It’s the 15th Annual Paul Nelson Day celebration!

That’s right, it’s 7 April, which is Paul Nelson Day! I figure I’l have an appropriately wild and festive celebration today by sitting home alone and grading papers. I’m planning to have an orange for lunch — I hope I’m not being too exuberant.

I thought I’d look and see what Nelson is up to nowadays. He’s still writing for the Discovery Institute, he’s working on another book, On Common Descent, which I doubt that I’ll bother to read, and no, he’s never come up with an adequate justification for the concept of “ontological depth”, which he claimed to have been studying empirically.

Just yesterday, though, he posted an essay expressing his gratitude to an atheist philosophy professor, Adolf Grünbaum, in which he is thankful for the methodological rigor of his training. That’s nice. I don’t think it took, though.

He gives an example of what he considers a flawed argument by Grünbaum.

An example: one day in class, Grünbaum was arguing that religious opinions followed geography and ancestry. One was much likelier to believe in the existence of Brahma and Vishnu, for instance, if one were born on the Indian subcontinent, and raised by Hindu parents, than, say, being born in Lincoln, Nebraska — which is true.

That fact is also irrelevant, however, to the entirely separate question “Do Brahma and Vishnu exist?” Moreover, as I explained to Grünbaum, my Jewish brother-in-law Avner, a theist, was raised in Montreal by atheistic, Stalinist parents who intended that Avner should also be an atheist who adored the USSR. But he didn’t adore the USSR. And he most certainly believed in God.

The statistical religious-belief-follows-geography-and-parentage argument Grünbaum was making, however, allowed for occasional outliers such as Avner — meaning that Grünbaum’s position possessed no predictive strength. The holes in his net of social statistics let any human counterexample swim right on through. Thus, Grünbaum’s argument said nothing definitive in any particular case, and since every human being is a particular case — that’s you, me, Avner, Grünbaum (who celebrated his bar mitzvah in a conservative Cologne synagogue), Stalin (raised as a believer who sang in church choirs and was educated in a Russian Orthodox seminary in Tiflis) — the argument just wasn’t very good, by Grünbaum’s own standards. One will believe in the God of one’s hometown and parents, except when one doesn’t. And therefore we’re back to square zero. Does God exist or not? Birthplace and parentage are irrelevant.

But Grünbaum was correct! He wasn’t making a deterministic argument that everyone born in India is somehow compelled by geography to believe in Brahma — obviously absurd because there are Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, and atheist Indians — and I doubt that he was trying to directly demonstrate God’s nonexistence, if he was as brilliant as Nelson makes him out to be. It’s also clearly not an absolute, fixed rule, so that Nelson can list a few exceptions is irrelevant.

This is an argument about epistemology: how do human beings know anything about the nature of the god they worship? What Grünbaum was pointing out is that our concept of god isn’t produced by an objective analysis of observable facts about nature, but is the result of influences from culture, community, family, personal subjective experience. Contrary to the beliefs of the Discovery Institute cultists, there is no god who left a distinctive and unambiguous signature on every living thing, and the basis of their belief in an Intelligent Designer is built entirely on bias, ignorance, misinformation, and superstition. Grünbaum was asking his students to question how they know what they think they know about deities, and to recognize that it’s mostly a product of local tradition, not divine revelation or measurable data.

I can believe that Nelson’s brother-in-law Avner was raised as an atheist and later became a believer, but that fact says nothing about how he came to believe, and trotting it out as if it somehow refutes Grünbaum is the real lazy thinking here. I rather doubt that Avner was floating all of his life in a total atheist void when suddenly, in a flash of insight, the entirety of Judaism manifested itself in his mind, and he woke from his godless dream in which the faith came to him to find, to his surprise, that an entire worldwide community of Jewish folk had independently come to all the same conclusions.

Oh, well. It’s part of the tradition of Paul Nelson Day that Paul Nelson will pop his head out of his burrow and make a nonsensical declaration that he cannot possibly defend. Yay.

