TREASON

Ilhan Omar is writing up articles of impeachment, which is fine, but far too polite.

Meanwhile…

Pence has issued his own statement saying that “those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” However, that also remains to be seen. Having gathered his followers together under the promise of a “wild” time; having spent months inflaming them with lies about a stolen election; and having spent years teaching his followers to disregard every other source … there is every reason to expect that, far from prosecuting the terrorists, Trump will issue a blanket pardon.

At 4 PM EST, President-elect Joe Biden issued a statement in which he said: “This is not protest. It is insurrection.” He called on Trump to go on national television and end this attempted overthrow of the nation.

Fifteen minutes later, Trump issued a statement to the terrorists saying: “I love you. You’re very special. I know how you feel.” In the video, Trump continued to insist that the election was stolen and he won in a landslide.

Trump did say for terrorists to “go home in peace.” That’s one hell of a lot different from “prosecuted the fullest extent of the law.”

Twitter has suspended the account of the criminal-in-chief for 12 hours, which is rather pathetic.

Trump has committed and incited treason against the United States. The police have arrested 13 or 14 rioters; I’d be content if it were just one. They should walk in, arrest Trump, and drag him out in handcuffs. That is the only appropriate response to this level of treason.

Lunchtime in the lab

Not for me, of course — people don’t eat food in the lab — but for the adorable baby spiders, who got some delicious live flies and immediately wrapped them up and sucked their brains out. I’ve got two photos of two different spiders that adopted remarkably similar feeding behaviors, biting their prey in the head and slurping up their juices.

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What is this mania about “cancel culture”?

Not Rowan Atkinson, too?

In an interview with the Radio Times, the multi-hyphenated British star blamed social media platforms for increased levels of polarization, which he said makes him fearful for the future of freedom of speech.

“The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society. It becomes a case of either you’re with us or against us. And if you’re against us, you deserve to be ‘cancelled’,” Atkinson said.

“It’s important that we’re exposed to a wide spectrum of opinion, but what we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn. So it is scary for anyone who’s a victim of that mob and it fills me with fear about the future.”

Tell me, who has been cancelled? It seems to me that what this paranoia is all about is that some people who are dependent entirely on their personal popularity with the citizenry are pleased to have a label to tag on the phenomenon of losing that popularity. It’s not their fault — whether it’s just that their 15 minutes are up, or that their creepiness is publicly exposed, or that someone finds out they are a racist or a pedophile — no, none of that. It’s entirely due to a wicked external force, “Cancel Culture”, that is targeting them for destruction for arbitrary and unfair reasons. So Louis CK might have been exposing himself and masturbating in front of women, but nobody would have known that if Cancel Culture hadn’t revealed that. Milo Yiannopoulos might have been frolicking with Nazis and babbling about how molesting children is OK, but the only way you knew that was because Cancel Culture was picking on him.

It’s as if they’re only now noticing that popular opinion is fickle, and yes, people will decide whether they like you on your personal opinions and behavior. This is the human condition. And if your entire career rests completely on your popularity, there will be ups and downs, and you can thoroughly trash your own reputation without any external agent doing any conspiratorial work against you.

It’s also nothing new. Was Fatty Arbuckle a victim of Cancel Culture? I’ll concede that Julius Caesar definitely was, but if you haven’t been stabbed, you can stop complaining. Critics can be obnoxious, but they’re not Culture Assassins.

It’s a ridiculous invention, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Go ahead, tell me that Louis CK and Milo were victims of “Cancel Culture” — it won’t make a bit of difference in my opinion of them. I don’t like what they did or said, and I can choose not to support them. The fact that I might not like you does not mean that I have a “simplistic, binary view of society” — I can be looking at you with all kinds of nuance, recognizing that you’ve done some good work, that you’re kind to dogs, that your mother loves you, but if you’re also a misogynist I can still decide that, on balance, I’d rather not associate with you. I’ve enjoyed Rowan Atkinson’s comedy, but at the same time I can think he’s being a bit of a dumbass right now. Do these whiners about an imaginary Cancel Culture hiding under their bed want to take my choice away from me?

You want more good news?

OK, I can do that. Today is the day the final nail gets pounded into Trump’s coffin.

Vice President Pence and his team have huddled for hours with the Senate parliamentarian. They have studied historical examples of other vice presidents who have presided over election results.

And they have begun anticipating the ire of President Trump — likely to come in the form of angry tweets — in the aftermath of Wednesday’s certification of the electoral college vote count before a joint session of Congress.

The role of Pence, who will preside over the certification, is largely ceremonial, one of the few official duties of the vice president in his capacity as president of the Senate. But Trump’s continued and baseless insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election has thrust Pence into a vise between the Constitution he swore to uphold and the president he has promised his fealty.

