Mission accomplished

Hey, I’m home again, and exhausted after a long day of travel. We accomplished much, however.

Here’s Skatje and Iliana (she’s in the pink raincoat with bunny ears) at La Push, Washington. It was a perfect day: overcast grey skies, a continuous drizzle of rain, and gusty winds blowing off the ocean. This is one of my favorite places on Earth, and it was a delightful day with all conditions exactly as I would have dreamed for.

The major goal of the trip was to see Connlann promoted to Major. It has been done.

For him, what this means is a whole bunch of new responsibilities. He’s part of the army response team handling the integration of tens of thousands of Afghan people into the United States, and last we left him he was preparing for a mission to airports out east. It turns out that if you need a sudden surge of people needing food and shelter, the Army is the outfit with all the tools to do that.

Now my mission is not accomplished: I have to rewire my brain and buckle down to preparing for classes tomorrow.

Scenes from newly opened universities in a pandemic

I fly back to Minnesota tomorrow! It’ll be nice to get back to a normal routine.

Except, my first in-person classes are on Tuesday! I hope I would have the courage of this college professor.

During Irwin Bernstein’s second class of the semester, the student, who was not present on the first day of class, arrived at the 25-person class unmasked and was asked by Bernstein to retrieve one from the advising office. The student was given a spare disposable mask from a peer but did not wear it over her nose.

Bernstein asked the student to pull her mask up to wear it correctly, but she said she “couldn’t breathe” and “had a really hard time breathing” with the cloth over her mouth and nose.

Written on the board at the front of the classroom was, “No mask, no class,” according to fourth-year psychology major Hannah Huff.

The 88-year-old psychology professor explained to the student that he could die from COVID-19 due to underlying health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and age-related problems, Bernstein said in an email to The Red & Black.

Only about 15 minutes into the Tuesday lecture, which consisted of Bernstein taking the student attendance, he asked the student to pull her mask up again, but this time, the student did not respond.

So he walked out and quit.

If I found myself in similar circumstances this week, I don’t think I’d have to quit: my university has a mask requirement, unlike the University of Georgia, a state with a spineless, stupid Republican governor. I would not look kindly on a student who tried to pull that bullshit about not being able to breathe. That’s a lie. I wear a mask all the time in public, and no, it does not significantly impair breathing. That girl was an immature whiner trying to make a stupid protest.

UMM is at least not like Liberty University, which tried to pull off a completely laissez faire policy: no required masks, no social distancing, and no vaccine requirement. Look what happened there!

Liberty University announced a campus-wide quarantine on Thursday due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

The evangelical Christian school’s office of communications said the “temporary mitigation period” would occur between Monday and Sept. 10, with all residential classes moved online and large indoor gatherings suspended.

There are 159 known active cases of the coronavirus at Liberty, according to the Lynchburg, Va., college’s COVID-19 tracker, the highest number since last September when 141 individuals tested positive for the virus.

Out of the 159 known cases, 124 are among students.

That was entirely predictable.

I can’t whole-heartedly laugh at stupid ol’ Liberty U, though, since my university only implemented the predictable, necessary, and obvious requirements to protect students and staff the week before our school opened.

Shut the f*k up, Aubrey

Aubrey de Grey does it again: he posted another long sanctimonious screed on Facebook about how no, he isn’t the harasser, someone else was doing the harassing, and there’s a conspiracy that is gaslighting his accuser and making her think he was harassing her, which is a really weird defense to make. Here’s just one sentence from the mess to give you an unpleasant taste.

My current best guess, based on the still somewhat fragmentary data available to me, is that these matters were kept from me by others who DID have those anti-Celine, pro-harasser intentions, because they realised that if I were informed of the situation I would act very swiftly (subject to hearing his side of the story!) to excise the harasser from the community for good.

It’s not very interesting, except as a sharp example of how you should shut up when accused of this sort of thing, it doesn’t help your case at all, especially when all you can muster of conspiracy-theory-mongering. What’s also somewhat interesting, though, is that he’s clearly pandering to his groupies, who are falling all over themselves to agree with his wacky stories.

I get email

Oh, look. I got an invitation.