Dang. I just realized that I don’t have any waffles in the house for the traditional Paul Nelson Day meal, and I’m supposed to stay-in-place and shouldn’t run off to the grocery store to get some.

Republicans using death threats to disenfranchise Wisconsin

I’m so sorry, neighbors to the east, but despite sensible orders to avoid congregating in groups, and despite the rising death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wisconsin and US supreme courts have decided that today’s election will proceed, and that you’ll have to congregate and risk exposure to a potentially deadly illness if you want to (checks notes) vote in a democracy.

  • The Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Monday to reverse an order extending the absentee ballot deadline for voting in the Wisconsin elections scheduled for Tuesday, stepping into a back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans in the state over when voting would take place.
  • Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, signed an executive order suspending in-person voting in the state earlier on Monday after trying and failing to convince the GOP-dominated state legislature to postpone elections until May. His order was blocked by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the evening.

  • The top court, in an unsigned opinion from which the four liberal justices dissented, reasoned that extending the date by which voters could mail absentee ballots “fundamentally alters the nature of the election.”

Some voters had taken advantage of the absentee ballot extension to vote by mail; those ballots will be destroyed, which is a perfect metaphor for how Republicans want to hold elections in the future. In an ideal Republican world, you’d all get to vote, but the electronic voting machines will, ummm, ‘translate’ what you selected into a ‘better’ decision, and if you use paper ballots, as we do in Minnesota, you’ll feed your ballots into a paper shredder rather than a tabulating machine.

Make no mistake, either: all of these decisions were made by conservative wankadoodles in our supposedly impartial, non-partisan judiciary. These actions are clearly and unambiguously the result of Republican corruption of the system.

I do appreciate the irony of a court decision ruling that enabling and encouraging more voter participation “fundamentally alters the nature of the election.” That’s not the American way!

Further irony: The Wisconsin Supreme Court met virtually to make this decision, because it wasn’t safe for them to meet physically. But they decided you peons must meet at the polling place to vote.

Can haz spider time?

I’ve been doing class stuff all morning. I haven’t left the house in several day. I haven’t fed the spiders in five days. Am I permitted to go into the lab for an hour or so today? I promise to avoid touching anything, to wash my hands thoroughly, and feed the girls with lots of tasty flies. And I’ll buckle down to more grading as soon as I get back.

They miss me. Or at least they miss dinner.

Viral dumping ground

Once again, let me get this out of my system, a dump of recent reactions to coronavirus news. Then I can just set it aside and think about more cheerful things for the rest of my day.

  • I am not at all a fan of Max Boot, who I consider an unpleasant warmonger with blood on his hands, but at least he gets one thing right: Trump is the worst president ever.

    So I have written, as I did on March 12, that Trump is the worst president in modern times — not of all time. That left open the possibility that James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding or some other nonentity would be judged more harshly. But in the past month, we have seen enough to take away the qualifier “in modern times.” With his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus, Trump has established himself as the worst president in U.S. history.

    Then he catalogs Trump’s lethally disastrous policies and errors.

  • You want more reasons? Do you need them? Where have you been? Just watch this nauseating performance.

    I’ve seen this before: the guy who hasn’t done the readings or the homework, called on to explain something, who then tries to fake it with a lot of oozing faux-sincerity and praise for the importance of the question, but who can’t actually say one word of substance.

  • How badly has Donald Trump fucked us over?

    Beyond the suffering in store for thousands of victims and their families, the outcome has altered the international standing of the United States, damaging and diminishing its reputation as a global leader in times of extraordinary adversity.

    “This has been a real blow to the sense that America was competent,” said Gregory F. Treverton, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the government’s senior-most provider of intelligence analysis. He stepped down from the NIC in January 2017 and now teaches at the University of Southern California. “That was part of our global role. Traditional friends and allies looked to us because they thought we could be competently called upon to work with them in a crisis. This has been the opposite of that.”

