Curious. I got up at a ridiculous hour again this morning, and cautiously walked into the kitchen. Why cautiously? Because our cat likes to leave us little presents, like a puddle of puke or a dead mouse. I flicked on the light and saw…onions. Onions on the floor, onions on the countertop, onions on the stove, onions in pots. The source was obvious — we had a mesh bag of onions hanging from a hook — and the material cause was clear — the mesh was slit wide open, from the knot at the top to the bottom of the bag. It was no longer a bag, but more of a useless mesh sheet. But how? Who, or what, committed the act of bagicide that liberated all these onions?

My first suspect is the evil cat, except that she has heretofore exhibited an irrational fear of the stove and the kitchen counters. The criminal mind is a superstitious mind, and she is definitely the kind of super-villain you’d find in a Batman comic book. But the bag was neatly slit, not raggedly torn, as a beast would do.

Also near the bag was a butcher block of knives that I’d sharpened to a razor edge yesterday. They must have played a role, somehow.

My keen deductive mind is forced to conclude that the cat, while practicing to overcome her fear of kitchen appliances, has learned to wield a knife and slash viciously at objects in her environment. That may seem unlikely, but when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth^*. I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on her now. First the onions, then the master, you know.

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^*By the way, I detest that dictum — it’s typical Holmesian illogical BS. You can never eliminate all the impossibilities, you can never even know all the alternatives. What if it’s something I didn’t even think of?

It never is.

Today I

• Assembled an exam I’ll hand out to one class tomorrow
• Put together a bank of practice problems for another
• Graded a bunch of papers…which I can’t post yet (I’ve learned that putting up intermediate, incomplete results prompts squawks of protest from the remaining students, who fear I lost their work)
• Got my lecture notes for class tomorrow together
• Posted the presentation for the class on Canvas
• Bought some supplies for this week’s lab
• Didn’t take a nap
• Neglected FtB’s Sunday social backchannel gathering
• Drank 2 cups of coffee and a quart of Diet Dr Pepper
• Sharpened the kitchen knives
• Made soup, it’s simmering right now
• Maybe I’ll get to bed at a reasonable hour and sleep through the night (ha ha)

Tomorrow, Spring semester advising continues on top of the usual workload.

Hey, this week is busy, but next week is only a half week, and there’ll be no lab! I’m going to need that to make it to the end of the term.

The TWO MILLIONTH comment on Pharyngula (caveat: we lost many comments in various moves, so really it’s the two millionth surviving comment — we practice natural selection on our commenters here) has been made. It’s here, and was made by the esteemed Lynna, OM in the Infinite Thread. Congratulations! Good work! Keep it up!

Sorry, I don’t have any prizes. Maybe I can save up for the 3 millionth comment.

All right, I’ve kicked prednisone to the curb, since it was magically making me wake up at 2am every morning. Now that I’ve been off it for a few days, though…I wake up at 1 am every morning, and can’t get back to sleep. Never again will I touch this poison!

To be fair, though, I think part of the problem is that the stupid ankle has slowed me down so much I’m not maintaining my usual level of physical activity, trapping me in my office most of the day. I’ve got this boat anchor strapped to my left ankle which simultaneously means I can’t get out much, but at the same time, I’m worn out from hauling it around.

On happier news, I seem to have successfully blocked our little troll. He’s now battering himself senseless posting one word abusive comments that get immediately whisked off into the spam trap. Seeing his frustrated futility cheers me right up. Also, my lectures are all prepared and ready to go for the next few days — I might be presenting them in an exhausted fog, but at least I won’t need to think too hard for a while.

I do trust the conservation of energy, and I do think evolved responses are often useful (but not always!), but most of all, I know that incompetent people can screw up badly. Recent example: leaving a loaded gun on a movie set. I’m not going to comfortably expect that somebody hung a massive object that could break my nose or worse did so correctly.

(Actually, I probably usually side with the engineers.)

I haven’t been following this Aaron Rodgers story much at all — he’s one among so many idiots who don’t know a thing about biology or medicine, but are so arrogant that they’ll pontificate foolishly about it and end up killing people. In this case, he’s a rich, overpaid, poorly educated professional athlete, and I confess, I find it easy to dismiss him as just a big dumb jock.

And then Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rises up and demonstrates that my stereotypes are false, delivering a well-informed smackdown to the stupid football player.

Unfortunately, the pandemic has revealed several athletes who abuse their position and responsibility, not just to the public, but to other professional athletes’ livelihood.

