Oh no! The libs castrated the cookies!

I am totally confused now. Tammy Bruce is on Fox News with Tucker Carlson arguing that gingerbread cookies are obviously male.

So, uh…they have penises? Or Y chromosomes? Or higher testosterone levels? Those are the usual criteria these loons use to argue for the inviolability and absolute rigidity of the male/female binary. Cookies don’t have any of those.

Are they finally admitting that gender is a social construct, that in the absence of biological markers they get to dictate by convention what sex a piece of baked dough is?

Also, Tucker Carlson has been spiritually neutered. But we all already knew that.

Spiders in Space

Oh, the nerdity of it all. I just read about a discussion of how spider-aliens would survive in space. This is my kind of thought-experiment!

In my stellar empire, the sapient life of the home world are arachnids. Due to an oxygen-heavy world with certain evolutionary characteristics, spider-like beings developed intelligence and formed society, leading them (eventually) to start looking toward the stars. This led to the development of space suits for the pioneering arachnid astronauts.

What would these look like? How would space suits be differently designed to support arachnids?

Let us posit that the arachnids are roughly 4 feet from “spinneret” to fangs. Their legs are large enough to support them (I don’t know what that is). They’re light compared to us (maybe 25 pounds at the heaviest – bear with me on the whole square cube law deal). They have roughly equivalent technology levels to ourselves at the time of our first missions into the stars.

Just by coincidence, I’ve been reading up on spider physiology recently, so this piqued my interest. Most of the answers in that thread are pretty good.

I’d first have to state a caveat: multi-legged alien beings evolving on a distant planet will not be spiders. It’s unfair to compare limitations and abilities that they have to those of terrestrial spiders — they aren’t related! Just blowing up an Earth spider to 1.2 meters long is not a valid comparison. But OK, let’s play a game and imagine an alien “spider” that evolved from an ancestor living in a similar niche to that of our spiders. Traits that are probably relevant are:

  • Obligate carnivory. It’s a predator with a need for live food. Unless there’s a way to store frozen bug juice shakes that this species will willingly eat, this sounds like a big problem — space-faring “spiders” are going to have to bring along along bug ranches to maintain livestock. And food for said livestock. Forget the spacesuits, there are going to be some demanding requirements for life support on space ships.
  • External digestion. Why, you might ask, would they need live food? Spiders inject enzymes into their prey which break down the guts of the animal into a liquid soup that they can slurp up. The food is both the container and the meal. “Spider” Tang is going to be a tough recipe.
  • Ambush predator. This has pluses and minuses: most spiders have notably lower metabolic rates than other poikilotherms, about 70% of what is expected in animals of equivalent size. So, lower oxygen consumption — that’s great for spacecraft/spacesuit design. On the other hand, they can have extreme surges in activity, for instance, when prey is captured. Oxygen consumption is going to be somewhat unpredictable.
  • Pulmonary system. The linked discussion mentions how spiders often have a dual respiration: they have two or four book lungs in the ventral abdomen, but also many of them have a trachaeal system, an array of small tubes that penetrate the cuticle and permit atmospheric gases to flow in to the tissues. This one might not be a problem, though: trachaeal systems are less and less effective the larger the animal, and they rely more on discrete respiratory organs, like lungs, as they grow to a larger size. At 1.2 meters long, these alien “spiders” are almost certainly going to have “lungs” and “nostrils” — it’s just that if they’re like our spiders, they won’t be on the face, but low on the abdomen.
  • Respiratory pigments. This is where it becomes obvious that you can’t simply extrapolate from Earth spiders to space “spiders”. Our spiders use hemocyanin to carry oxygen, which has a significantly lower O2 carrying capacity than our hemoglobin. You’d think along the way to evolving larger size and metabolically demanding intelligence they’d have to be using a more efficient respiratory pigment…although blue-green blood is kind of cool.
  • Sensory apparatus. Look closely at a spider sometime: they are covered with hairs. These aren’t dead insulators like our hairs, either, but are all invested with nerves for mechanical and chemical sensory functions. Putting them in a suit that limits them to only visual input is going to be like dumping them into a sensory deprivation tank.
  • Motility. There is a suggestion that they could use “an enclosed pod that the spider can sit inside with legs folded and have mechanical arms/legs that support the pod and allow it to walk around.” Maybe. But that throws away many of the virtues of a space-walking “spider”. They are incredibly agile, are accustomed to maneuvering in 3 dimensions, and are beautifully adept at manipulating objects in their environment. Watch one wrap a prey item in a web — they are weaving with all 8 legs simultaneously, flipping it around and dancing about delicately. It would be a shame to limit that by stuffing the “spider” astronaut in a barrel and making it manipulate its environment with a few waldos.