    This article, which retraces the failures over the first 70 days of the coronavirus crisis, is based on 47 interviews with administration officials, public health experts, intelligence officers and others involved in fighting the pandemic. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and decisions.

    You’ve got to read the whole long article to get a sense of how catastrophic this presidency has been.

  • Unfortunately, one of the major contributors to the ongoing clusterfuck is the pseudo-objective “he-said-she-said” style of journalism that has been perfected by the New York Times. Here’s a perfect example of a NYT headline.

    Look at that. The presidential authority figure says testing is fine, but everyone else is saying he’s wrong…so let’s lead with the ass-in-chief lying and make it a story about “he-said-they-all-said” and not offend any Republicans. Even when scientists chime in to point out that Trump is all wet, the reporters stick their nose in the air and ignore the facts.

    Let’s just move on to Yale epidemiologist/infectious disease researcher Gregg Gonsalves kicking the Times’s ass, which sorely offended one of the Times writers so!

    “Move along,” said the pompously wrong New York Times reporter to the infectious disease specialist from Yale.

    Newspapers have responsibilities to the truth. When the NYT ceases to respect that, it’s time to disrespect the NYT.

  • Guess who’s advising the administration on the pandemic? That quack, Dr Oz. Enough said.

  • You may have seen a map going around that plots the distance people travel in a day, showing that southern states in particular were particularly bad at limiting their isolation. There’s a reason for that, and it isn’t that Southerners are stupid.

    But there’s another reason that the red states are also “red states” when it comes to their travel distance. As former Obama White House official Christopher Hale points out, these maps correspond closely to areas that are “food deserts,” where the nearest grocery story requires making an extended trip. “Food deserts” is a term that is often applied to urban neighborhoods where good nutrition is outside of walking range, but these are counties where it takes an extended auto trip to find any kind of nutrition, even bad nutrition. Why? The simple answer is Walmart. These areas represent locations where big box retailers like Walmart have annihilated local grocers, and where the quest for an apple or a box of Pop-Tarts means crossing the county to a store that also sells tires, televisions, and potting soil.

    I’ve lived in one of these “deserts” where you can’t do anything without getting in a car and driving, only it wasn’t the south — it was in a Philadelphia suburb. We had the nice middle-class home in the development, surrounded by lots of other nice middle-class homes, and after we settled in, we realized that there’s absolutely nothing there but middle-class homes. You want groceries, or a movie theater, or a pharmacy, or even a nice walk in the park, you’ve gotta drive.

    This was a bit of a shock. I grew up in a small town where a kid could find everything he wanted in a short walk or a bicycle ride. We had just moved from Salt Lake City, and say what you want about Mormon Town, the city actually was extraordinarily livable and offered a variety of things in walking distance. These horrid suburbs…nope. Worst of everything. They’re designed around cars, and Walmart has taken advantage of that destructive car culture.

    Now I live in a small town again, and it is actually a pleasant environment. You need a car to get away from the town, but all your day-to-day needs are conveniently close. We don’t have a Walmart. I hope we never do.

  • Here’s Elon Musk a month ago.

    He got a lot of pushback on that, which crimped his ego, so he rushed to be the ever-helpful billionaire, you know, like the Elon Musk who threw together an impractical submarine to help rescue boys trapped in a flooding cave…that is, he made noise to make it sound like he was a good philanthropist. He promised to put his engineers to work making over a thousand ventilators that he would donate free to hospitals.

    Reality is less impressive. He instead bought a bunch of devices from another company, slapped a “Tesla” label on them, and handed them out…but they’re the wrong kind of ventilator. They’re not totally useless, but they’re also not an appropriate response to a need.

    The tweet features a photo of the “40 ventilators” Musk donated still in boxes labeled with ventilator company ResMed’s logo. Those 40 devices represent a portion of the more-than 1,000 Musk purchased from the San Diego-based ventilator maker.

    A closer look at the photo, however, reveals a device that is not the kind of ventilator hospitals are struggling to find. The American Association for Respiratory Care confirmed to FOX Business that the device is a “bi-level machine” traditionally used to help people with sleep apnea. In particular, the photo shows ResMed’s non-invasive, five-year-old S9 bi-level model.

