Justice only looks like chaos to the unjust

The Washington Post headline this morning was “Chaotic Minneapolis protests spread amid emotional calls for justice, peace”, and it’s illustrated with this photo:

I ask, where’s the chaos? I see a small group of calm people standing victorious before the ruins of a criminal enterprise. The people speaking for the community clearly see where the chaos was coming from.

“There are folks reacting to a violent system,” McDowell said. “You can replace property, you can replace businesses, you can replace material things, but you can’t replace a life. That man is gone forever because some cop felt like he had the right to take his life. A lot of folks are tired of that. They’re not going to take it anymore.”

That’s why, he said, “Minneapolis is burning.”

Chaos is when the people delegated to preserve the peace are murdering people in the street for non-violent offenses. Chaos is heavily armed cops oppressing the communities they’re supposed to safeguard. Chaos is the district attorney waffling over whether to charge a cop for murder when they have video of the man slowly throttling another to death in public. Chaos is the absence of justice.

This is Minneapolis, a pleasant city full of good people trying to get by. It’s not Gotham City, and it never needed a crew of Batman-wannabes to keep the peace.

My name is not Ernst Haeckel

It’s also not “Meyers”. As promised, Kent Hovind has uploaded his “Whack An Atheist – PZ Meyers” video to YouTube, and I’m so disappointed, since he didn’t whack me at all. He spends the whole time ranting and raving about Ernst Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law, insisting that any mention of pharyngeal structures in embryos is a lie, and that embryology does not support evolution. There are more than a few problems with his argument.

  • I am not Ernst Haeckel. He died before I was born.
  • I do not accept the Biogenetic Law, and no biologists do anymore.
  • The only way I teach the Biogenetic Law is as an example of theory that was shown to be wrong. I try to get them to understand that labeling something “theory” does not mean it’s infallible.
  • Conflating “gill slits”, a colloquial term for the non-respiratory pharyngeal structures of the embryo, with “gills”, is Hovind’s error, not that of any biologist. I’ll agree that “gill slit” is confusing term, but I haven’t seen it used in the scientific literature lately, so who cares.
  • That Haeckel’s explanatory theory is wrong does not invalidate the embryological observations of homologous structure in the pharynx of embryos. They’re there. Accept it.
  • The similarities in embryos are real, and constantly having to deal with creationists who think that they aren’t because one 19th century embryologist exaggerated and misinterpreted them is tiresome.
  • The similarities do constitute evidence in support of evolution. Again, interpreting them to imply a sequential, linear pattern of progressive change is erroneous. That would be a creationist flavor of historical change, rather than an evolutionary one.

Throughout, Hovind repeatedly challenges me and others to a debate. There’s a reason I’m not going to do that: Hovind relies entirely on strawmanning me, and I’d have to spend most of the “debate” trying to explain how he doesn’t understand evolution, embryology, or me.

Also, charmer that he is, references the fact that evolutionary biology is taught at Kent State, says “we all know what happened there”, and explains it away as thanks to the students being taught that “they were animals”. That would be the moment in any debate where I’d have to dither, trying to decide between walking off the stage or kicking Hovind in the balls first, then walking off the stage. It’s the eternal dilemma when engaging someone as vile as Hovind.

If he wants to debate anyone, apparently he really wants to engage Ernst Haeckel. Go to Jena, Germany, where he died in 1919. Bring a shovel.

Maybe the city deserves to burn

There’s been more rioting in Minneapolis, although I’m strongly suspecting that agents provocateur have been at work. Take, for instance, this fellow who was recorded leaving after some AutoZone windows were smashed.

White guy, all in black, with a fancy gas mask, smashing windows with a hammer and then immediately leaving? Sure, that’s normal. I do wonder if he’s a cop trying to stir up trouble to make the murderers on the force look less guilty.

I deplore the destruction of property in South Minneapolis, but even more I deplore the deeply-seated racism and violence in the Minneapolis police. If it takes riots to break the back of the criminal enterprise that we call “law enforcement”, let it be so. Let it burn until the moneyed interests that hold all the power realize that letting a goon squad control the city is not profitable, since that seems to be all they care about. Rise up, good merchants, and let City Hall know that these assholes have to be removed, the police have to be demilitarized, and there has to be a major change in how crime is controlled.

Stripping the police of power and privilege is a good start. My university is making a few changes in how they interact with the police. President Joan Gabel:

Today I am announcing two immediate changes regarding our relationship with MPD.

First, I have directed Senior Vice President Brian Burnett to no longer contract with the Minneapolis Police Department for additional law enforcement support needed for large events, such as football games, concerts, and ceremonies.

Second, I have directed University Police Chief Matt Clark to no longer use the Minneapolis Police Department when specialized services are needed for University events, such as K-9 Explosive detection units.