Invitation to Publish a Critique: Fungi/Tube Worms on Mars

Dear Dr. Myers

You have been cited in news articles as stating you believe Dr. Joseph’s work is harmful to science and to the field of astrobiology. We are aware you are a leading opponent of all claims favoring extraterrestrial life. The Journal of Astrobiology is very interested in publishing your views

The Editors of the Journal of Astrobiology (JOA) are inviting you to submit a critical analysis of the claims and recent findings of Dr. Rhawn Joseph and his team, RE: Fungi on Mars. Tube Worms on Mars.

If you accept our invitation, the critical analysis must be scholarly, fully referenced, and less than 2000 words, including Abstract, Title, Figure Captions.

We are aware of the insults, false statements and personal and hominem attacks directed at Dr. Joseph by some science news reporters. We are confident, if you should decide to submit a critical analysis, your article will be scholarly and factual.

Your article will be peer reviewed. However, be assured: JOA is interested in publishing your views.

There are no page or publication charges. All articles are published online, open access, and authors have the right to reprint and post their article at Researchgate and their website.

Sincerely,

Sheila Van Akker
Managing Editor
JournalofAstrobiology.com

Right. Please write us a review that doesn’t point out the idiocy of our work, and dignifies it by treating it as if if were serious scholarly research.

No. It’s garbage.

Also, I’m not a leading opponent of all claims favoring extraterrestrial life. I’m just someone who can clearly see when a pseudoscientific fraud is trying to bamboozle the public.

You like ferns? We got ferns.

Also mosses and trees.

We did a little walking in the Olympic rain forest yesterday. It was a bit challenging getting photos — I was only carrying my macro lens, and it was also a bit dim in the forest primeval. But you what else I saw lots of?

Spiders. Spiders everywhere.

My eyes are locked into arachnid sensing mode nowadays, and I was impressed with how everything in the rain forest is dripping with adorable little spiders.

Today I’m teaching a class from my hotel room, and then we’re rushing off to catch the low tide at La Push.

Greetings from the Quinault nation!

I’ve arrived on the Pacific coast to my little struggle. The best internet connection I’ve found is at the Quinault beach resort and casino, so I’m going to try and teach my class at 1:00 Central time from here. I just have to find a quiet (or relatively quiet) spot to talk cell biology for an hour.

Not your typical classroom setting

Then this afternoon we’re off to the Olympic mountains for a bit.

Apres moi le deluge

It’s been dry and miserable all summer here, my lawn is dead, the spiders are panting for a drop to drink, and I arrive at the Minneapolis airport to fly away, and what happens? The skies rip open, thunder and lightning, and everything is drenched. It’s my parting gift to Minnesota, I guess. Don’t worry, I’ll be back on Sunday to resume the desertification.

One thing I should mention on my way out the door is that I’m going to a corner of the US where internet service is spotty. We’re staying at a hotel that assured us they do have wifi, but I’m not sure I believe them, and it’s a little bit of a worry, since I have to teach a class over Zoom every morning. It’s a lesser concern, but if your comment gets hung up in the pending queue, it might be a little while before I can clear it.

Now I have to go get wet, I think. I may step off the plane at Sea-Tac and instantly dessicate the entire Pacific Northwest.

#IStandWithMeb and the latest TERFy nonsense

The contretemps du jour on Twitter is an attempt by TERFs to take over a trans-inclusive bar in Edinburgh (Meb is the bartender who politely threw them out). Marion Millar, a notorious transphobe who is currently awaiting trial for hate crimes against trans people, was one of the organizers who “innocently” (yeah, if you believe that you’re pretty darned gullible) booked a night out with the girls at Doctors, a pub in Edinburgh.

That would be fine, even TERFs get to enjoy some fish & chips and a pint now and then, except…they saw this as an opportunity to hand out inflammatory flyers and put up gender critical stickers in the rest room and argue with the other patrons and the bartender.

Here’s a good summary of the evening.

Doctors bar in Edinburgh and specifically their manager have come under fire from a torrent of abuse from transphobes on social media who have even been review-bombing the bar on Facebook etc. This after a group of transphobes went to the bar wearing transphobic campaigning t-shirts and armed with leaflets which they attempted to litter around the place. They were politely asked to leave, refused and were escorted out by police.

They got what they wanted, to provoke and disturb other people and get in the news with their brand of indignant hatred, and the staff at the bar dealt with it as responsibly as they could. They also found a target for their hate to focus on, Meb, and an exciting new hashtag they can poison.

If ever I find myself in Edinburgh again, I’ll definitely seek out Doctors and give them my custom. They sound like good people.