Even tiny brains are complicated

This is impressive: scientists have scanned and imaged every neuron and every connection in a fly brain

. The data has been made freely available, and you can download the whole dataset, if you have 12TB of storage available.

Human brains have about a million times more neurons than a fly brain, and note also that this is morphological, rather than biochemical data, which is going to be even more complex. Adjust your expectations for mind uploading accordingly.

It wasn’t Cthulhu after all

There was this mysterious large black sarcophagus found in Egypt, and for a while, there were wild rumors of evil curses and imprisoned demons and HORRIBLE FATES AWAIT ALL WHO OPEN IT. Sadly, the only things in it were three skeletons and lots of reeking sewage that had seeped in.

Addressing media fears that disturbing the tomb could trigger an implacable Pharaoh’s curse, Mr Waziri declared: “We’ve opened it and, thank God, the world has not fallen into darkness.

“I was the first to put my whole head inside the sarcophagus… and here I stand before you … I am fine.”

Dang. I’d almost been hoping for an apocalypse that would put us out of our misery.

Despite that, the site has now been cleared of people amid fears the sarcophagus could release lethal toxic fumes, Egypt’s state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram says.

So, you’re saying, there’s still hope?

I think this is satire, probably

At least, I wish it were satire. Alexandra Petri describes the role of senators.

A senator, as you know, is someone empowered by the Constitution to go on cable news and state opinions. A senator can do nothing to restrain the executive branch. In the system of checks and balances designed by the Founding Fathers, the Senate is neither.

The Senate is an appendix, a vestigial organ whose function no one can determine, so it just sits there and sometimes rumbles ominously after meals. Aside from its traditional role of acting as a rubber-stamp for judicial appointees, it is a kind of cheery bobblehead designed by the Constitution to stare at what the Executive is doing and offer tacit approval. It is decorative, not functional — like a pocket square, or a succulent in a dentist’s waiting room, or the “Share On Facebook” button at the bottom of an article.

It might be a little too accurate, since it perfectly describes the behavior of all those Republican senators who go on TV to deplore the president and mewl a little bit and then do nothing to stop him. Jeff Flake? John McCain? Susan Collins? All those pseudo-mavericks of the right?

Jewdy-ized and homosexual-ized?

What does one wear to a decapitation party? Rick Wiles says we’re going to have one by this weekend.

“America, you’ve been homosexualized. You’ve been Jewdy-ized. I’m just telling it how it is,” Wiles told viewers. “She was spewing out, last night, calls for revolution. She was telling the left, ‘Take a deep breath, we’re at the moment, it’s coming, we’re almost there, we’re going to remove him from the White House.’ We’re about 72 hours — possibly 72 hours — from a coup.

“Be prepared that you’re going to turn on the television and see helicopters hovering over the roof of the White House with men clad in black rappelling down ropes, entering into the White House. Be prepared for a shoot out in the White House as Secret Service agents shoot commandos coming in to arrest President Trump.”

But Wiles wasn’t finished with his hysterical anti-semitism and homophobia.

“That is how close we are to a revolution. Be prepared for a mob — a leftist mob — to tear down the gates, the fence at the White House and to go into the White House and to drag him out with his family and decapitate them on the lawn of the White House,” he said.

In case you’re wondering who “she” is, the leader of the revolution, the one who is going to chop off the president’s head, it’s Rachel Maddow. I knew I liked her.

However, once again, the Left has shown its inability to get their act together. I didn’t get any notice of this glorious uprising. Was it in the same envelope with my check from George Soros? ’cause that’s also late.

Cats did not evolve 80 million years ago

I mined the rich vein of ignorance and inanity that is Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation, and only got as far as one page before I was stunned into silence. He made a claim about cat evolution that even my evil cat found repugnant.

You know the Felidae are a fairly recent clade, appearing in the late Miocene, right?

Script below the field if you’d rather not watch video.

[Read more…]

So, so tired of Christian Atheists

Here we go again, with more weird Christian bias from atheists.

You know, the first sentence is just fine — please do appreciated the culture and history of a place. Personally, I’m not at all fond of church bells, because I grew up near a church that insisted on playing those obnoxious electronic chimes every 15 minutes, and here in Morris some jerk insisted likewise that the local cemetery play ear-splitting hymns on their electronic carillon all day long (fortunately, no longer). It might be a matter of frequency, too, since the Catholic church 3 blocks away rings their bells every Sunday before mass, and that’s not a problem at all.