Oooh, “angry tweets”. That’s what the wrath of Trump has been reduced to. This act by Pence is also his final doom — he sold his soul to Trump, and now this is what he looks like to the rest of the world.

Pence’s performance Wednesday in the Senate chamber will serve as a fitting coda for a vice president who — through a combination of deference, obsequiousness and studied self-effacement — has made navigating the whims and loyalty requirements of his mercurial boss a full-time pursuit.

Go find a nice hammock in rural Indiana, go to church a couple of times a week, and relax for the rest of your life. Your political influence has been snuffed out, Mike. Mr Obsequious. Mr Deference. Mr Spineless.

You might want a good solid fence and a couple of bodyguards, Mr Chickenshit, because the former president is going to sic the right-wing goons you spent the last four years enabling after you.

Good news/bad news

You get the good news first.

  • Warnock has definitely defeated Loeffler in Georgia.
  • Ossoff has a strong lead over Perdue that will probably strengthen as mail-in votes are counted.
  • Democrats will gain control of the Senate, narrowly.
  • Moscow Mitch’s stranglehold will be broken.

Now the bad news.

  • These were close races. Almost half the voting citizens of Georgia voted for two rabidly conservative, corrupt Republicans.
  • The Democrats are a conservative party, just less mad than the Republicans. Don’t expect rapid advancement of progressive legislation.
  • The Blue Dog will have his day. The Democrats will be trying to appease Joe Manchin, the West Virginia DINO, so that he doesn’t defect to the other party.

It’s going to be interesting. Watch the Democrats drag their heels over doing the right thing over and over again, and then watch them lose in the next round of elections. At least they won’t be able to hide their sympathies anymore!

COVID-19 vaccine is available in Morris!

Good news! Of course, then I looked at the priority rankings.

  • Rank 1a are health care providers and nursing home residents.
  • 1b are essential workers (police, fire, teachers, etc.) and those over 75. (this might be me.)
  • 1c are those older than 65 and with underlying conditions.

I suspect I might be in 1b, although I don’t get exposed to as many people as public school teachers.

My wife is in none of the above, which does not make me happy. I suppose if I had the opportunity, I’d get the shot before my wife, with the understanding that I’ll be locking her in the house and doing all the shopping until they give it to her.

A mundane cleaning day

Did you know classes start in 2½ weeks? It’s astounding; Time is fleeting; Madness takes its toll…but rather than doing the time warp, unfortunately, I spent several hours doing basic custodial work in the lab. First, a colleague and I scrubbed up the cell biology lab, shuffling computers into storage and putting away glassware, because that space will be used for a different course Spring semester. It’s tidy! And shiny!

Then I went into my lab, which is cluttered and grimy, and I need to make a few trips to a dumpster and polish up a whole lot of stuff — the sink is piled high with empty spider vials that need washing, for one thing. Today I set aside all the menial labor, though, and instead dismantled my microscope and cleaned up all the optics. That was fun! I may do it again tomorrow!

The filth wasn’t as bad as I feared, fortunately. One glass surface had accumulated a bit of dust and grime, and was fairly easy to wipe clean. I did have to take apart a few subassemblies, but thankfully, good German engineering made it easy.

I had to test it out with a few photos, but whereas the engineering was cooperative, the spiders were not. The entire interior of their condo cube was an intricate network of spider webs everywhere, so opening up the cube always tore their webs, making the kids frantic and excited, so they were mostly unwilling to sit still for their portrait.

I put a sample spider photo below the fold, and you’ll see what I mean — it’s all criss-crossed with silk, and I played a few lighting games to make it visible. Also note that the image is much, much better than the last spider photo I posted here.

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I’m adding Bang to my collection of rage-emailing punctuation!

Some people are just obsessed. There’s one who goes on sporadic binges of email — I’m calling him Bang, because of his fondness for exclamation points, but I’ll spare you his real name. He apparently had some time off for New Year’s and chose to send me a string of messages. These are all from 3 days around New Year’s Eve.

Ahmad Al-Qloushi, Steven Hinkle, Jonathan Bean and Sukhmani Singh Khalsa
The four individuals above were targeted by the leftist censors and thought police that you claim don’t exist. I suggest you look them up. Maybe you already have! I doubt you’ll acknowledge them though! You ignored the ordeal of Brett Weinstein and his wife Heather Hadley when it was brought up to you by his brother on Twitter, falsely accusing them of lying! It just like how Ray Comfort ignores the evidence for evolution when it is presented to him!

Nope, sorry, I don’t know any of those people, and I’m not really interested in looking them up, especially after seeing the names of all the other people he thinks are just ducky.