It’s a fun exercise, but if we ever find such a creature I suspect it will have less similarity to our spiders than we humans do to an acorn worm, so much of the speculation is moot.

Real spiders are more interesting. As I said, I’ve been reading up on spider physiology, so here’s a diagram of the main elements of the spider circulatory system (“h” marks the heart, on the dorsal side of the abdomen.)

That’s the cartoon version — here’s a resin cast of the full circulatory network of the opisthosoma of Cupiennius. It blows me away that they were able to do this — Cupiennius is fairly large as spiders go, but still pretty tiny.

Even more impressively, people have measured the blood pressure in the spider circulatory system — no, not with an itty-bitty sphygmomanometer. I suspect they used optical methods to visualize pressure changes, but that’s a paper I haven’t tracked down yet.

Systole and diastole are still valid concepts in a spider. In case you were interested, their hearts beat at a rate of 9 to 125 beats per minute. That’s quite a range, but as I mentioned above, one of the challenges is a highly variable metabolic rate.

Ultimately, though, if you’re going to design an SF “spider”-like alien, you shouldn’t be constrained by the form and physiology of terrestrial spiders. A homeothermic creature with an endoskeleton, but with a bunch of limbs and eyes and a sclerotized cuticle, and maybe some funky spiky complex mouthparts, is going to look enough like a spider to Zapp Brannigan that that’s what he’s going to call it anyway.

Schmitz A (2016) Respiration in spiders (Araneae). Journal of Comparative Physiology B 186(4):403–415.

Wirkner CS, Huckstorf K (2013) The Circulatory System of Spiders. In: Nentwig W. (eds) Spider Ecophysiology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

The panopticon is looking more appealing

One of the advantages of living in a tiny rural town is that I really don’t worry much about having packages stolen off my porch — I did once have a package fail to show up on time, and we wondered what had happened to it. It turned out that a new deliveryperson had put it on our front step — we almost never use our front door, preferring the door that opens up to the driveway and has a kind of mud room (do houses in other parts of the country have mud rooms?), so we just didn’t see it. It sat there in plain sight to anyone passing by on College Avenue for about a month, getting rained on. You could have stolen it and we wouldn’t have even noticed.

I understand it’s a bigger problem in the suburbs of big cities, and can see how it would be infuriating, especially around this time of year. This one guy took an extreme approach to handling it, though, building a combination glitter bomb/stink bomb with a GPS and multiple recording cameras to catch people in the act of theft.

I guess I’m supposed to be impressed with the elaborate, over-engineered contraption, but what struck me most was the thieves — these were ordinary people who would just casually rob others with no qualms at all. Multiple people. Not organized rings of criminals, just passers-by who would steal from their neighbors without regret, people with nice cars and nice homes. What the fuck is wrong with you? Didn’t your mothers teach you anything?

Do not ever fake your data

That’s a rather fundamental lesson for scientists: do not take shortcuts with the data. It completely corrupts all your conclusions, makes your entire history suspect, and will get you fired.

A tenured biology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was fired Friday, a rare punishment that essentially means a career death sentence in higher education and that has happened only once before at the state’s flagship public university.