That latest egregious abuser is Green Bay quarterback and three-time MVP Aaron Rodgers who directly and deliberately lied to fans and the public when he assured everyone he was “immunized,” knowing that word would be interpreted as his being vaccinated. He wasn’t vaccinated. And he got COVID-19. And he went maskless during in-person press conferences, which not only violated NFL rules, but put everyone else’s health at risk.

Instead of consulting immunologists, he consulted anti-vaxxer and podcast host Joe Rogan, who also contracted the virus. If he ever requires open-heart surgery will he hand the scalpel to romance writers because they know about matters of the heart? While many who came into contact with him thought he was vaccinated, Rodgers had embarked on his own regimen to boost his “natural immunity.” He failed, as any scientist could have told him—and as they have been publicly telling us for over a year. University of Michigan microbiologist Ariangela Kozik explained that achieving “natural immunity” through these homeopathic methods is a non-starter because vaccines inform our immune system what the virus looks like so the body can build its own protection.

Joe Rogan…now there’s the type specimen of the big dumb jock. Abdul-Jabbar references that to point out that, obviously, some big jocks aren’t that dumb.

Rodgers’ ignorance regarding the science of immunology brings back to life the old stereotype of the big dumb jock. His utter lack of even the most basic knowledge and logic is shocking. In an effort to defend his lying, he stated, “This idea that it’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated, it’s just a total lie … If the vaccine is so great, then how come people are still getting covid and spreading covid and, unfortunately dying of covid?” Those two statements don’t even belong together. Statistics from many sources conclude that around 97 percent of those being hospitalized or who have died in the past several months are unvaccinated. The CDC found that the unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to die than those vaccinated. If he thinks that’s a lie, what credible evidence does he have? None.

And then — I did not know that Rodgers had been whining about “cancel culture” and the “woke mob”, but I am unsurprised. As always, though, the ones who whimper the most about being “canceled” never seem to face any real material consequences, they’re just bawling over their inanity being exposed.

Rodgers complained that the “cancel culture” was coming for him, but his own words cancel him as a liar and a bad thinker. If he had a principled objection to the vaccine, he could have chosen not to play, like Kyrie Irving, who at least is honest. What really sacked his whining stance was his refusal to wear a mask during interviews to protect others from sickness and death. That was merely his hubris and arrogance against what he called the “woke mob.” In this case, woke means compassion and responsibility toward others. He might also remember that the only reason he is able to play in front of crowds again is because all those suckers got vaccinated.

What will happen to Aaron Rodgers? Other than the brief suspension probably very little. He’s a valuable asset to a multi-billion dollar industry. The deal he signed with the Packers in 2018 is worth $134 million, plus the $9 million for commercial endorsements such as the one he has with Adidas, State Farm Insurance, and others. He has lost one endorsement: Prevea Health, a health care provider, cancelled their contract because his actions were contrary to their commitment to encourage vaccines to end the pandemic. When Rodgers signed with the company in 2019, Dr. Ashok Rai, president and CEO of Prevea, remarked at the time, “As one of the most respected athletes in the country, Aaron is truly passionate about improving the health and wellness of our communities.” That, too, turned out not to be true.

I can’t help but think of Colin Kaepernick, who was blacklisted by the NFL for passively expressing his frustration with systemic racism—a brave act meant to help his community and save lives—while multi-millionaire Rodgers will continue to play, despite lying to the fans and his teammates and putting innocent lives in danger. Time will tell whether Rodgers will be judged by the content of his character or the strength of his throwing arm.

I’m going to guess that the content of his character has just become a more valuable asset to the regressives.

My streak continues: 5 consecutive nights in which I go to bed, fall asleep, and then at between 2:00 and 2:05 am, my eyes snap open and I’m wide awake the rest of the night, although too tired to get anything done. I’m still kind of impressed at the consistency of this effect of the drug on my system. There’s also a bout of late afternoon/early evening shakes, but that hasn’t been as precisely predictable.

So now I’m being a bad patient and stopping the medication prematurely. I’m kind of curious to see what happens tonight. Does my internal alarm stop going off altogether? Does the clock start to vary? It’s not a great experiment, because the fact that I’m currently so dang tired is a confounding variable, but I do want to see the outcome. Unfortunately, I’d rather not do further experimentation along these lines on myself, so I’m not going to play with the variables any more. Student volunteers? The cat? Nah, that would probably be fatal to me.

We’re only a few hundred comments away from a nice round 2,000,000 total comments on this blog.

Of course, that number is totally fictitious because we lost over half the comments when NatGeo took over from ScienceBlogs, and then we lost a lot more when we ported over to this site from NatGeo, but hey, the round numbers are an artifact of using base 10, anyway. The current count is 111101000001010011000 in binary, which ends in a bunch of zeroes already.