Watch party on 30 April!

Mark your calendars — the makers of We Believe in Dinosaurs are hosting a watch party of their movie on 30 April. What that means is…

  • Sign up for a seat at the link. You’ll be sent a Zoom URL so you can join a group of people online.

  • Get a copy of the movie on your streaming service. It’s $3.99 on Amazon.

  • On 30 April, before 7pm, make popcorn, log in to zoom, get your movie queued up.

  • Precisely at 7, hit play, watch the movie and listen to commentary from the makers.

  • You can, I presume, use the chat feature to make text comments of your own.

If you’re wondering what the movie is about, it’s a documentary about Answers in Genesis’s Ark Encounter. He’d rather nobody saw it, so you’ll get the bonus thrill of pissing off Ken Ham.

Do economists have even more hubris than physicists?

It’s hard to believe, but it’s a valid question. Tyler Cowen demonstrates his arrogance by questioning the validity of epidemiology, and he asks a series of stupid questions that show how little thought he has put into the subject.

a. As a class of scientists, how much are epidemiologists paid? Is good or bad news better for their salaries?

You know, there’s this thing called “Google” which economists apparently haven’t heard about yet. If you look it up, it turns out that epidemiologists work in public health — which should already tell you they don’t get absurdly rich at this job — and they make on average about $69K per year. I would ask what the point of the question is. Does their salary say something about the accuracy of their conclusions? Because, near as I can tell, salaries under capitalism have nothing to do with intellectual rigor.

The employment of epidemiologists is not contingent on whether their results are good news or bad news, but on the quality and accuracy of their work. Why? Is it different for economists?

b. How smart are they? What are their average GRE scores?

Holy shit. Cowen reveals his own ignorant biases there.

Epidemiology requires solid skills in statistics and biology, neither of which are exactly easy-peasy topics. Their GRE scores were good enough to get them into demanding academic programs. There aren’t any shortcuts.

c. Are they hired into thick, liquid academic and institutional markets? And how meritocratic are those markets?

“Thick, liquid”? That sounds like economics jargon. I have no idea what he’s talking about, and I won’t pretend to know, unlike some.

I can say that academia is only loosely meritocratic. There are a lot of built-in cultural biases that mean we get some incompetent people, and some brilliant people get excluded. The question ought to be whether epidemiology is more or less meritocratic than economics. The evidence here says “more”.

d. What is their overall track record on predictions, whether before or during this crisis?

Crack an epidemiology textbook. There are a lot of variables and a lot of case studies. Unlike in economics, failed models tend to be rapidly discarded.

e. On average, what is the political orientation of epidemiologists? And compared to other academics? Which social welfare function do they use when they make non-trivial recommendations?

Fuck me. Like most educated academics, they probably skew liberal and Democratic. Their recommendations favor maximizing public health and minimizing death and illness. That’s their job. Economists seem to be much more twisted by flaky ideological concerns.

He has more questions, but I’ve had enough. What a chuzzlewit.

Vote for the lesser of two dotards

I agree with Rebecca. She’s voting for Biden because he’s somewhat better than Trump, but does not think that imposes an obligation on others to do likewise.

I’m making no predictions on the outcome of the November election. I know people are apathetic about voting at all, and are going to skip the election because they cannot bear to vote for a man who sexually assaults women, and that might depress Democratic turnout. On the other hand, Trump is such an egregious incompetent that maybe we could nominate an old stick and it would win. On the next hand over, on the basis of incompetence Trump should have been crushed in the last election; right now he’s busy fanning the flames of fear and xenophobia, and his party is engaging in widespread voter suppression, so maybe he’ll win. The president is not the product of a process that optimizes for the best person to do the job at all.

I don’t know what other people will do. My plan is to unenthusiastically vote for whoever runs against Trump, to hope they make a smart choice for the VP, and to hope Biden is at best a one-term president.

