Don’t they know that complexity can only be produced by Intelligent Design?

Complexity, complexity, complexity. This article sure talks about complexity a lot, but it’s all produced spontaneously by spiders.

Across 44 mating trials, researchers found males copulated more and faster if they produced complex signals in their courtship.

This meant mixing up the transitions between two noises, what sounds like a fingernail on a rough surface (aka ‘revs’) and the clattering of high heels on a linoleum floor (aka ‘idles’).

These signals are not only watched by the female spider, they are felt in the form of vibrations (as spiders don’t have ears).

In cases where the female looked especially fertile, as conveyed by her body size, successful male spiders stepped up their transitions and began improvising with patterns of sound.

The findings suggest male wolf spiders are altering their signaling complexity according to feedback from the females.

“We see that in lots of other animal groups, but people who work on other animal groups are often surprised when they see stories of spiders engaging in these sophisticated behaviors,” says behavioral ecologist Eileen Hebets from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

I think it’s a modern fusion, Jazz-Flamenco. The spiders I work with do similar sorts of artistic courtships, but it’s all about plucking strings leading to percussive massage.

We aren’t done yet

I don’t feel much of a call to celebrate the Fourth of July. That first attempt at writing a bold statement about liberty in 1776 was 90% hogwash, undermined by the hypocrisy of supporting slavery, and in fact, eventually jiggering together a federal government that was designed to prop up slave states and give them enduring power.

The rationale behind the Fourth of July was seared away in the bloody Civil War. That war staggered us a few steps closer to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people — slaves were nominally freed, at least — but it left in place the political structures that were built to benefit wealthy slave owners. We’re still saddled with an electoral college and an unrepresentative senate, and we’ve added more biases that cripple our politics, such as laws that have turned elections into competitions in burning money, with corporations chortling as they contribute to the bonfire.

The date is still a good marker, though. In that Civil War, the climactic battle that broke the slave-owner army was the battle of Gettysburg, fought on July 1-3, 1863. We staved off the threat of total capitulation to an unmistakably authoritarian, aristocratic oligarchy at that time, although the failure to address the shortcomings of American government has crept back strongly. At least we had that moment in 1863, though. We here in Minnesota hold a relic of that war. That Virginia battle flag above.

Marshall Sherman was a 40-year-old house painter in St. Paul when he joined the 1st Minnesota Infantry as a private in the Union army. Described as a soft-spoken gentleman in historical accounts, Sherman fought in the Battle of Gettysburg alongside the rest of the 1st Minnesota.

This brutal confrontation became the site of the highest number of casualties of the Civil War. One Union soldier from Minnesota described the Battle of Gettysburg as such:

“If men ever become devils that was one of the times. We were crazy with the excitement of the fight. We just rushed in like wild beasts. Men swore and cursed and struggled and fought, grappled in hand-to-hand fight, threw stones, clubbed their muskets, kicked, yelled, and hurrahed.”

On the third and final day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, Pvt Marshall Sherman took the Confederate battle flag belonging to 28th Virginia Infantry. After Pickett’s Charge, a massive turning point that led the Union to victory, Sherman emerged with the tattered flag. It was one of 25 Confederate flags captured by the Union Army that day.

We’ve still got it. The traitors who revere their ancestors role in the rebellion have begged for it back. They aren’t getting it.

Many Virginians became upset that Minnesota held on to one of their Confederate battle flags from the Civil War.

Roanoke Civil War reenactors who represented the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment officially asked for the return of the flag in 1998. They appealed directly to the Minnesota Historical Society, who then asked the state attorney general office for help.

Minnesota’s assistant attorney general denied the Virginians’ request, but the word was out. Now, Virginia’s state lawmakers wanted to get involved.

In 2000, both the Virginia House and Senate passed a resolution that formally requested Minnesota return the flag. Again, the Minnesota Historical Society refused.

On February 29, 2000, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura answered questions about the controversy concerning 28th Virginia’s battle flag. When asked if he would consider giving Sherman’s captured Confederate flag to Virginia, Ventura replied:

“Absolutely not. Why? I mean, we won.”

Ahead of the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg in 2013, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell requested the flag be loaned to his state to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton denied that request, saying that returning the battle flag would be “sacrilege” to Union soldiers who died in the Civil War.

“It was something that was earned through the incredible courage and valor of men who gave their lives and risked their lives to obtain it,” Dayton said. “And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a closed subject.”

To this day, the Confederate battle flag that Union soldier Marshall Sherman captured more than 150 years ago remains in Minnesota’s possession.

That’s the right idea, but we’ve got to do more. It’s nice that we’re hanging on to a symbol, but people are still flying confederate flags. Tear them down and take them home as spoils of war. Let’s move beyond symbols and tear down more relics of the 18th century, starting with our corrupt and antiquated system of government. No more electoral college, no more privileged Senate, no more lobbyists, no more corporate buyouts, no more celebrations of our deep flaws. Tear them all down.

That battle flag is just a token and an unfulfilled promise. Finish the job. If you want to keep a few souvenirs of the old wickedness, I think there is a museum in Minnesota where they could be stored, next to a shameful old flag.

