No rest for the weary

Time to crash down into reality. Meet Bob Good, the newly elected congressvermin from Virginia.

You think electing Biden made everything all better? Think again.

  • Virginia just elected a Trumpkin. He’s going to be poisoning congress for the next few years.
  • He’s addressing a rally of unmasked people, not wearing a mask.
  • His message is that we have a very serious virus, but the pandemic is fake.

Huh. The US didn’t suddenly become smarter on 4 November. I guess the work has only just begun.

The Wall Street Journal opinion pages have always been garbage, anyway

In case you hadn’t heard already, the WSJ published an appalling bit of nonsense from a Joseph Epstein in which, for some unexplained reason, he decided the important issue of the day is to berate Jill Biden for using the title “Dr.” I know. It’s idiotic. She earned the title, use it. There’s a serious reek of sour grapes here, since Epstein has, at best, a BA. Nothing wrong with that, all of my students graduate with a BA, and I’m proud of them. If you want to see it dissected, with excerpts, here’s the summary for you, complete with summary diagram.

But here’s the deal: among themselves, academics tend not to use fancy titles for each other. We might use them when introducing a colleague to others (but see below), but many of us won’t expect it even with our students, or anyone else for that matter. That goes for all you readers, too — I’d rather you didn’t address me as Dr Myers. That feels weird.

One exception, though: if you try to tell me that you’re not going to call me Dr because I only have a mere biology Ph.D., then for you, I’m going to have to insist on the formality.

Also, these data bring me up short. There’s a tendency for male academics to be more informal with female academics than with their fellow men.

Wow. When women introduce women, they’ll nearly 100% of the time use their title; when men introduce women, it’s down to less than half the time. That’s simple misogyny, diminishing the accomplishments of women, which Epstein has to an extreme degree, but a surprising number of us men also share. I think I tend to get formal when doing formal introductions, so I don’t think I’m guilty of that, but I’ll be more conscious of the problem in the future. I wouldn’t want to Joey Epstein myself, you know. No one wants that.

The Martian Odyssey concludes

The Bolingbrook Babbler has the final episode of our story chain, and it’s epic!

I did the first link in the chain, and I have to apologize to the other authors — I stuffed far too much into the intro, which meant everyone else had to load up even more into theirs, which meant that to have freedom for creative elaboration the whole story just expanded to an intimidating degree. Everyone did great, but I made them all work so hard. We’re bouncing around ideas for future story chains that will be much more light.

The sound of spiders feeding

The campus is dead quiet right now. The parking lot is empty. Offices are all closed. When you walk in, if you’re attentive, you might hear the constant faint hum of the air conditioning system in the science building, but your brain will tune that out after a short while.

The noisiest part of the feeding are the flies. You dump them from their bottle into a plastic cup; it sounds like rain as they tumble in. Then they scurry about frantically with a chitinous rustle, a distant shshshshsh from the cup. You turn to the vials of spiders and uncap them all. There is no sound, no movement. The dead stillness makes you look in and wonder, “are you still alive in there?” You see the motionless plump bodies. They’re in no hurry. Spiders possess infinite patience. It’s in their nature. Rather than wondering if they’re OK, maybe you should be questioning your own lack.

You tap the cup of flies to knock them all down, and open the lid. You flick a few flies into each vial, 1, 2, 3, move to the next. The loudest noise in the process is when a fly drops to the bottom of the vial, tik, tik. Except that when they fall directly into a web, they’re silent…tik, , tik. For a while, you swish flies into all the spider vials, tik, ,tik, tik, , , tik, ,tik, tik, tik.

The sound of spiders feeding is silence. They raise their forelimbs like a pair of daggers, they slip quietly on silk threads to their prey, turn, and knit a prison with their hindlimbs. No noise at all. Flies trying to escape the trap are louder than the spider assassins, and they’re barely a whisper as they scrabble at plastic walls.

I had a pleasant morning in the lab today, if you couldn’t tell.

Republican is a synonym for Traitor

My local state representative, Jeff “Goose Poop” Backer*, was begging Minnesota to join in that ludicrous Texas lawsuit to invalidate the elections in 4 states that didn’t go the way Republicans wanted — you know, the lawsuit that collapsed yesterday.

Below is the letter I sent to our Attorney General stating our support of MN joining the Texas lawsuit. We must protect the integrity of this and all future elections to ensure your constitutional rights are protected. ~ Jeff
“Elections belong to the People.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
**********************************************************
Honorable Attorney General Ellison
I urge you to protect my constituent’s constitutional voting rights by joining the U.S. Supreme Court suit with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against defendant states that violated the U.S. Constitution during the 2020 presidential election.
The actions of these states, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, have violated the election requirements of the Constitution resulting in an illegitimate vote of the Electoral College.
Again, I urge you to join suit with Texas AG Paxton to protect my Constituent’s constitutional rights. His lawsuit can be found here: https://www.scribd.com/…/TX-v-State-Motion-2020-12-07….
Sincerely
Jeff Backer, State Representative 12A
701-361-1909

I am amused at the Lincoln quote — his goal is to erase the voters in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. I guess their elections didn’t belong to them. They belonged to the Republican party.

The claim that their position is the constitutional one seems to be a common one among the Trumpers. I don’t get how they can say that about 50 lawsuits that have all been dismissed by multiple courts, some of which were even rejected by a Supreme Court that has been packed with Republican troglodytes?

This episode has revealed once again the motivated reasoning of Republicans. Only votes for their candidates are valid, everyone must march in lockstep behind their choice, even if it’s someone as hateful and incompetent as our soon-to-be ex-president.

*He earned the nickname by opposing legislation to limit agricultural runoff, blaming the poisons polluting our rivers on the fact that we’re on a major migratory flyway. It wasn’t herbicides and pesticides we needed to worry about, it’s all the goose poop! He’s awful.

Another failure for Trump

That Texas lawsuit to invalidate the election results of 4 other states and just give the presidency to Trump? Rejected.

Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

Gosh. How will Texas Republicans react? They suggest that they and 17 other states should form their own union, a Confederacy if you will, and go their own way.

This sure sounds awfully familiar. The last time they tried that, it didn’t turn out so well for Texas.

Also, those 106 “congressman” [sic]? Traitors, every one. Kick them out.