Katherine Johnson has died

Aww, crap. I first learned about her in the movie Hidden Figures, which you should see if you haven’t already, where we learn that a black woman was a crucial element in doing the math that got men into space and to the moon. Now she has died after a long and distinguished career, at the age of 102.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Katherine Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, DC, Cape Canaveral, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission, from blast off to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to “get the girl”—Katherine Johnson—to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. “If she says they’re good,’” Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.” Glenn’s flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Katherine Johnson talks about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo’s Lunar Lander with the moon-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Satellite, and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after thirty-three years at Langley. “I loved going to work every single day,” she says. In 2015, at age 97, Katherine Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

Cruel, incoherent “activism”

I read the story a few times — it’s short — and I still don’t know what these “activists” were trying to accomplish. At the time of the Nevada Democratic debate, a group calling themselves P.U.T.I.N. (“Pigeons United To Interfere Now”) glued little red MAGA hats on the heads of pigeons and released them in Las Vegas. Why? I don’t know. Was it to protest Russian interference, to mock the Republicans, or to ridicule Democrats? I have no idea. It just seems to be a petty exercise in animal cruelty with no point.

It’s not even funny or clever, only ineffective and confusing. It’s a good demonstration that, while it’s good to be motivated to do something, some thought needs to be put into your plans and you must have specific goals that are served by your actions. Whoever pulled this stunt was heedless of the animals they were coercing.

When a righteous cause enables unrighteous behavior

I don’t even want to touch this story, but it’s a real problem. An organization to fight sexual harassment and abuse in the scientific community, MeTooStem, is facing a major crisis. One of the founders, BethAnn McLaughlin, has regularly antagonized other members to the point that they’re having huge turnover problems.

BethAnn McLaughlin, a high-profile activist against harassment and abuse in academic science, is facing calls to resign from the organization she founded, MeTooSTEM. She herself has been a bully, recent MeTooSTEM volunteers say, and has not addressed criticisms that led to previous waves of resignations from the organization.

“While I have worked very closely with BethAnn over the last year or so, I can no longer support her leadership as she displays behavior patterns our organization has vowed to fight against,” Teresa Swanson, one of three members of MeTooSTEM’s leadership team, wrote in a message to The Chronicle.

This kind of thing arises every time too much power gets invested in a single individual at the head of an organization — all people suck in one way or another, and putting them in charge without significant checks on their behavior inevitably leads to fractures. We saw that in the atheist movement, where even informally making people figureheads led to ego clashes and dissent; I think we can see it in the centralization of power in the American government, too (although I would not compare McLaughlin to Trump at all). Authority needs to be distributed.

Although this is a good suggestion, too.

One well-known advocate, Kathryn B.H. Clancy, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, suggested that there never was any need for a formal MeTooSTEM organization in the first place. “It’s a movement. It never needed a nonprofit or a savior,” she tweeted.

Sometimes a hierarchy is just the wrong method to use. Although other methods have their drawbacks — see Occupy, for instance — you have to have a means compatible with the end you desire.

You missed the party, but we’ve still got the hangover

Welp, we didn’t get the live YouTube stream of our celebration working, but Jason Thibeault was recording and has put it on YouTube now. One important announcement was that Allegedly: The Website is now up and running, which has all the information on our court case you could want. In particular, check out the timeline of events in the case — it has all the facts & details & links you could want.

Watch it now!

If you are moved to help us out, there are a few ways to make a contribution:

Ignore this if you’re not an arachnophile

I put more spider photos on Patreon and Instagram. Today’s subjects are members of the tribe of Pholcus phalangioides who are dwelling in my basement. They seem to have undergone a population crash recently, though, probably because, while it’s warm enough in our house, they’re probably getting hungry at the lack of invertebrates to eat here in the depths of winter.

The sad, pointless death of Mad Mike Hughes

I’ve mentioned Mad Mike Hughes here a few times before. He claims to be using a rocket to research “flat earth” hypotheses; every time I’ve mentioned him, I’ve pointed out that flying a steam-powered rocket to a height of a few thousand feet doesn’t test the hypothesis at all. Basic Research 101: design your experiment to discriminate between your hypothesis and alternatives. People fly as high as that rocket, and higher, all the time in commercial and private planes, and they do so safely with the leisure to look out the window. Professional astronauts go much, much higher (with more risk), and they depend on a theory of gravity that the flat earth loons have to deny. There was no reason to strap yourself into an amateur rocket and launch yourself to amateur altitudes.

Now Mad Mike Hughes is dead.

The death was filmed by a crew of ghouls from the Science Channel for airing on the Discovery Channel, along with their usual professionally filmed trash fires about the Bermuda Triangle, Ancient Aliens, and stories about the “Secret Life of Jesus”. He was encouraged by flocks of idiots who think the shape of the earth is an open question, who gawp and play stupid gotcha games, and who reject well-tested evidence because it doesn’t fit their hollow-brained theories.

They, and his own ego, killed Mad Mike Hughes. What a colossal waste.

The spiders are hiding on Freethoughtblogs, but they’re still around

I said I’d stop flashing spider photos at you all, so really, it’s safe to come back here if you’re arachnophobic. I still occasionally indulge on the Patreon site, and I just added a few this morning (I’ll put them on Instagram shortly). My model was the lovely Danu, a Parasteatoda tepidariorum I caught at Skepticon in Missouri last August. My lighting setup was far short of ideal, though, so I’m going to have to work on that.

Yes, I still have those St Louis spiders in my lab, they’re doing fine, but in the absence of St Louis males, are not producing babies for me. I guess I’ll just have to go to Skepticon again this year and find some mates for them. Maybe if you go to Skepticon, I can draft you to help!

Who’s been chalking our sidewalks?

When I walked into work this morning, I noticed something odd: all the sidewalk tiles were outlined with ragged, chalky lines. It sure was a lot of work to go to to get such a minimal, if striking effect.

The explanation was obvious (look at the top right tiles), and was clearer a little later when I came home. Melting snow and ice filled the cracks first, and then there’s a race between slow diffusion of meltwater and evaporation due to the sun, leaving precipitated salts at the leading edge of the front.

It looked cool, anyway.