COVID, COVID, COVID. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist!

First Dog on the Moon does adequately capture our current sense of the state of the pandemic, although saying “10,000 dead” is so quaint — but then, it’s an Australian comic. American policy has been so consistently stupid that we have over 1,000,000 dead here. Also, I don’t know what a “bbg*” is, someone will have to explain it to me.

The fourth panel hits home, too.

Do you know someone who has had COVID? Was it you? I was at a rare bbg* on the weekend with a bunch of scientists and only two of them had ever had COVID. WHY? Because they were animal scientists. They are only ever at home or in the bush pointing their fiendish science machines at unsuspecting furry animals or birds and then they go back home again. No COVID.

I’ve never had COVID. WHY? Because am only ever at home or in the field or in the lab pointing fiendish science machines at unsuspecting spiders. I’ve been scrupulous about social distancing and masking everywhere I go, I’ve gotten 4 vaccine shots, and while I had to teach a mob of disease vectors, they all had to wear masks and spread out (former university policy), and I took measures to move as much of my courses online as possible. That’s why.

That was at some cost, too. My big pre-pandemic project was to do community outreach and get a baseline spider population count in homes around here…well, that got monkey-wrenched hard by the disease so I’ve been focused on just the spiders, forget the plague carriers. And oh, man, all the work involved in transforming my classes, without compensation other than not getting sick!

Now all those protective measures have been torn down by my university, and I feel like this is the year they’re going to reward me for 22 years of service with a potentially deadly disease. They’ll be saving on pension expenses, at least.

Maybe we need to exploit Republican stupidity more

This is true.

A new Minnesota law lets people 21 and over buy and consume food and beverages with a small amount of hemp-derived THC, but some legislators might not have fully understood the bill before passing it.

The new law says food and beverages cannot contain more than 5 milligrams of hemp-derived THC per serving and no more than 50 milligrams per package.

Although marijuana-derived THC is still illegal in Minnesota, THC derived from hemp is chemically the same. Marijuana and hemp come from the same cannabis plant, though the plants are bred differently, with marijuana plants high in THC and hemp plants very low in THC.

THC, or delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, is the chemical that causes the high of marijuana.

They didn’t mean to. They didn’t understand the law they were voting on.

Minnesota state Sen. Jim Abeler, a Republican from Anoka, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune he did not realize this law would allow THC-infused edibles of any kind and thought it would only apply to delta-8 THC products.

No takesie-backsies!

Get outta here, Nancy

What bumbling, incompetent corporate lackey is in charge of Democratic fundraising? Fire them. Really, they annoy me so much. I get a flood of email from the Democrats, and it’s instantly recognizable, and it grates. They always put my formal first name in the subject line, like so: I don’t know what to say, Paul. Sorry. You’re not my friend, my friends call me PZ, and it’s not a human writing me anyway, it’s a bulk emailer. Call me “Mr Myers”. If you really want to suck up, “Dr Myers” is OK, but I’m not at all fooled that this is in any way a personal contact.

Then, goddamnit, SAY SOMETHING. This is the latest text.

I asked you Monday.
I asked you Tuesday.
I asked you Wednesday.
I asked you Thursday.
I’m truly sorry to ask you again today, Paul.

But my team just informed me we failed to meet yesterday’s FIRST End of Quarter Deadline since the Supreme Court’s ruling. I won’t sugarcoat this, Paul. If I don’t reach 1,387 more gifts before midnight to close the budget gap, it will be the single most devastating setback for Democrats’ chances of winning this election and protecting women’s reproductive freedoms nationwide. If you’ve been waiting for a moment to step up with $15, this is it, Paul. Can I count on you? >>

Paul, I just received an emergency phone call that made my heart drop.

My team just informed me that I did not receive enough support from Democrats to reach last night’s critical End of Quarter goal.

I don’t know how else to put this, Paul:

If Republicans discover we failed to meet our FIRST fundraising goal since the Supreme Court’s ruling…

They will take it as a sign that the Majority is theirs for the taking — and unleash every last cent at their disposal to seize power in this election.

I know I ask a lot of you, but this is quite possibly my most urgent ask:

Will you step up with $15 in this dire moment?

I need 1,387 patriots to help before midnight to hit our End of Quarter goal of this pivotal election year and avoid a humiliating defeat.

Are you self-aware enough to realize that your opening is a confession that you’ve been dunning me for money? This is SPAM. It is a gross turn-off. All you’re peddling is fear.

Allow me to make a suggestion, knowing full well that you won’t read it, because while you call me “Paul” all you really care about is my credit card number: a fundraising letter telling me what you’ve done and what you hope to do in the near future would be far more inspiring to get me to crack my checkbook open. “In June, we proposed bills X, Y, and Z, and we got Y passed. In July, we’re going to push hard for Z, and we’re revising X.” You know, that sort of thing would impress me. Can it with the fear-mongering to try and get confused old senior citizens to part with cash. Also, stop over-using my first name. You’re wearing it out.

I’m afraid, though, if the Democrats got honest about their accomplishments, they’d be talking about their vacations and cocktail parties and schmoozing with lobbyists.

