Good noise

I often like to have a little background noise while I’m working — sometimes I’ll turn on the TV, even if I’m not paying attention to it, or have the radio on with headphones. It’s paradoxical how our brains work, that total silence can disrupt our concentration. I suspect that part of it is because in a silent room we become more attentive to inevitable rare small sounds.

I have now found the best background sound ever: “10 hours video of Arctic ambience with frozen ocean, ice cracking, snow falling, icebreaker idling and distant howling wind sound. Natural white noise sounds generated by the wind and snow falling, combined with deep low frequencies with delta waves from the powerful icebreaker idling engines”.

Oooh, soothing. Got a nice beat, I think I can get some work done to that.

But Trump has the spokesperson he deserves!

Charles Pierce thinks Sean Spicer deserves to be fired for this:

You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons, Spicer said in response to questions about the implications of Assad’s chemical attacks.

Then he made it worse.

Hitler was not using the gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing.

His own people. On Passover.

That is an epic gaffe. If it were a hook, it would only be used for landing whales, and would require the power of a Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C to hoist it. Decades from now, people will remember where they were on the day Sean Spicer made Melissa McCarthy utterly superfluous; McCarthy is weeping right now, defeated, knowing she could never invent something as ridiculous, oblivious, and insensitive as that comment. Spicer will go to his deathbed regretting dropping that turd from his mouth. It’s going to be in his obituary afterwards. The only person praising the Lord for that remark right now is the CEO of United Airlines.

Since the invention of the spokesperson, there have only been five spokespeople that were rated the most incompetent, the most dishonest. This one left them all behind.

So yes, if Trump were a rational man who valued competence, Spicer should be immediately fired.

But Trump is not that man.

Are all Republicans just hateful scoundrels who like to hurt people?

It sure seems that way. Minnesota has been thriving under Democratic leadership for the last several years, and we had a bit of moderate progressive legislation passed…but the Republicans got a majority in the last election, and are bound and determined to eradicate all the successes of the past. It’s as if they just don’t like people.

Progressive policies enacted in Minnesota’s largest cities in recent years are at risk from Republicans who control the state Legislature as they seek to block, undo or change local ordinances on everything from sick leave and the minimum wage to plastic bags and bike lanes.

Sick leave? Minimum wage? Bike lanes? They don’t like bike lanes?!?! They don’t have any kind of positive intent or agenda, so they’re just going to tear down what previous legislators accomplished. Their justification is also as racist as fuck.

“Clearly the cultural values of Minneapolis are drastically out of alignment with greater Minnesota, so there’s going to be conflicts,” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, author of a bill that would block cities from passing their own labor rules.

Key words there: “greater Minnesota” is a phrase that refers to all of the state except for Minneapolis/St Paul. To put it in words more familiar to out-of-staters, he wants to block any support for the cultural values of those urban people, hint hint, nudge nudge.

He’s wrong, of course. There are a lot of us out here in “greater Minnesota” who have progressive values, and find these damned dumb regressive yokels to be an embarrassment.

We’ve got to work to kick these slugs out of office in the next election.

Excuses fit only for authoritarians

We’ve all heard about the disgraceful behavior of United Airlines and the Chicago police. I’m getting disgusted by the excuses made in the aftermath.

A few weeks ago, United made the news for kicking two girls off one of their flights because they were wearing leggings. United justified this because there were rules written down for United employees traveling on a pass, so a lot of people said that was OK, then — they were rules, after all, and rules must be obeyed.

Wait, why? Who made this rule, and for what reason? Presumably it’s because they have this corporate image that they want to enforce, so they’ve got this damn stupid rule written down by some prudish busybody — it’s certainly not for an objectively good reason, like safety — and now they insist on enforcing it, pointlessly, even if it is problematic for customers. And yet I saw people just accept the injustice because it was a rule.

Now likewise they have a rule that they can throw paying customers off the plane at the convenience of their employees and at the whim of a random number generator. People are doing the same thing! It’s a rule, therefore United has a right to abuse passengers who aren’t sufficiently obedient. Again, this is not a safety rule (if a passenger is endangering others, then yes, there should be an expectation of obedience and penalties for defying the airline), but one for the convenience of the corporation. They are permitted to act inhumanely in the service of purely capitalist gains.

And people accept that! Some, like Bill O’Reilly, even laugh at the video of the man being bloodied.

I don’t give a flying fuck if somewhere in United’s fine print they have written down that they get to club you senseless if they need your seat — it is an unjust rule because it prioritizes the convenience of an employee over the safety and health and rights of another human being. Having it written down does not make it right, it means that an immoral behavior is formally sanctioned in the corporate culture of United. That makes it worse.

Of course, there is even more heinous justifications. Would you believe journalists have rummaged in the victim’s past to find evidence of misbehavior? He was convicted of using his medical license to abuse prescription drugs in 2004. That’s bad, but not relevant — his punishment was to have his license to practice medicine suspended for ten years, a debt that has been paid. It does not mean that United, or anyone, is justified to punch him in the head any time they feel like it.

I find the callousness of big business disturbing, but find the willingness of too many Americans to condone it even more distressing.

Cincinnati, 16 June…whatcha doin’?

A student and I are going to attend the 2017 Midwest Zebrafish Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio. We’re getting in on Thursday night, and the meeting schedule has us free all day Friday, until the opening remarks at 6pm.

Hmmm. What to do all day long? What embarrassing, horrible spectacle is there within a short drive of Cincinnati that could provide amusement?

You guessed it. I’m going to the Ark Encounter! I imagine there will be lots of developmental biologists and geneticists in town that day…anyone want to join us? Or if you’re not there for the meeting, but just idling about in the neighborhood, feel free to come along, too. It’s not as if you need a Ph.D. to laugh at the pseudoscience on display.

Also, if anyone wants to meet up for serious conversation during the conference, I’m up for that — as mentioned above, I’ll be there with a student who might be looking for a graduate program in another year, and I’d like to introduce them around.