Samantha Bee explains how dangerously pathetic @POTUS is

The comedians are going to be busy.

He really is a sad little man. He did a White House interview with ABC, and you’ll never guess how it ends…with Trump giving a tour of the collection of photos he has had mounted on the wall that ‘prove’ he had the biggest inauguration crowds ever. The interviewer smiled and failed to mention that the data show he is wrong, that he persists in insisting on this lie after being shown the evidence that his claim was false makes him a liar, and that his obsession in denying his unpopularity as president makes him petty and unfit for office.

But then, the interviewer probably hopes to get invited back, so he was avoiding asking those pointed questions that might annoy the buffoon-in-chief.

Thank you all for the very nice war chest

Our legal fund has hit $17,486 — we’re really close to our primary goal of $20,000. We’re breathing a sigh of relief right now, since this is going to mean our legal costs for this first phase of the battle will be met (our lawyer is working on venue issues and other such significant preliminaries — it seems silly to have a trial in Ohio, where none of us live, and where Carrier did not live until right about the time he put together his lawsuit). Once that’s all settled we’ll know better what direction the case will go.

He’s supposed to be a smart guy. Maybe he’ll realize this is a losing argument for him, he’ll drop the whole thing, and we can all get back to writing, teaching, doing science, fighting for justice, and crushing Donald Trump, all much better uses of our time and money.

The imminent destruction of American science

A little history lesson: the United States has not always been a major player in scientific research. In fact, Europe has a longer research tradition, and before WWII the US was looked upon as a bucolic place that had the advantages of a great deal of natural resources, but with only scattered centers of academic excellence, and most of the research was done by the independently wealthy at private colleges. I remember reading about Edwin Conklin, a big name developmental biologist at the turn of the last century, and being rather surprised that all of his work at marine stations was paid for out of his own pocket, a fact of life that was taken entirely for granted at the time.

All the big state colleges that are the backbone of our research efforts now were founded as either agricultural schools or normal, or teaching, schools. They were not intended to be major research centers. You’d go to State U to learn how to farm, or in a few place, mine, or how to become a public school teacher. In my grandparents’ day, that was the default: you’d scrimp and save to send the oldest son to college to prepare him to inherit the family farm, and maybe you’d send the oldest daughter off to learn to be the local school marm.

That all changed with WWII and the work of Vannevar Bush, who saw an opportunity to harness the potential brain power of the country. You don’t think Europe hoped for our entry into the war because we’d bring in high tech wonder weapons, do you? We were a big reserve of manpower for cannon fodder and iron for ships and artillery. The Brits (and the Germans) were the eggheads. Bush was the man who transformed everything in this country, providing resources through the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development to fund innovative science and cultivate an atmosphere that valued research at our universities. Everything that we appreciate about American science flowed out of the investment of federal funds in the research enterprise via the OSRD, which eventually metamorphosed into the National Science Foundation, the major source of basic research funding. (The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is also huge, but as you might guess from the name has more of an applied research focus on biomedical research, although plenty of basic research also gets smuggled in).

A chill should run down your spine when Trump’s pick for the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, suggests that … what might be the best question: do we really need government funded research at all. The context of that question was a rambling post in which he raised a whole lot of, to his mind, unanswered questions about the Zika virus.

Brazil’s microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery — if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in countries also hit hard by the virus? In Brazil, the microcephaly rate soared with more than 1,500 confirmed cases. But in Colombia, a recent study of nearly 12,000 pregnant women infected with Zika found zero microcephaly cases. If Zika is to blame for microcephaly, where are the missing cases? According to a new report from the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), the number of missing cases in Colombia and elsewhere raises serious questions about the assumed connection between Zika and microcephaly.

He was wrong about just about everything, as the linked article explains, but still what strikes me is that he’s pointing out all these difficulties, and raising all these questions (see those question marks? Scientists are the people who bring up those question marks and then try to answer them), and he’s then using the questions as a reason to avoid funding the process of resolving them. This is a man who doesn’t understand the whole point of research, to the point that he considers the possibility of not funding it at all. He’d like to roll back American science to the 1920s.