Dawkins begins to go off the rails with the second sentence. Why is he comparing church bells to “Allahu Akhbar”? 1) A better comparison would be with the adhan, or call to prayer, of an Islamic mosque. It’s not “aggressive-sounding” at all. It would drive me nuts if I had to hear it every day, but it’s analogous in every way to his church bells. 2) “Allahu Akhbar” just means “God is great”, a phrase you’ll hear all the time in Christian churches. It is awfully arrogant, but it’s exactly the same crap that goes on in the grand medieval building behind Dawkins. Just a different language and a different culture.

Which is why the third sentence is so disingenuously stupid. Exactly, Richard, it’s a matter of your cultural upbringing. What else would it be? This is nothing but a phony call-out to anti-Islamic sentiment.

But wait, his supporters say. He’s Just Asking a Question. Maybe he’s simply acknowledging the varieties of human experience and openly admitting that he has a preference shaped by his history? Read charitably, maybe he’s noting the similarities of these different cultures.

Nice try. Nope. He followed up with this:

“Allahu Akhbar” is anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a suicide bomb goes off…fine. Relevance? Do you really think the muezzin is urging all listeners to yank the cord on a suicide vest? It’s a call to prayer. Just like the ringing bells of a cathedral. Shall we make the point that the bells of Winchester cathedral are anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a priest yanks down the pants of a little boy? That “Onward Christian Soldiers” isn’t exactly about peace and love? Is it beautiful when Christian America thinks it would a great idea to nuke Mecca?

Talk show host Pat Campbell for WFLA-AM in Orlando, Florida asked the Colorado Republican Congressman Tom TancredoWikipedia’s W.svg how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons; he responded, “Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.” “You’re talking about bombing Mecca,” Campbell said. “Yeah,” Tancredo responded. The congressman later said he was “just throwing out some ideas” and that an “ultimate threat” might have to be met with an “ultimate response.” “What is near and dear to them? They’re willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?” the representative asked, his spokesman stressing he was only speaking hypothetically.

Wow. That sounds just like a Sam Harris hypothetical.

It’s really simply bigotry when you condemn followers of one faith for doing exactly what followers of another faith do, and equate going to a mosque to pray with murder.

Science confirms the obvious!

Did you know that YouTube comment sections are a cesspool? And that women get harassed more than men? It’s been checked out.

I have a small-time YouTube channel and don’t get all that many comments, but I can tell you that I’m not enjoying the discourse. I’ve activated the YouTube comment filter, which lets a lot slide through, but also holds a lot of crap back for approval…and I’ve looked through those and am usually disgusted. I’ve also been quick on the trigger to ban people, but the way YouTube works, they can just bounce back instantly with a new pseudonym.

I doubt that YouTube will ever do anything to fix the garbage. Hey, you wanna whine about civility? Stop complaining about leftists repudiating Nazis, and pay more attention to trolls on social media.

Trump is just the tool. We’re the ones who betrayed America.

Trump is a bad man, corrupt and immoral. But putting the focus solely on his action in Finland is misleading. Russian meddling might have given him a slight boost in the last election, but really…lots of Americans voted for him. The Republican party is supporting him. All the howling aimed at one man is a distraction from the long term problem.

Why were Americans susceptible to Russian propaganda? Why do they vote for a criminal political party? Because for decades we’ve been demolishing our infrastructure, undermining unions, allowing big money to corrupt the political process, setting our standards for news media low, fostering greater income inequality, allowing racism and misogyny to run amuck, wrecking the educational system, and investing in the military rather than our people. It should be no surprise that people distrust and are resentful of The System, and are willing to endorse radicals who offer nothing but the promise to tear it all down and agree with the worst of our impulses.

Imagine a fantasy resolution: the Trump regime is thrown down, all of his appointees are thrown out and imprisoned, and the man himself is shipped off to the Hague and locked away for the rest of his life (that’s fantasy, it’s not going to happen). What next? What will change to prevent the next demagogue from taking over? What about the thousands of Republican party apparatchiks and the tens of millions of citizens who voted for them? We don’t need one guy stopped, we need the system changed.

Well, that makes a mess of my day

Hey! Today is the day I pick up my wife from the airport! It’s only been 6 weeks apart. She’s probably mostly distraught about having to leave her grandchild for…me.

But then, as I was packing up to leave, she informs me that her flight has been delayed about 2 hours, she had to rebook her connecting flight, and she’s getting in 5 hours later than expected. I’m ready and eager to set off to the Twin Cities, but I guess not. Think I’ll go clean the cat box again.