to say was, because I know damn well we’re playing her.” Reverend Schenck admits that McCorvey was “a target,” a “needy” person in need of love and protection, and that “as clergy,” people like Schenck and Benham were “used to those personalities” and thus easily able to exploit her weaknesses. He also confirms that she was “coached on what to say” in her anti-abortion speeches. Benham denies McCorvey was paid; Schenck insists she was, saying that “at a few points, she was actually on the payroll, as it were.” AKA Jane Roe finds documents disclosing at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the anti-abortion movement to McCorvey.
Reverend Benham then blurts out, “Yeah, but she chose to be used. That’s called work. That’s what you’re paid to be doing!” Schenck’s thinking is quite different: “For Christians like me, there is no more important or authoritative voice than Jesus,” he explains. “And he said, ‘What does it profit in the end if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ When you do what we did to Norma, you lose your soul.”
In fact, Reverend Schenck underlines his own conversion, which took place in the last decade: “I still identify as an evangelical, but I like to think of myself as lovingly critical of my community. I guess in some ways I’d like to use whatever years I have remaining to undo the damage that I did and that many movement leaders did on the pro-life side. I used to think that Roe v. Wade would never be overturned. I think Roe v. Wade could be overturned now. And I think the result of that would be chaos and pain. And to impose that kind of crisis on a woman is unthinkable.”
Fortunately, the pro-choice cause does not rely on the bought testimony of individuals, but on the autonomy of all women.
Spokane has had about 30 COVID-19 deaths, so a memorial was put together at the city hall, a Christian memorial with a collection of crosses. I’m not so keen on that — do the non-Christians not count? — but OK, it’s harmless and generous and acknowledges the people who died, even if it is a bit presumptuous. I wouldn’t be upset about it at all.
Then someone trashed it. We know who, because they took credit for it. It was the Proud Boys who were quite proud to demolish a memorial, and who have been upset with anyone who tries to protect themselves from the virus.
In another video posted on Facebook, Proud Boys members and other protesters are seen mocking and harassing Robinson as he stands in front of the memorial. He repeatedly asks them to step away and respect his social distance.
The video includes profanity.
“This is what Proud Boys do,” Robinson is heard saying in the video.
One of the Proud Boys members, who identifies himself as “Milkshake,” said he came to the protest from western Washington. He and other protesters repeatedly tell Robinson in the video to remove his mask.
Oh, yeah, personal liberty for us, but not for you!
Also at the demonstration: far-right Christian fanatic and Spokane representative Matt Shea. We had a lot of unkind stereotypes about the inhabitants of the eastern side of the state when I was growing up, and Shea personifies all of them, cranked up to 11.
I want to shop here now.
Karen gets upset that a store won't let her shop without a protective facemask. She then tried to pretend like she's the victim, despite the store giving her options. This is pure arrogance. https://t.co/qgFLhKjgxd #COVIDIDIOTS #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/OXV4EQLOgD
— Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) May 17, 2020
A problematic customer walks up to a store with a clearly marked policy that you must wear a mask, and everyone cheerfully informs her of everything they can do to help her: they can get her whatever she wants (she refuses, she claims she needs “personal things”, which is silly since she has to inform the store about what she’s buying when she checks out), that they can take her credit card and pay for it for her (she objects that they’d get her financial info, which they do every time she swipes the card herself anyway), yet she just generally makes an ass of herself…and the staff are as obliging as they can be. Stores should use this as a training video for how to deal with a bad customer.
The woman’s name is Shelley Lewis, and she suffers from a severe case of entitled dumbassery.
Heavy.com catalogued the Twitter background checks that began popping up Sunday about Lewis, who seems from her Facebook presence to be a real prize.
Among the topics of conversation are some conspiracy crazy greatest hits, including 5G towers, 9/11, fake moon landings, and the Earth is flat. And, as Twitter quickly found, Lewis is loud and proud in her belief system, having appeared on this Jubilee Media discussion on YouTube, arguing with scientists about whether Earth is flat.
“I live in Dana Point,” she says at one point in this video. “We see too far… I can see San Clemente Island, which is 60 miles away.” She also contends that as ships disappear she can still see them with a zoom lens.
Lewis was a speaker at the Flat Earth International Conference last year, and in her bio it states, “She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she entertained hopes of becoming an AstroNOT.” It further says she was discharged from the military after being diagnosed with lupus, and she now treats the condition with a vegan lifestyle and alternative medicine.
The problem with America is that we’ve allowed this kind of inanity to flourish unchecked, to the point where Entitle Dumbassery can run for president and win.
Trump claims to be taking hydroxychloroquine.
President Trump told reporters Monday that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine for about a week and a half and that the White House physician knows he is taking the anti-malaria drug despite the fact that he continues to test negative for the coronavirus.
Clinical trials, academic research and scientific analysis indicate that the danger of the drug is a significantly increased risk of death for certain patients, particularly those with heart problems. Trump dismissed those concerns, saying he has heard about the drug’s benefits from doctors and others he has spoken with.
You have to be closely monitored if you take this dangerous drug — there are all kinds of potential side effects. So we know he’s lying his ass off.
It’s also a lie that can get other people killed, if they believe him and try to emulate him.
On the other hand if he’s not lying, I hope he decides to quadruple his dose. Please.
We put it together today, me and my nerdy daughter and my very excited granddaughter, who had to inspect each of the components.
She had to teach me a little (very little) Python, but we got it working with a little script to take time lapse images. That’s the camera at the top, and the two eyeballs are IR LEDs. The plan is to do a test run when I get back and see if we can record night-time spider activity with it. The spiders are very sneaky, and when I see them during the day they’re usually lounging about, doing little unless some prey falls into their web, but every morning I see the cages more densely matted with cobwebs, so it would be nice to watch them at work.
The images aren’t bad for such a minuscule lens. The test will be to see if I can get enough depth of field to get a sense of their 3-dimensional construction methods.
(If you’re curious, that’s the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 4GB Starter Kit and the UNIROI Raspberry Pi Camera Module.)