I can tell you personally what that would be like: you’d reduce American science to places like my lab. I’ve worked at Research 1 universities, and this is a whole ‘nother animal. I have no federal funding — a few of my colleagues do get small NSF grants now and then, but it’s hard to persuade the agencies to support small schools, especially when grant money is incredibly tight. I have a tiny lab space that also does double-duty as a class lab when I teach small upper level courses (many of my colleagues across the country will be jealous: they have no lab of their own, but do have classroom space that can do double-duty as a research lab when they aren’t teaching). I keep up with small supplies — pipettes, paper towels, that sort of thing — with maintenance money from the department.

My chief research tool, a microscope, was purchased with a state grant, part of the building fund that paid for renovations of the old science building and construction of a new wing. It isn’t really my scope; it’s a shared resource for all of the biology faculty that just happens to be kept in my lab.

I’ve been lucky in that I do have an independent, but small, revenue stream. All the additional equipment in my lab, like my digital camera system and animal maintenance stuff, is paid for with…blogging money! Yes, real student research is being supported by those obnoxious ads you see springing up around here. Now try to imagine a world-class biology research unit (not mine) with dozens of grad students and a gang of post-docs and a couple of technicians and the latest, cutting edge research tools that burn through reagents that cost more than my annual salary trying to support themselves by creating a popular blog and sprinkling it with ads for the latest fad food that will help you lose weight.

That isn’t going to happen.

The kinds of research I can do are limited. The latest project is one that Edwin Conklin would have understood perfectly in 1905, using tools that would have been considered high-tech in 1978, but I think we’ll be able to eke out a little bit of useful data, a tiny contribution to the body of evidence. My main contribution is that I can teach students to think like scientists, even with our limited resources, so they can go off to research careers at bigger places…which would cease to exist if Mick Mulvaney had his way.

I am not complaining about my situation. This is actually what I wanted, a place where I could focus on teaching, didn’t have to spend all my time writing hard-to-get grants, and could still work independently in a small lab. It’s perfect for me. It is not at all ideal if you want a national source of advanced research. You’re just going to have a lot of people like me training eager, ambitious kids for possibilities that you’ve eliminated.

That’s not the worst of it.

Suddenly, the federal government has decreed that USDA scientists may not talk about their work in public. This is antithetical to the whole point of doing science!

The EPA has frozen all of its grants. Environmental scientists have also been told they can’t communicate with the public.

The CDC has pre-emptively canceled a climate change meeting. Why? I suspect they’re battening down the hatches, preparing for some lean years, and investing in a meeting that will just get canceled by the administration is an unwise choice.

The National Park Service is being censored. Badlands National Park has had tweets deleted that discussed the evidence for climate change. “Rogue” elements of the park service have resorted to disseminating information under aliases.

All this in just the first four days of the Trump regime taking office. It takes far less time to demolish an institution than it does to build one up. Vannevar Bush’s contributions took decades to bear fruit, and Trump is determined to burn them all down in days.

And taking a wrecking crew to science isn’t even the worst thing he has done! He aims to wreck public education with the appointment of Betsy DeVos — even my small lab becomes pointless if that stream of eager, ambitious students dries up. Congress is busily trying to prohibit all family planning. How’s this for irony?

Making it (Hyde) permanent is not just important for the moral fiber — fabric of our country, but you’ll see millions more lives saved by us taking this important action, House GOP Whip Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, told reporters Tuesday.

I remember Henry Hyde, corrupt Catholic, philanderer and adulterer. That his name is invoked at the same time as the words “moral fiber” is amazing hypocrisy.

So, in this time of turmoil, when injustice rules and inequity thrives, when all is to be subordinated to the selfish greed of a small number of extremely wealthy white people, I fear that the loss of American science is a tiny problem and will be lost in the chaos. It is shaping up to be an early casualty, though, and when faced with a thousand losses, triage is hard, and terrifying. We are looking at devastating losses to humanity on all fronts, thanks to the fact that we have elected an incompetent demagogue to lead the country, who is propped up by a political party that has become a garbage fire of epic proportions.