Anyway, mail from Nancy Pelosi is now blocked.

Next, rage

Next week, our monthly Podish Sortacast will tackle a hot-button issue: abortion. We’ve got a doctor, a biologist, and a whole swarm of people here who will happily defend the medical procedure and castigate the people who oppose it. Should be fun. I’ll be sure to take my blood pressure medicine beforehand.

Democrats can’t even compromise competently

He’s laughing at you, Joe.

This is the deal.

President Joe Biden struck a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to nominate Chad Meredith, a Republican anti-abortion advocate, to a federal judgeship on the Eastern District of Kentucky, Slate has confirmed. Under the arrangement, Meredith would take the seat currently occupied by Judge Karen Kaye Caldwell, a George W. Bush nominee. Caldwell submitted her move to senior status on June 22, which, once complete, will allow Meredith to take the seat. A lawyer with connections to the Kentucky governor’s office who is familiar with the agreement told Slate that Caldwell conditioned her move upon the confirmation a successor—specifically, the conservative Meredith. In exchange, McConnell will allow Biden to nominate and confirm two U.S. Attorneys to Kentucky.

In return for appointing two term-limited attorneys to the state of Kentucky, Joe Biden will allow one fanatical wingnut anti-choice lifetime appointment of a federal judge. I’ve seen this move before. Two tens for a five, Joe?

The pandemic is/is not over

I know everyone is acting as if it’s won and done, but it isn’t.

The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 18% in the last week, with more than 4.1 million cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization.

The U.N. health agency said in its latest weekly report on the pandemic that the worldwide number of deaths remained relatively similar to the week before, at about 8,500. COVID-related deaths increased in three regions: the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Americas.

It’s annoying how the people who actually know the science are saying one thing, while politics is pretending the opposite.

“This pandemic is changing, but it’s not over,” Tedros said this week during a press briefing. He said the ability to track COVID-19’s genetic evolution was “under threat” as countries relaxed surveillance and genetic sequencing efforts, warning that would make it more difficult to catch emerging and potentially dangerous new variants.

Here’s a fun one. I want to know what reasonable precautions I can take in my classes, but here’s how my university dodges the issue:

So sure, you can ask your students and colleagues to take reasonable action to protect you and each other, but they are allowed to ignore you, and you will respect their decision to endanger everyone’s health.

Great. This is going to be the year I get COVID. Hope I don’t die!

I waded through the filth so you don’t have to

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Kent Hovind, creationist, is bad enough, but Kent Hovind, groomer, is enough to disgust anyone. There have been some developments in the revelations about what goes on at Dinosaur Adventure Land. Unfortunately, no one involved in discussing the story can write, so you have to sit through long rambling videos to extract the facts.

I’ll spare you that. If you must drill down through the slime, there’s a video on YouTube by Cindi Lincoln (Hovind’s ex-wife) and another on UGetTube, a right-wing conspiracist site, by a YEC who doesn’t like Hovind. I had to sit through a commercial for MyPillow to see that one.

OK, here’s the short summary. Kent Hovind has a good buddy named Chris Jones — they’ve been friends for 30 years, Hovind says — who showed up at DAL with a young boy in tow. The problem: Chris Jones has been “convicted on multiple charges of lewd acts against minors” and is on a sex offender registry. The kid is not related to Jones.

Normal people in that situation would ask many pointed questions of their pedophile friend and would call the police. No, not Kent Hovind! He says the charges against Jones were trumped up, just like the charges against him that put him in jail for ten years. Most of us would be extremely suspicious of a convicted pedophile showing up with an 11 year old boy, but what Kent did instead was put the man and his mysterious child in an empty house, with nothing but a mattress on the floor, for 5 days.

And then the kid disappears. People are looking for him, but Kent says it’s fine, his pedophile friend had the permission of the child’s mother to take charge of him. Now he’s been found, and his mother is grateful for the return of her boy, and has reported Chris Jones to the police.

Hovind still defends Jones. He went on the awful Brett Keane YouTube show to protest his innocence, and in the process, admit that he put a convicted child molester and a child in a house, unsupervised.

Does evangelical Christianity have the molestation of children as one of its precepts? Get out while you can!

Another development: the boy is pressing charges against Chris Jones, so Kent Hovind calls him a “moron”. Not Jones, his victim.

His heart’s desire!

Jordan Peterson announced a while back that he was leaving Twitter for good. Strangely, he was back to posting frantically only a few hours after that.

You’d think a psychologist would be able to recognize an addiction when he sees one.

Anyway, now Twitter has suspended his account. Over this:

I’ve had people try to tell me that Peterson is not transphobic –he’s just highly principled and dedicated to the ideals of free speech. That tweet was just hate and disgust and contempt for others. So much for admirable principles.

He’s been off Twitter for a couple of days. His daughter is begging Elon Musk to help him. He might be able to console himself with his new ticket to the right-wing gravy train.

Peterson, who joined the staff of conservative podcast outlet Daily Wire on Thursday, is infamous for his anti-trans stance. He once claimed on Joe Rogan’s podcast that being transgender is a result of a “contagion” and similar to “satanic ritual abuse.”