    Is anyone surprised? This is another example of a billionaire posturing to get attention, but only delivering the goods that salve his ego, rather than what people actually need.

  • You probably don’t want to read this last link. A doctor describes the intubation procedure he has to routinely do to save lives.

    Usually, before this, patients would be on a vent for three to five days. Now we’re seeing 14 to 21. Most of these people have acute respiratory distress syndrome. There’s inflammation, scar tissue, and fluid building up in the lungs, so oxygen can’t diffuse easily. No matter how much oxygen you give them, it can’t get through. It’s never enough. Organs are very sensitive to low oxygen. First comes kidney failure, then liver failure, and then brain tissue becomes compromised. Immune systems stop working. There’s a look most people get, called mottling, where the skin turns red and patchy when you only have a few hours left. We have a few at that point. Some have been converted to “do not resuscitate.”

    I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get sick.

I am ashamed to make this suggestion

No, really, I am a bad person. I shouldn’t even be thinking this way.

If any of you are in Idaho, and you feel sick with COVID-19, could you give Ammon Bundy a big hug for me? You could also give him a kiss if you felt like it, or hug all of the other people there, or cough in the damn punchbowl, too.

Ammon Bundy, leader of the Y’all Qaeda militia that took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016 to preserve liberty and get lots of attention for fringe radical groups that want to overthrow the government, just wants you all to know that there is no “public health” in the US Constitution, just as there is no “public land,” either. That’s why last week Bundy held a “town hall” in a commercial building he owns in Emmett, Idaho, to announce that Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s stay-at-home order was unconstitutional and very bad. And because it’s Ammon Bundy, you know damn well he promised to get the ol’ Vanilla ISIS dildo militia together again and lead an armed resistance to defend anyone who wanted to defy the order, too. But that would only be if the government forced him to, by doing something he didn’t like.

Boise State Public Radio reports that the meeting in Emmett, about 30 miles northwest of Boise, was

like something from a pandemic safety nightmare. Dozens of people sit elbow to elbow, greeting each other with hugs, even posing for pictures with an arm around Bundy’s waist.

The small rally is also illegal, according to the emergency order issued by Idaho’s governor.

I only suggest it because obviously Bundy and pals wouldn’t be at all averse.

I feel guilty, though, because accelerating the spread of the pandemic is also going to do harm to innocent people in the region. So I guess you shouldn’t do it. Never mind.

I can’t even hope that one of the attendees was already infectious, because as much of that stand of weeds over there really deserves to be exterminated, you can’t control a wildfire by casting a blind eye on some of the sparks.

Who is paying for this “service”?

I find it hard to believe any institution is shelling out money for these authoritarian proctoring services.

When University of Florida sophomore Cheyenne Keating felt a rush of nausea a few weeks ago during her at-home statistics exam, she looked into her webcam and asked the stranger on the other side: Is it okay to throw up at my desk?

He said yes. So halfway through the two-hour test, during which her every movement was scrutinized for cheating and no bathroom breaks were permitted, she vomited into a wicker basket, dabbed the mess with a blanket and got right back to work. The stranger saw everything. When the test was finished, he said she was free to log off. Only then could she clean herself up.

“Online proctor” services like these have already policed millions of American college exams, tapping into students’ cameras, microphones and computer screens when they take their tests at home. Now these companies are enjoying a rush of new business as the coronavirus pandemic closes thousands of American schools, and executives are racing to capture new clients during what some are calling a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This is contrary to any good teaching practice. When your paranoia is so great that you no longer trust your students to learn, then you can’t teach effectively. What is wrong with the University of Florida, or anyone else who coughs up money to have strangers sit and stare at their students?

If my university required this kind of nonsense, I’d tell them to fuck off, no way am I subjecting students to this kind of humiliation. Fortunately, I think most of my colleagues would express the same sentiment.