Fei Wang, an associate professor of cell and molecular biology, was terminated following a special meeting of university trustees Friday, concluding a yearslong review of his work. Board members determined that Wang had fabricated and falsified scientific data in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

You will also get zero sympathy from your colleagues.

“Prof. Wang is without question a highly intelligent, likable, and charismatic scientist,” trustees wrote in its report, released Friday. “However, the record supporting his fabrication of data and falsification of laboratory results, his submission of mouse cells rather than human cells in his data, his failure to mentor and supervise his students is overwhelming and beyond unacceptable. Prof. Wang’s misconduct has already required the university to return substantial sums of research funds to the federal government.”

He made them return grant money? He just lost any friends he might have had in the administration.

The latest numbers from Dan Phelps

The latest numbers for attendance for the Ark Park are in, and as one might expect, show a steady decline.

This year in November 2018 the Ark Encounter sold 40,193 tickets.
Last year, November 2017, the Ark Encounter sold 51,914 tickets.

About -20% from the previous year, eh?

A nightmare for Ken Ham, but it is entirely possible that hoards of 4 year olds are overwhelming the place, brought by their lifetime member parents or guardians.

I can’t wait to see what winter months bring. It might be financially wise to close the place for January and February, but Ken Ham can’t lose face by doing such a thing.

Here are all previous numbers since the safety tax began, for your convenience.

2017:

July: 142,626 (Safety Fee amount: $71,313.00)
August: 106,161 ($53,080.50)
September: 83,330 ($41,665.00)
October: 93,659 ($46,829.50)
November: 51,914 ($25,957.00)
December: 36,472 ($18,236.00)

2018:

January: 13,250 ($6,625.00)
February: 17,961 ($8,980.50)
March: 62,251 ($31,125.50)
April: 67,613 ($33,806.50)
May: 73,353 ($36,676.50)
June: 113,901 ($56,950.50)
July: 135,922 ($67,961.00)
August: 98,106 ($49,053.00)
September: 69,207 ($34,603.50)
October: 89,434 ($44,717.00)

A few words of caution in interpreting these numbers. The Ark Park is absurdly overpriced, and Ken Ham is raking in a heck of a lot of profit…so the numbers would probably have to drop a lot more before he goes in the red. Also, the numbers come from reported attendance, used to calculate a safety fee or tax to the city of Williamsburg. Ham is such a venal little toad I wouldn’t be surprised if he intentionally under-reports (if he can) to save a little money.

I’m also unsurprised. Any theme park will have a drop off in attendance after the shiny newness wears off. 20% in a year, though…ouch. AiG is probably frantically trying to think of new ways to spark interest in their ridiculous young-Earth pretense.

I recommend that they should jump on the flat-earth, no moon-landings, anti-vaxx bandwagon. There’s no end of gullible people in that crowd. They won’t bat an eye at the claim that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old.

The movie this week was Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

Everyone was raving about this movie, so I walked into it with elevated expectations, which is usually the kiss of death. But it wasn’t! Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was excellent! It has an interesting, complex story without relying on the “Villains aiming to destroy the world!” trope — even the primary bad guy, the Kingpin, had a believable motive.

But best of all was the artwork. This was a comic book movie that was not afraid to be a comic book movie, stealing comic book styles and comic book art and comic book plots, and then reveling in the freedom of computer-assisted animation. It just flies along playing visual games in a way that highlighted the story. It’s also damned optimistic, and lately we really need that occasional taste of escapism.

I went alone to the theater, because when I told my wife it was a super-hero movie, she was turned off and uninterested. It’s too bad, because she missed out, and I think she probably would have enjoyed it, too. Maybe when it comes to Netflix…

Israel has become a sacred cow, and you can guess what I think of such beasts

Unbelievable. The state of Texas requires people to affirm a loyalty oath to Israel in order to be employed in education.

A children’s speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told she can no longer work with the public school district after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation.

This is an attempt by lawmakers to coerce citizens to hold certain political views. It’s an odious law and a disgrace to any country that tries to enforce it. But it’s not just Texas: 17 states have passed similar laws, including the blue state of New York.

