We’re doomed

Jesus fucking christ. Trump is claiming he has a natural ability to do science.

Here’s what really makes me mad, though. Look at that scene; there are 6 other people standing around listening to that buffoon, and at least one more behind the camera. Not a single one of them speaks up. No one corrects this deluded liar or raises an objection. This is the ongoing social cowardice that allows a dangerous fool to persist.

I would have said, “You know nothing about this subject. Your uncle’s competence in physics is not heritable and is irrelevant here. I guarantee you that none of the scientists you’ve talked to actually respect your knowledge of science.” That’s the least any of those people should have done.

Trump is hopeless, but the rest of you are required to correct him.

Schocked!

I was surprised to learn that the most famous person from Morris, Minnesota was a disgraced Republican politician, known for using campaign funds illegally to decorate his office. It’s a strange thing to have attached to the place where you live.

Now he has cemented his position as the biggest name from Morris by coming out as gay. He worked for years against LGBT rights, so that’s a bit surprising (or is it?).

There’s more! Now I learn that his family was a member of the Apostolic Church of Morris (we actually have two churches for that sect here in town, the other is the North Apostolic Church). Uh-oh. I know that church: fervent, hard-working Biblical literalists who have a rather oppressive influence on the rest of us. That’s where he started!

My story starts in the rural Midwest, as part of a family centered in a faith and its particular traditions. At the Apostolic Christian Church where we belonged, we were enthusiastic regulars. My parents did their best to raise me and my siblings according to biblical tenets as they understood them.

I wonder if they are aware of how their beliefs boomeranged against them in this one case. They’d probably attribute it to the fact that his family moved to “one of the less rigid branches” in his youth.

If they’re all going to die anyway, why not get it all over with at once?

This guy is seriously suggesting that we simply infect everyone with the coronavirus right now and get it over with, because drawing it all out is hurting his pwecious stock market.

Even if you play it with the sound off, he looks deranged. How dare we hurt his money?

I have a few objections to his plan. One is that part of the problem with a pandemic is that it overwhelms the capacity of clinics and hospitals to properly treat patients. His solution maximizes chaos and thereby maximizes the amount of death and suffering. These viruses mutate every year, like the flu, so slamming the population now doesn’t mean we won’t get a repeat next year. And finally, and least, if he thinks the stock market is hurting now, imagine what it would look like in a month in which 10 million Americans died and far more are flattened with illness and grief.

That bozo is Rick Santelli, a business editor for CNBC. He’s not a doctor. He is evidence that a business degree tends to inflate the ego but not the knowledge of its recipients.

Common sense about spiders

Hey, this is the same thing I tell everyone: spiders are mostly harmless, and they’re there whether you like them or not.

Spiders are not out to get you and actually prefer to avoid humans; we are much more dangerous to them than vice versa. Bites from spiders are extremely rare. Although there are a few medically important species like widow spiders and recluses, even their bites are uncommon and rarely cause serious issues.

If you truly can’t stand that spider in your house, apartment, garage, or wherever, instead of smashing it, try to capture it and release it outside. It’ll find somewhere else to go, and both parties will be happier with the outcome.

But if you can stomach it, it’s OK to have spiders in your home. In fact, it’s normal. And frankly, even if you don’t see them, they’ll still be there. So consider a live-and-let-live approach to the next spider you encounter.

The author of that article is also one of the authors of a paper I’m citing in something I’m working on now, in which he and colleagues did a thorough, room by room search for all arthropods in houses in a North Carolina region. One of their observations is that 100% of the homes had Theridiidae (common house spiders, like the Parasteatoda I’m studying) living in them. They’re kind of unavoidable. In my own much more limited survey (we only examined garages and sheds, and only arachnids, here in the harsher environment of Minnesota), we saw some similar results: almost all garages housed spiders. The one exception was eerily meticulous, everything stored away in tidy boxes, and no cobwebs or even dust. There are people who dust their garages! Unless you are that thorough, though, they’re there. And even if you are, they’ll sneak in — later that summer, we did find a few spiders in a shed on that same property. They looked terrified. Don’t worry, I didn’t rat out that they were there.

(Note: we were pretty strict about confidentiality, all locations are encoded in a file separate from the data on spider populations. You’d have to go through two sets of paper records matching addresses with spider counts to pin an identity on the houses with the most, or least, spiders.)

By the way, I have in mind proposing a workshop to Skepticon this year, an effort to counter arachnophobia. What I was thinking is a series of staged tables, where the beginning is something like 1) coloring pages of spider drawings, with explanations of anatomy; 2) a table of photos (maybe in trading card format?) of real spiders; 3) some small, caged spiders where we could observe feeding and courtship; and 4) a few harmless spiders, like Pholcidae, where people could actually let them clamber around their hands. Participants could ease in gradually and stop where ever they feel comfortable, and see people actually interact harmlessly with spiders.