We’re doomed.

But we need to keep fighting for everything, every step of the way. A Scientist’s March on Washington is being organized. I don’t think it can have the impact of the Women’s March — we don’t have the numbers — but maybe if it’s a march intended to focus on one-on-one lobbying with congress, and to getting the press engaged, it can help.

Ultimately, though, the only thing that’s going to make a big difference is to depose the tyrant and banish him to a cozy retirement home where he can watch a lot of TV and do no further harm. We also have to basically delete the entire Republican party and grow a new, rational opposition party, one that will give the Democrats an incentive to actually do effective good for a change.


More on the Scientist’s March on Washington — it’s very preliminary, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

We’ll keep Trav Mamone around

They have addressed an important controversy, and have wisely arrived at the correct answer. Pizza should be served with pineapple. I will go further: the perfect pizza is one with pineapple and jalapenos.

PineappleJalapenoPizza

On the subject of pineapple, I will tolerate no disagreement. I’m a little more flexible on the jalapenos. Back in my day, when I was dating my wife-to-be, we’d typically head out to Shakey’s Pizza Parlor up on the hilltop of Kent, Washington, near the high school, and we’d order a Hawaiian pizza, always, with pineapple and Canadian bacon. That was the best pizza, until I discovered the joys of hot, spicy peppers combined with the sweetness of pineapple…my wife could not follow me into that den of sinful pleasure, but I forgive her, and we haven’t divorced yet.

Being human ain’t natural

Lance Mannion writes real gud, so I usually enjoy reading his essays, but this time he struck a nerve and for the first time I have to deeply disagree with him. He’s writing about math. He, personally, thinks he’s not good at math, so he regards it as unnatural.

Personal prejudice: Most people can’t do math. What we call math is actually simple arithmetic. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Calculating. What Jethro Bodine in his pride at his sixth grade education called cipherin’. Nobody does math, and can do math, until they understand why multiplying two negative numbers together produces a positive number. I’ve never understood that one. So I can’t do math.

I can cipher like a wiz, though. Like a sixth grader, at any rate.

This Paley Center panel discussion on Hidden Figures was interesting and I can’t wait to see the movie but I was a bit disgruntled by the way people on the panel who know better talked about math as if it’s all arithmetic and anybody can do it and do it well if they put their mind to it and get over the idea it’s too hard.

OK, that part I agree with. He’s right: math isn’t about the kind of number games you can play on a calculator. Mathematics isn’t about arithmetic, except for those parts of a big field that are. But then, after correctly stating that math is something more, he doesn’t really get it and ends up criticizing it for things it isn’t.

But I didn’t like it that learning to do math got implicitly compared with learning how to write a sentence that parses.

As the son of a physicist and computer scientist who, hard as he tried, never could get me to follow his math when he helped me with my homework, and as someone who was an A student in math in grade school but was stymied by ninth grade algebra and defeated in eleventh grade by calculus, and as the father of someone who has struggled with a severe math learning disability—dyscalculia they’re calling it these days—and is two daunting math courses shy of completing his degree, I’m here to tell you…

Math ain’t natural.

We don’t think in numbers. We’re not good at holding them in our heads. Most of us count “One, two, three, many” and then, if we’re forced to go higher, “Many more, and a lot!” and that’s as high or as complex as our numbers get.

That’s irrelevant, as he should know. Mathematicians aren’t necessarily thinking in numbers, either: they’re thinking about patterns, or relationships, or logic, or even geometry. Somehow, being unable to visualize numbers greater than, say, seven in our heads doesn’t seem to be an obstacle to considering infinity.

The thing that raises my hackles, though, is that word “natural”. I hate that word. It’s usually used to vaguely mean “the good things that I like” rather than “those unnatural abominations that perverted libertine over there likes”…like math. Or football.

And then, uh-oh, he abuses the “E” word. My wrath is immediately stoked.

Some of this is the result of biology, anatomy, and evolution—the evolution of bodies, and then the evolution of culture.