We have a responsibility to uphold our values and a duty to honor them. We will limit our collaboration with the MPD to joint patrols and investigations that directly enhance the safety of our community or that allow us to investigate and apprehend those who put our students, faculty, and staff at risk.

It’s about time that someone realized that the MPD as structured is a detriment to the peace and safety of our communities.

Also relevant:

I was in that store once before! It was strangely laid out, and it was awkward navigating in there, unlike the suburban Targets I’m more familiar with. That explains a lot.

Also important: the Minnesota Freedom Fund accepts donations to help bail out citizens held by the Minnesota Persecution Department.

A politician finally asks the obvious question

We should be asking this kind of question after every instance of police brutality. They need to be put on a tighter leash. Arresting the responsible policemen and charging them with a crime is a start…although even there, I expect our corrupt justice system would let them off eventually.

“Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” Frey asked. “If you had done it or I had done it, we would be behind bars right now.”

“We cannot turn a blind eye,” Frey said, calling on Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to file charges against the officer two days after the incident.

There is also a security cam video at the link of the moments before he was murdered, in which he is dragged out of the car and put in handcuffs. He’s clearly unhappy and distressed and is passively resisting, but there’s nothing in his behavior that warrants police violence or murder.

I’m getting whacked!

Kent Hovind has informed me that I’m being featured on his YouTube channel tonight.

Heads up PZ, every Wednesday night i do a “Whack an atheist” show on my YouTube channel kenthovindofficial and tonight, 5-27-20, you were honored as the self proclaimed atheist to get whacked. 😊
I would gladly pay my own way to come to Morris and debate you and your followers on the best three evidences for the religion of evolutionism or you can come to Dinosaur adventure land in Lenox Alabama and I’ll give you a tour of our science center and then debate you on my channel. Call 855-big-dino ext 3 to talk to me or ext 2 to schedule a debate or ext 1 to order my creation seminar series to learn real science and learn how to have your sins forgiven and become a child of God.

Ho hum. Should I care?

No, I’m not interested in his “evidences”.

2020 AAS Virtual Summer Symposium

Oh, happy news: the American Arachnology Society meetings were cancelled this summer, but they’re going ahead with the 2020 AAS Virtual Summer Symposium on 25-29 June. I can gladly do that! I’m an expert at sitting on my butt in my office staring at a screen!

It’s free if you happen to be a member of the AAS. Non-members can attend for the cost of a $10 donation to the American Arachnological Society.

The Mystery of the Old Gazebo

The other daaaay, we’d gone walking around the Pomme de Terre river, and just off the bike trail there is an old gazebo. It’s weathered, lichen-covered, and a bit creaky, but it’s also covered with spectacular orb webs, so we were curious to find out who was living there.

We poked around, and a couple of spiders scurried out, but I was baffled…the ones we caught didn’t look like orb weavers, they seemed to be Theridion, or social cobweb spiders. I guess they’re just lurking, taking advantage of any small prey caught in another spider’s web. The actual weavers of those webs couldn’t be found anywhere. I suspect the reason for that is that smack in the middle of the gazebo is a swallow’s nest, so any reasonably large spider is going to hide during the day an only emerge at night.

We’re tempted to revisit at night, except that another feature of the gazebo is all the hearts and INITIALS+INITIALS carved into the wood. We might interrupt more mammalian activity.

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POLICE VIOLENTLY RIOT IN MINNEAPOLIS!

No surprise, the police are violent everywhere. But they’re selectively violent, and it shows. When hundreds of unarmed citizens gathered to protest the police murdering a citizen, they got the usual response: police in riot gear marching out and hitting them with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Protesters filled the intersection where Floyd died, carrying banners that read, “I can’t breathe” and “Jail killer KKKops.”

They later marched to a police station where officers in riot gear confronted them and deployed tear gas and fired projectiles. As rain fell, some protesters kicked canisters toward police.

The protesters made the classic error of not showing up with shields and AR-15s and rocket launchers. If they had, the chickenshit police would have stayed in hiding in their station. It’s open season on peaceful protests, especially ones that criticize our thin-skinned cops.

Oh, also, they weren’t white. Terrible mistake. Never protest while brown, because the police are agents of a white supremacist government.

Yeah, but was it a radioactive spider?

Three boys in Bolivia found a black widow spider.

“Thinking it would give them superhero powers, they prodded it with a stick until it bit each of them in turn,” the official, Virgilio Pietro, said.

The boy’s mom found them crying, so she rushed the siblings to a nearby health center, which transferred them to a nearby hospital, Telemundo said.

They’re fine now. They did not turn into spider-boys.

Note that they had to torture the spider to get it to bite them in the first place. Don’t do that. Don’t blame the spider. The spider knows that with great venom comes great responsibility, and that boys taste yucky.