The law, known as HB 89, charges the Texas Comptroller’s Office with making a list of “all companies that boycott Israel” and provide the list to state agencies. Those agencies will then be barred from contracting with those companies. State pension funds are also prohibited from being invested in firms involved in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

The bill passed the state House 131-0 and the state Senate 25-4.

Texas is now the 17th state to pass such a law, with other such states ranging from California to South Carolina. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a similar measure by executive order.

That is sickening. How can such a law have such overwhelming support from legislatures? What next? Laws demanding that you be fired if you don’t eat beef, that you have to hold a concealed carry permit to be a teacher, that Communists can be blacklisted…oh wait, they already tried that one.

I had to look to see if any of the usual Freeze Peach Warriors had anything to say about this story. Not much; 4chan has a long ugly thread about it, in which a few people do stand up for principle, reluctantly, but the majority are screaming slurs and insisting that no Muslims ought to be allowed to even exist in America. Sam Harris has just resigned from Patreon…because they banned a couple of racist, misogynistic scumbags, Milo Yiannopoulos and Sargon of Akkad, from their service, so we can guess what side he’d take, and we know what he considers pressingly important — the privileges of bullies and racists over the rights of citizens.

Satire is dead, again

Some alt-right wackaloon has announced a new vidyagame, Jesus Strikes Back: Judgment Day. It features a gun-toting Jesus, “Dolph”, an Austrian with a toothbrush mustache (not to be confused, they insist, with Hitler), an orange blonde guy named “Tromp” (not to be confused, etc.), “Pootin” (ntbc…), “Mussolino”, etc., etc., etc. as the heroes, who are on a mission to kill “radical social justice warriors,” “radical feminists,” “radical LGBT militants,” oh god I’m already bored and tired of this bullshit game, and it hasn’t even been made yet. Oh also, one class of enemies are “Doctors”, who vaccinate people.

The story of JSB:JD is so utterly complex that it simply cannot be conveyed by mere words on a webpage. It is a story so beautifully crafted and rich in detail that it could of very well been written by Tolstoy himself. A story so powerfully moving that it is guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye of even the most reserved, indifferent man.

JSB:JD follows the story of seven different men on their own one-man-crusade to destroy the radicals and the New World regime, and how this shared goal forces their destinies to entwine. With the odds stacked against them, they have nothing to rely on except the triumph of the will if victory is to be theirs. Although they may not share the same beliefs or characteristics, their shared hatred of the radicals and New World regime unites them together, ultimately forming mankind’s last hope for salvation against the tyrannical regime.

They may not always see eye-to-eye, but they must put aside their differences if they ever wish to liberate the world back to rightful law and order. They must struggle against all odds – against the whole world – if they are to be victorious.

Fuck, I don’t care. I don’t care if they’re trying to satirize SJWs, anti-SJWs, or whatever…this is just bad, clumsy, unfunny, tedious crap.

If it makes them feel better, they can go ahead and claim they owned me. Don’t give a damn. Except to say that my cynical despair over the state of humanity is confirmed once again.

We can all stop worrying about climate change now

Thanks for the reality check, Steve Milloy!

All we need to do now is learn how to live with temperatures of 465°C (870°F for the benighted among us) –we’ll need to use some kind of refrigerator for baking, since that’s a little on the high side. I suppose we could breathe CO2 if we completely changed our biochemistry and metabolism. I guess while we’re doing that, we could also learn to stand unharmed in concentrated sulfuric acid at 90 atmospheres of pressure. Small changes. You know, nothing like the unbelievable stuff the Warmists are proposing, like meters of sea level rise.

This is Milloy’s bio.

Co-founder http://BurnMoreCoal.com . Trump EPA transition team. Eagle Scout. Biostatistician. Lawyer. Author. FOX News contributor.

I think the new Trumpster slogan ought to be “Turn Earth into another Venus”, since there are nothing but good associations with the goddess of love.

How can you not want to live there?