The Only Bigot is you, asshole!
How dare you call Ben Shapiro and David French bigots PZ! After you called Michael Nugent the Irish Wanker! After you claimed that conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals were all dishonest frauds, said that they didn’t think but clung to prejudices and demanded people accept them! After you said falsely that Regressive left was created by rightwingers who were all terrible! Maajid Nawaz, a liberal Muslim invented the term Skunkwipe! After you slimed Sam Harris as a right wing neocnservative, and said such people should be removed from the atheist movement!
After you banned a man for criticizing commenters that used the words Honkey, Hetero, and Straighty Mcstraighterson!

Wait, what? I had to look that one up, and found a thread where I did ban someone…for consistently defending racists. Someone hasn’t changed.

It’s a thread from 2013. He’s been stewing over this for over 7 years.

Tiredness
I’m tired of you P.Z you asshat! I’m tired of your lies, misrepresentation, defamation, Blancophobia, Ameriphobia, Androphobia, violent statements, anti-police hatred, anti-capitalist claptrap, and especially you thinking you can disqualify someone from the atheist movement because their politics don’t match yours. I’m also sick of you ignoring facts that contradict your leftist worldview. Like that people who challenge leftist orthodoxy in universities are persecuted. Peter Ridd, Brett Weinstein, James Damore, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bruce Giley, and many others have suffered because of communist, socialist, thought policemen like you! I’m sorry I ever liked you PZ! You’re not tired of me, if your were you wouldn’t keep mentioning me on your site! Why haven’t you posted any of my other emails on Pharyngula! That one you listed in September 2020 was posted ages ago, and I’ve sent many more! Including a response to you and the commenters who insulted me when you first posted about me! That by the way wasn’t even the first one I sent you! The first I sent was about Sam Harris and how he wasn’t right wing, or a neoconservative, that Greenwald didn’t dismantle him, that he responded to Greenwald’s screed, and that you had no right to deceive who could and couldn’t be apart of the atheist movement. Are you afraid of my criticism, you Skunkwipe?!

Gosh, he used to like me? I’m blushing.

Yes, I mentioned him and his incessant, over-the-top ranting emails once before. That doesn’t mean I “keep mentioning” him — every thread about conservative racists isn’t actually about Bang. Yes, he does send a lot of angry email, as he admits, it’s just that it gets filed in spam and I only notice every once in a while.

If Bang is tired of me, there’s an easy solution: stop reading my stuff. I’m actually easy to avoid.

Defamation= Lawsuit

If you ever defame me, PZ,nthe way you’ve defamed Harris, Condell, Luciano, Knight, Mehta, Coyne, Ali, Mason, Dawkins, Hitchens, Ngo, Saad, and numerous others, I will sue you so bad that you’re grandchildren are going to need lawyers!

It’s hard to defame an anonymous email stalker, but I’m willing to try.

Your Awfulnes
PZ you defend Antifa’s assault on Andy Ngo, you misrepresent Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, you call Michael Nugent an Irish wanker and accuse him of defending a haven for rapists, you call for a revolution to erase the stain of America, you allow commenters to use the words honkey, hetero, whitey, and mcstraighterson, you brand all police officers as bigots, you brand all conservatives as dishonest frauds who don’t think, but cling to prejudices and demand people accept them, you slander Steven Pinker as alt-right and a right-wing shitweasel, and you have the audacity to call Smalley and Silverman horrible! Fuck you, modern-day Caiaphas!

Bang does have a talent for picking the worst. I mean, really, have you seen what Silverman has been up to for the last few years? Yeesh, after seeing the names of all the people he’s defending, I’m so glad to see I’m definitely on the opposite side of that rift.

Caiaphas, though? I’m not a high priest of anything, I have no power or influence — I’m just a guy who writes words on a blog — and I’d be curious to know who he thinks the modern day Christ I’m scheming to have murdered might be. It can’t be Bang himself, because I already crushed him and ground him into the dirt of ignominy, way back in 2013, and all he can do now is wail impotently, with lots of exclamation points.

So now I’ve got a Bang to go with my Comma. I need to collect all the punctuation! I want lots of angry, upset email from Period, and Semicolon, and Mdash, and Ellipsis…

Why are we dawdling?

This fellow is talking about containing the Ebola virus, but the basic lesson are applicable to all epidemics.

One thing he doesn’t address is another emerging problem: the longer you wait, the more you let the virus proliferate, the more evolution you get — the more opportunities for the virus to mutate and act as a shifting target. We’re already seeing COVID-19 variants. It’s nothing to panic over yet, but the longer you wait, the greater the opportunity for the virus to hit the jackpot.

When the virus wins, we lose, you know.