Provided with toys and spider scouting for boys

I wanted to get out and get some exercise today, and also see how the local spider populations are doing. It was not a great outing — the horticulture garden is closed, as is Pomme de Terre park, so the usual haunts where I can go for a nice long walk and see lots of varieties of habitats were inaccessible. I finally ended up at East Side Park, a small central city park, mostly mowed grass, kiddie play structures, and an assortment of picnic tables. Not the best sort of place for wild spiders. Also, it’s been a bit neglected during the pandemic. I saw lots of broken glass (someone snuck out there with the cooking sherry, I noticed), so not entirely the best place for kids right now.

I needed the exercise. I found I’m out of shape from my winter’s languor. I was either in a half crouch, stooped over, or standing on tip-toe holding up my camera, in order to take these photos, and I was trembling after 10 minutes, so I’d just aim and take a dozen photos hoping one of them would be usable.

The park does have a big ol’ band shell, though, and I crawled around that for a while and found 4 different species without looking too hard. It’s a rather grungy structure right now, needing a good power wash, and I found lots of webs clotted with dead insects, especially mosquitos, draped all over the walls. Most of them looked ancient, probably from last summer.

But there were a few new spiders living there! I found 4 species on the side of this one building and you can see the photos on Patreon and also on Instagram and under the #InverteFest tag and the Spiders of Minnesota page. I’m not hiding them, I’m just trying to avoid sticking spiders in the faces of arachnophobes here.

One Theory to rule them all

I’ve been slow on the uptake on all these conspiracy theories. I was completely unaware of all the “5G causes COVID-19” goofiness until all the cell phone towers being set on fire stories hit the news, for instance. Now Orac informs me of another wacky tale. Did you know glyphosate causes COVID-19? How about glyphosate and vaping? Maybe glyphosate in biofuels? Glyphosate in automobile emissions? Glyphosate in jet fuel? Meet Stephanie Seneff.

I am a senior research scientist at MIT [in computer science]. I have devoted over 12 years to trying to understand the role of toxic chemicals in the deterioration of human health. I have been particularly focused on figuring out what has been driving the skyrocketing rates of autism in America and around the world. My research strongly suggests that glyphosate (the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup) is a primary cause of the autism epidemic in the United States. When the COVID-19 pandemic began its march across the world, I started to consider whether glyphosate might play a role.

If there is indeed a connection between glyphosate and COVID-19, understanding why and how they’re connected could play a critical role in combating this pandemic.

The only thing missing is a claim that glyphosate in contrails causes autism and COVID-19. Maybe it’s already there if I were to dig deeper, but I’m disinclined to dig even shallowly.

Personally, my theory, which is mine and that of every moderately sensible biologist on the planet, is that COVID-19 is caused by a moderately infectious virus that has nothing to do with glyphosate or jet fuel or rivers or I-5. But that’s just me. And most educated persons.

A patron hangout on Sunday

On Easter Sunday, at 3pm Central time, I’m inviting all my lovely supporters on Patreon to join me in a conversation on YouTube about whatever they want to talk about. I’ll come prepared with a few things I’d like to discuss, but if my guests want to go off in other directions, that’s going to be fine.

If there are any gaps in the conversation, I will be ready to talk about a few topics:

• I’m enthusastically getting ready to go spider hunting as the weather warms up. Last summer we explored a few narrow niches, this year I want to look more at spider diversity.

• I have tools and ways of exploring places for spiders, or other critters. We can talk about interesting environments here in Western Minnesota, or where others live.

• If you’re not into spiders, I’ll talk about my growing interest in photography, and show off a few of my favorite lenses. (Warning: amateur here.)

• There has been a curious shift in my thinking as I refocus my interests from lab-based developmental bio to field work on behavior & ecology & eco-devo. We can talk about philosophy of biology!

Also, most importantly, we can talk with those weirdos who support me, and they can share their interests and their expectations for the coming months. Probably not all are dreaming of arachnids.

If you’re a patron, and want to join in, you can find a zoom link on my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/pzmyers

or on our Discord server:

https://discord.gg/gQhq4q

It’ll be fun! It’ll be a distraction from the fact it’s not quite warm enough to go out scouting for spiders.