The struggle never ends

Over the last few days, there have been some ups and downs in crank medicine. The Tribeca Film Festival scheduled Andrew Wakefield’s anti-vaccine documentary to be shown, and Robert DeNiro defended it as a legitimate contribution to the discussion of the causes of autism. It isn’t. It’s rank nonsense from a discredited quack.But then DeNiro changed his mind and yanked it from the schedule. Good for him!

But now, lest you think the problem is solved, let me remind you that there are bad parents medically abusing their children everywhere.

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If I ever get this cranky, just shoot me

crankyclintYou may recall Ted Storck from his greatest hits here in Morris: he’s the guy who donated the chimes that annoyed everyone for years, who wrote bitter letters to the local newspaper when asked to turn them down, who complained when a vandal cut the wires (OK, that was wrong to do, but he also accused me of having done it), who, when the chimes were finally silenced by the city council, whined about how he should never do anything nice for the community, before stomping off to his retirement in Arizona.

I thought we were done with crotchety ol’ Ted — the chimes are gone, he’s moved away — but no! He’s taken to writing cranky letters to the local newspaper, about things that have annoyed him. And the paper is publishing them! Ah, Morris.

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Inshallah

This is a painfully common story: parents give child a deadly weapon as a present, child accidentally kills someone (because CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE PLAYING WITH GUNS), and everyone shrugs it off because, well, these things just happen. It’s no one’s fault. Nope, no blame anywhere. This is a rifle intended for children, so it was being used properly. Of course, it was used by a five year old boy to accidentally slaughter his two year old sister, but hey, It’s just one of those nightmares, a quick thing that happens when you turn your back, say the police, as if there was no agency involved anywhere in the whole tragic series of events. It just happens.

And then Grandma has to come along and open her mouth.

Riddle said she is devastated, but comforted knowing that her granddaughter is in a better place.

It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess, she told WLEX. I just know she’s in heaven right now and I know she’s in good hands with the Lord.

Fuck you, Grandma.

One of these states is not like the others

North Carolina:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) late Wednesday night signed rushed legislation that, as is widely known, eliminates local governments’ ability to pass anti-discrimination measures to protect gay and transgender individuals. But what received less immediate attention was that the new law guts workplace discrimination protections for virtually everyone.

The bill also pre-empts local employment ordinances governing wages, benefits, employee protections and leave policies. It would prevent schools from allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

The law also prohibits local ordinances regarding child labor.

Basically, assholes like businessman Art Pope used anti-LGBT bigotry to pass anti-worker legislation without a lot of people noticing (or caring–some people value their bigotry more than their welfare).

Indiana:

Gov. Mike Pence made Indiana the second state in the nation to ban abortions sought because the fetus has a disability, signing into law Thursday an expansion of the state’s already restrictive abortion laws.

Georgia:

HRC and Georgia Equality, the statewide LGBT advocacy organization, called on House Leadership and Gov. Nathan Deal to put a stop to the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act of Georgia,” H.B. 757. The bill, which just passed the Georgia Senate by a vote of 38 – 14 goes far beyond protecting the right to practice one’s religion and would instead put LGBT people couples, single parents, and unmarried couples at risk for discrimination.

The dangerous legislation goes far beyond protecting the right of free exercise of one’s religion. While falsely framed as prohibiting the state government from making funding or tax status decisions based on an organization’s views on marriage that are driven by religious belief, in reality it threatens to create a breakdown of state government services, opening the door to discrimination against same-sex couples, their families, and those who love them. Taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies could refuse to place children who are in desperate need of loving and caring homes with LGBT couples. State-funded homeless shelters could turn away unwed couples and their families. Government employees could refuse to file tax forms for same-sex couples or provide state benefits to single mothers.

Minnesota:

The battle over transgender rights has flared at the State Capitol as a group of Republican legislators unveiled a proposal Wednesday that would require people to use bathrooms and changing rooms that match their “biological sex.”

…

Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday decried the legislation, saying that he was “appalled” and that he would veto it if it were to reach his desk. “This is about pandering to their extreme issue,” Dayton said.

He added: “They just keep bashing people for their own political advantage. … They’re wrong on the issue, and they’re wrong on the morality.”

It’s kind of weird. Dayton is an extremely wealthy businessman, and once upon a time he would have been stereotyped right into the Republican party. But he’s a Democrat, and he’s also got all these liberal, progressive views and doesn’t think his position of power should be used stomp on the poor and give more advantages to his wealthy cronies.

I think you mean “cephalosanity”

Hey, I recognize that octopus illustration!

cuttle8

It’s an illustration of the “eight armed cuttle” from the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1871. It’s used on a new article on “The Octopus That Ruled London”, about the “cephalomania” that swept across the city when people were first able to get a close-up look at the majestic mollusc. It’s not a mania, though, if everyone is doing it. Then it just becomes a sign of a normal, balanced, healthy mental state.

I knew the Trump2016 trauma was exaggerated

It’s become the standard trope: college students are whiny, delicate, over-sensitive wimps who can’t take the real world and demand safe spaces and trigger warnings. These complaints about students are usually made by ignorant jerks who don’t know any, and who will also be complaining about too PC and of course, the regressive Left, and before you know it, they’ve put all college folk into the cultural Marxist category. Those phrases are good tells to let you know you’re dealing with an idiot.

The latest cause célèbre for the regressive trolls is an incident at Emory University, in which someone scrawled “Trump 2016” on the sidewalk. As the right-wing twits tell it, the students were shocked and horrified and demanding protection from the administration, and the administration rushed to coddle them.

It was all a lie.

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Friday Cephalopod: Sounds like high school

The Australian Giant Cuttlefish aggregation is truly one of nature’s great events. Thousands of cuttlefish congregate in the shallow waters around the Spencer gulf in South Australia, to mate and perpetuate the species. The cuttlefish like alien beings, display an array of patterns, textures and colours to indicate their intentions. As male courts a female or wards off other males, and entourage of suiters stay poised for an opportunity to mate with the female. A visual delight and a rare glimpse of nature in all its glory. Scott Portelli

The Australian Giant Cuttlefish aggregation is truly one of nature’s great events. Thousands of cuttlefish congregate in the shallow waters around the Spencer gulf in South Australia, to mate and perpetuate the species. The cuttlefish like alien beings, display an array of patterns, textures and colours to indicate their intentions. As male courts a female or wards off other males, and entourage of suiters stay poised for an opportunity to mate with the female. A visual delight and a rare glimpse of nature in all its glory. Scott Portelli

The genesis of schizophrenia

Lately, my genetics class has taken a turn, by intent. I start the semester with the basics: Mendel, simple crosses, learning the terminology, all of that simple stuff that most of them see as a review of high school biology. But then, once I’m reasonably confident they know the commonly understood rules, I start adding all the complications that Mendel knew nothing about, and then we start getting into epistasis and the complicated business of translating genotype into phenotype, and I essentially end up telling them that everything they learned before wasn’t exactly true, because real world heredity is a heck of a lot more complicated. You can’t usually reduce complex traits to one gene with alleles that are dominant or recessive.

So what do you know, the New Yorker comes out with an excellent article that highlights complexity and real world genetics: Runs in the Family, about the genetics of schizophrenia.

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