Doing the right thing saves lives

I’m home alone and kind of miserable, but am willing to pay that small price if it reduces the death toll. It looks like Minnesota’s efforts might pay off!

When Walz issued the two-week stay-at-home order, the goal was an 80% reduction in face-to-face contact and viral transmission.

Modeling by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests this is working. Deaths so far haven’t been increasing in Minnesota at the expected exponential rate, prompting the institute to lower its forecasted COVID-19 deaths in the state from around 2,000 two weeks ago to 932.

“We’re seeing the impact of these measures and how early they are” put in place, said Ali Mokdad, chief strategy officer for population health at the University of Washington.

Meanwhile, a bunch of states with Republican governors are dragging their heels and killing people. That’s what happens when you belong to a party that ignores the data.

Dang, I’m surrounded by three of those states, Iowa, North and South Dakota. When will you guys learn: don’t vote Republican, ever.

We live in a country where Joe Rogan’s dumbass opinions are valued

We are so screwed.

For some reason, our media and many voters think it’s important to weight the opinions of some unqualified meathead named “Joe” — remember Joe the Plumber? — as somehow insightful or precious. It was one of Bernie Sanders’ missteps when he touted Joe Rogan’s endorsement as something worth promoting, when it was actually no more meaningful than a bird landing on his lectern at a rally. We should not be making racists and transphobes more prominent!

Rogan is a flittering twit who tries to pander to his audience of mostly young men, and who likes to appear as a radical with novel ideas. He has no coherent ideas at all. He previously endorsed Sanders, a democratic socialist, praising his consistency. Now he has turned around and endorsed donald trump, saying trump is fine with the pressure of the presidency, even as people are dying all around us from his mismanagement.

He also likes to pretend he is some populist voice-of-the-people, but look who he is talking to when he made this surprise recommendation.

Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital, wealthy privileged kook.

We should be saying, “Who the fuck cares what some uneducated jock with an online mob of sycophants thinks?” The answer, unfortunately, is our news media.

By the way, he said this in the context of not wanting to vote for Joe Biden. I agree with that — I think Biden will be a maintainer of the status quo, where the status quo is an ongoing catastrophe — but to then prefer an obvious con man and incompetent buffoon is worse. I have more respect for people who say they won’t vote at all than I do for anyone who votes for Trump.

Saturday afternoon creature feature? Sure!

Back when I was a kid, the local stations would have the creature features with the horror host on Friday and Saturday night, but they’d also show them on Saturday afternoons for the kids. It’s Saturday Afternoon. Are you ready for The Giant Spider Invasion? It stars, sorta, Alan Hale Jr. as the sheriff — he’s better known as the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island.

The first lines of dialog:

Young man: “Sheriff!”
Alan Hale Jr: “Hi, little buddy!”

Because of course they are.

Other notable facts: it takes place in northern Wisconsin, but none of the residents seem at all perturbed at finding tarantulas all over the place. Just the usual house spiders, I guess.

The big bad monster is cheesy and fake, but by the standards of low budget horror/skiffy of the day, it’s actually not too bad. They do a good job of framing it with the camera so you can’t see the puppeteers wiggling the legs and moving it along. I want one.

Also by the standards of the genre, they did an OK job imitating the chelicerae of a mygalomorph.

The story ends with an abrupt deus ex machina, but it’s really an excuse to show buckets of multi-colored goo and slime oozing out to an excessive degree from the dead spider puppet. Young me would have appreciated it.

Visit a museum!

That’s bad advice, since in my experience museums tend to be full of excited, eager disease-carriers — I mean, children — and a lot of museums are currently closing their doors and laying off staff. There are still museums with an online presence, though. Here’s a spider expert answering questions at the Burke Museum, and the Bell Museum has video tours of their exhibits. Tell your little disease-carriers kids to sit down and pretend they’re visiting a museum!

Hey, also, when this is all over, and when your finances have recovered…become a member of your nearest museum. They’re all hurting right now, too, and we should appreciate and support our local resources.