Evidence suggests that humans were talking to each other from the start, putting words to their feelings, coming up with ideas that could only be created with words, naming things. Naming things is what made us human. We evolved to speak and we evolved from speaking. Culture, art, and society are the result of words. We didn’t start counting until later when societies became more complex and more things needed to be sorted out. We can see our ancestors inventing math.

We don’t know precisely when language arose, so it’s hard to place it in relationship to other aspects of culture. Did the hominins who lacked language also lack art? We don’t know. So it’s hard to say that one is the prerequisite for the other. It’s also a definitional problem.

Did the first being we’d recognize as human speak? Or are we going to use speaking as the criterion for defining humanity? Maybe the first True Human was the bipedal ape who rose up from the grass with a rock in his hand, computed (without words, obviously) the parabola it would follow when thrown, and estimated the intersection of his rock’s path with the racing path of that tasty looking rabbit over there. Note that this isn’t the math of counting things, which Mannion unfortunately lapses into assuming here, but a different kind of understanding of the nature of motion that’s more physics than poetry (although I have noticed a tendency for poets to claim movement as an act of poetry; maybe scientists need to fire back and claim meter and rhythm as acts of physics and sensory biology).

But to return to the previous point: everything is natural, or nothing is. If we’re going to start labeling human specializations as unnatural, well then, singing ain’t natural. Dancing ain’t natural. Writing novels…what a weirdly unnatural thing for an animal to do.

All that stuff doesn’t just come “naturally”, whatever that means. People have to train to do it, they have to practice and practice, and there’s also an aspect of talent that you have to be born with. I can’t sing, unless you call off-key croaking “singing”, but I wouldn’t seriously declare that singing ain’t natural. Of course it is, because we do it.

Hey, who knows, maybe singing — something with a rhythm and tones — preceded language, even. Perhaps australopithecines got together in great choruses and hummed and beat drums and sang to express their mood, all while calculating what frequencies went together best to make pleasing chords. Don’t know. Wouldn’t past ’em. Humans are weird, and the first ones wouldn’t have been constrained by any expectations, you know?

So please, avoid trying to justify your prejudices by claiming your preferences are “natural”. It turns out we’re all capable of whipping that one right back at you, so it’s a poor argument.

But I do usually agree with Mannion, so I’ll conclude on one point we both share. He’s not a fan of the current STEM fad.

I hate the word neo-liberal. But I only know it as an online epithet. Progressives use it as an all-purpose insult for liberals and Democrats who don’t adhere to any point of their programmatic political doctrine, and as such it has whatever meaning the user gives it because it suits his purposes or feelings at the moment. Which is to say it has no real meaning. But if it does have any meaning in the real world, it’s when it describes the self-interested principle that social good is best achieved by letting capitalism take its natural course. If it saves money or makes money and some of that money is used to promote the general welfare, then hooray! And if that’s what it means, then our colleges and universities have become hotbeds of neo-liberalism.

STEM is a neo-liberal dream.

Promote STEM and the government will throw money at your school. Promise the kids good jobs and they’ll flock to your school and more government money will follow. Target minorities and girls in particular and even more money sluices in. And look at the good you’re doing while you build the endowment and hire more administrators. Those kids get a first class education (Never mind that most of their classes are taught by grad students and adjuncts.) and will likely get good jobs when they graduate. They’ll become productive members of the wealth producing elite and isn’t that the whole purpose of education and of life, in general?

I’m a STEM guy in a STEM field teaching students STEM who personally benefits from the parent/student bias for STEM degrees, but I agree, STEM alone is a terrible idea. We should be promoting a balanced education, where scientists-to-be need to learn some history and language and music and all that social science/humanities stuff. I deal with students all the time who regard all those requirements outside science and math to be a waste of time, and are focused entirely on zipping through their education as quickly as possible so they can get a job in a science- or engineering-related occupation. It’s a terrible attitude. Didn’t they pay attention to Alexander Pope?

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring

Oh, right, they’re STEM majors, and they would never even hear of Pope unless we forced them to take those literature courses, which they think are a waste of time. They don’t know what the Pierian spring is, either, because they’re all hoping to grow up to be David Gelernter.