What do you think? Would you actually participate in such a thing, if you had the opportunity? What number would you stop at?

I have irked the Bernie Bros

It was inevitable, I guess. Because I said that the Democratic field has narrowed to a couple of old white men, and that all candidates are flawed, the Bernie Bros have decided that I am anti-Semitic. It doesn’t matter that I voted for the guy, or that I think Biden is far worse, just the fact that I question his perfection means I must hate the Jews.

I can’t even.

It’s objectively true that they’re not perfect. All of the remaining candidates are too freakin’ old. This is a worry, because we don’t have a very deep bench that will inevitably be truncated by death. Bernie Bros should definitely be concerned, because I don’t see any sign that Sanders has established any kind of plan for a succession. When he dies (is it anti-Semitic to point that out?), will his movement die with him? All signs say yes. This is another of those systemic problems in the political system that won’t be addressed by the current crop of candidates. I sure hope the next generation of Democratic Socialists isn’t coming from the ranks of the Bernie Bros.

It’s delusional to pretend all of the candidates aren’t obviously flawed. Think back to months ago when we had a milling mob of potential candidates. Every one had strengths and weaknesses, and the process, in our perfect world, was supposed to filter them to select the very best. And who did we end up with? Biden. This is no meritocracy, since we ended up with one of the weakest, least inspiring candidates leading the field. If we selected our choice by a process that picked the most competent, smartest, strongest person, Elizabeth Warren would be the last person standing, no question. Instead, I’m probably going to have to cast a ballot for a blithering ninny in the pocket of the financial industry.

So don’t try to tell me I have to worship the products of this broken system. I’m not gonna.

Accounting. I hate accounting.

Well, we got an invoice from our lawyer. He recommends a monthly payment of $15,000.

I scraped up $500 from that lovely Patreon account. I don’t think he’s planning to sic bounty hunters on us, as long as we can keep up a steady stream of money heading his direction, even if that amount is economically impossible. Don’t forget our GoFundMe!

My creaky bones have reached peak agony after my fall the other day, so I can look forward to repair and relief soon. I hope. It sure would be nice to sleep through the night without sporadic spasms again.

In happier news, tomorrow is my research day, I’m planning to seal myself up in the lab and catch up with my spiders. Big feeding time! Lots of lab cleanup! Temperatures have drifted above freezing lately, the snow is receding, so I’m also eagerly anticipating the return of numerous arthropods to the external environment. Maybe it’s premature with thick layers of snow still on the ground, but I think I detect a faint glimmer of spring. Maybe.

Oy. $15K/month. That’ll take the wind out of your sails.

Random thoughts about the course of this election

Just what I think, nothing more.

  • It’s alright to detest any of the candidates — Bloomberg was a rich goblin, go ahead and say so. I like Warren, but if you don’t, I’m not going to try and change your opinion. Fire away with your dissent.
  • All of the candidates, current and past, are deeply flawed. If you’re trying to argue that your favored candidate is a saint who will make every segment of the electorate happy and win in a landslide, you are delusional. Own their shortcomings, work to reduce them, preferably by getting the candidate himself to admit to them.
  • We’re not going to get a revolution in January, even if your preferred candidate gets into office. Face the facts: this is going to take a long struggle over decades. Longer with Biden than Sanders, I think, but Biden is the cautious choice that a surprising (to me) lot of people favor.
  • One of the reasons it’s going to take a long time is that changing figureheads doesn’t change the direction of the ship. We’ve got to work on informing the electorate. You’re going to have to win over 330 million people, not just the one at the top. The US has systemic issues that aren’t going to disappear in a single election.
  • To accomplish change, you’ll need to get along with the supporters of the other Democratic candidate, win or lose. There’s a lot of bridge-burning going on. Stop it.
  • That doesn’t mean you stop criticizing the other guy, or your guy. He’s your representative, not your boss. Let them know what needs to change in their approach.
  • Disappointingly, as the field has narrowed, it’s obvious that we’re not going to get a woman or person of color in the oval office. Don’t forget all the other elected positions that we need to fill! Fight to build a coalition that supports your goals, and that reflects the diversity we need.
  • The enemy is Donald Trump and the whole damned Republican party. Fight them with the army you’ve got, not the one you wish you had.

Now it’s getting personal

I just learned that a woman acquaintance I knew well in high school has lost her husband to COVID-19. It’s odd how the personal connection snaps it all into focus so clearly. I’ve got a lot of connections to people in the Pacific Northwest, where there seems to be a lot of activity by this virus, so I expect to get more sad news in the future.