You know Gelernter, the guy who might be Trump’s science advisor.

In Gelernter’s view, the future of higher education will involve a focus on STEM subjects while “throwing out” the arts and humanities. Online courses will become commonplace, but not without evolving, and students will need a “digital guides or mentors” to carry them through online education.

Degrees themselves will become a thing of the past, Gelernter writes as they’re “gradually be replaced by certified transcripts.” Rather than a university conferring the degree, a “transcript” — that is, coursework showing that a student has successfully learned a given set of material — will be “vouched for” by a trusted institution like a think tank, newspaper, museum, or research lab.

Jebus. Throwing out the arts and humanities is a great way to build a generation of short-sighted, unimaginative, uneducated blockheads who might be able to code or mix reagents, but that’s about it.

How about if we do it all, balanced and in moderation? Or would that be too “unnatural”, especially when it requires an alliance of mathy people and non-mathy people?

Thanks, everyone!

In the first 24 hours of our fundraising campaign, we’re almost 3/4 of the way to our conservative goal of $20,000. When we hit that, though, don’t stop! We set a goal to cover our current expenses, but we know more will be coming along, depending on how far Carrier wants to take his foolish suit.

It’s sad, too, because he has to be spending at least as much money on his lawyer, all for an unattainable award (he won’t be able to squeeze $2 million out of us; we’re operating on a shoestring as it is), on a journey that, win or lose, is doing a heck of a lot of damage to his reputation.

National Day of Patriotic Devotion??!? For what?

What the ever-loving fuck? Donald Trump has proclaimed that 20 January 2017, his inauguration day, is a National Day of Patriotic Devotion.

A new national pride stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart. We are one people, united by a common destiny and a shared purpose.

Freedom is the birthright of all Americans, and to preserve that freedom we must maintain faith in our sacred values and heritage.

Our Constitution is written on parchment, but it lives in the hearts of the American people. There is no freedom where the people do not believe in it; no law where the people do not follow it; and no peace where the people do not pray for it. There are no greater people than the American citizenry, and as long as we believe in ourselves, and our country, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion, in order to strengthen our bonds to each other and to our country — and to renew the duties of Government to the people.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand seventeen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-first.

That is totally clownshoes. It’s an utterly bonkers declaration. He’s saying that one day, 3 days ago, is retroactively a day we were supposed to be patriotically devoted? He decided this for us all on his inauguration day, but didn’t bother to tell us?

We are ruled by a goofy, pompous narcissist with delusions of grandeur. It’s an embarrassment.

Oh, well. It’s a harmlessly ridiculous act that does nothing but make Trump look ridiculous. It’s not as if he signed anything that would kill people…oh, fuck.

Say, hi, Mike Pence, you evil old asshole. Now you’re exporting ignorance around the world.

The ban, which was first implemented by Ronald Reagan in 1984 and has been enforced by all Republican administrations since then, has been called the “global gag rule” because it prevents medical professionals and aid workers whose work is supported by U.S. grants from even talking about termination as an option for women with unwanted pregnancies. The rule forces international aid agencies to make a tough choice: Either reject American funds and continue to give women accurate information about their reproductive health options, or accept American funds and deny women information about abortions they may desperately need.

This is nuts. That Women’s March was not enough: instead of peacefully demonstrating, they should have stormed the White House doors to tar and feather these patriarch wanna-bes.

Your word for the day

You should know this word, it’ll be useful in years to come.

claque |klak|
noun
1 a group of sycophantic followers: the president was surrounded by a claque of scheming bureaucrats.
2 a group of people hired to applaud (or heckle) a performer or public speaker.
ORIGIN
mid 19th century: French, from claquer ‘to clap.’ The practice of paying members of an audience for their support originated at the Paris opera.

Note that this is different from clique, which is “a small group of people, with shared interests or other features in common, who spend time together and do not readily allow others to join them.” While it is mildly pejorative, we all have our little cliques; very few of us are dishonest enough to pay for a claque.