Bawbags?

I missed two concerts recently. The first was Roger Waters, who I did see last year, but he was in Scotland and so he had to modify his stage sets a little.

Heh. It’s not an slander, it’s true!

I regret not being able to see that show. I’m not regretting missing the one in St Paul last week, but we did get a glorious review of the Jimmy Buffett and Eagles concert. Read it. It’s one good thing to come out of the event.

Has anyone else lost all interest in celebrating the 4th of July?

I know I have. There is a lot of high sentiment in that ol’ declaration of independence, but 240+ years of this country failing to live up to them, and now deciding to just give up and abandon every noble principle expressed in it, doesn’t leave me feeling like commemorating much of anything.

This will be a good day for fasting, working, and watching the rain come down (it’s a thunderstorm day here in Morris, good for Nature for putting a wet blanket on the annoying fireworks.)

Please, stop with the goofy fads

OK, this is a weird one: getting a “pedicure” by putting your feet in a tub with Garra rufa, a small fish that then industriously nibbles dead skin away. That’s not a pedicure, for one, and two, it probably doesn’t do anything for you, although it does feed the fish, and three…your toenails might fall off, probably due to secondary infections.

The CDC has a few things to say about the practice.

  • The fish pedicure tubs cannot be sufficiently cleaned between customers when the fish are present.
  • The fish themselves cannot be disinfected or sanitized between customers. Due to the cost of the fish, salon owners are likely to use the same fish multiple times with different customers, which increases the risk of spreading infection.
  • Chinese Chinchin, another species of fish that is often mislabeled as Garra rufa and used in fish pedicures, grows teeth and can draw blood, increasing the risk of infection.
  • According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Garra rufa could pose a threat to native plant and animal life if released into the wild because the fish is not native to the United States.
  • Fish pedicures do not meet the legal definition of a pedicure.
  • Regulations specifying that fish at a salon must be contained in an aquarium.
  • The fish must be starved to eat skin, which might be considered animal cruelty.

Next step up: dunk your toes in a tank full of piranha.

What if we planned a sneak attack and a civil war, and didn’t tell anyone?

Except Alex Jones, of course.

Somehow, we antifa/commie/liberal Democrats are supposed to fire up this war on the 4th of July — in two days — and there has been no communication at all to us cannon fodder. But Alex Jones knows all about it! Apparently, it was announced in the liberal “Elite Publications” last year, but I missed it.

Anyone know what those publications are? Because I’ve also missed out on all of those.

Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to dig up my old uniform — birks, shorts, tie-dye t-shirt, and headband — put a flower in my hair and march off to San Francisco. Or wherever the old hippies have set up a staging ground. I wonder if we can get the Dead back together to play for the Revolution?

I guess I’m doing this YouTube schtick until my face falls off from decrepitude

I put up this video on my YouTube channel yesterday. It’s short, only 2 minutes long, and is a basic introduction to me.

I was asked why — I’ve been making videos for a few months now, years even, isn’t it a little late to be putting up an intro video? I’ll explain.

  • I started this as an experiment, just dipping my toes in the water. I had no confidence that I could sustain it. Now I’m feeling like, yeah, I can put out one or two videos a week, no sweat, so let’s commit to the long run.

  • I’m also getting more confident that I can get better at this — I’m not claiming I’m any good at it, but at least I’m recognizing where all the flaws are and can work on correcting them next time. It’s a productive exercise for me.

  • There’s a provision in YouTube for including a channel trailer, that is, a video that is shown to unsubscribed viewers when they visit. I figured I’d finally get around to filling that slot.

  • There are video creators on YouTube who are confusing — they have so thoroughly absorbed the internet custom of constant sarcasm that you don’t know whether they’re mocking a position, stating a criticism, or are occupying some undefined middle ground where they make stupid arguments with plausible deniability. I hate those guys. So I wanted to stake out where I’m coming from with complete clarity.

  • Another thing I’ve grown to detest: people with crudely animated avatars doing all their speaking for them, with terrible names, like “The Adjective Atheist” or “The Pretentious Modifier Skeptic”. I hate those guys, too. So I’m using my real name, and I’m going to commit to at least begin all future videos with my real face on camera, even though it’s not going to win me any beauty prizes.

So now you know. The beatings will continue until you appreciate them more. Sorry. But I’m doing this for me, not for you.

Speaking of ongoing suffering, I’m planning to subject you all to another “Ask Me Anything” hangout tomorrow, Sunday, 1 July, at noon central time. To get the conversation rolling, I thought I’d share with you a couple of mail messages I’ve received in the last month. Real mail! On paper! With stamps and everything! Also, they’re not all bad, but there are a couple of creationist doozies in there.

Shame on you if you use “Rate My Professors” metrics in your evaluations

Jonathan Eisen has been ripping on RateMyProfessors lately with a hashtag, #BoycottRateMyProfessors. Good.

RMP is a terrible source for any kind of evaluation of professors — it’s more of a place where disgruntled students can vent, which is fine. I do pay attention to complaints, since they’re information I can use to improve, but they’re more useful when they’re on an evaluation form rather than on a website I don’t read.

But there are two big problems here. One is that Google algorithms take RMP seriously as a source for information on academics.

But worst of all…the goddamn chili peppers. You’re supposed to rate your professors on their “hotness”. It’s flamingly sexist.

And before the sniggers come in about me being jealous because my students definitely do not rate me as “hot” — I’d be even more annoyed if they had put one of those stupid red peppers next to my name. Sorry, students, “eye candy” is not and never has been in the job description.

Here’s a really good summary of the problem from the person who started flaming those peppers.

Hank Campbell and the ACSH have bought out Scienceblogs

Oh, this is going to be an interesting conundrum. You see, good ol’ Scienceblogs magically reappeared on the internets a short while ago — you know, the original science blogging network that I was part of for so many years, that was then neglected, then transferred to the control of National Geographic, and then allowed to languish and eventually die. But now, suddenly, all of my old posts there are back again! Along with all those other interesting people who contributed so much over the years. Thanks! Nice to see it still exists, even as a dead, static archive. (But a lot of the comments on my site are still lost forever: NatGeo really botched an update shortly after they bought it out.)

But then to have it owned by the ACSH brings mixed feelings. You see, the ACSH (or American Council on Science and Health) is an astroturf organization, a pro-big-businees propaganda front, backed by the likes of the Koch brothers and other pro-industry capitalist shills, and I’ve said so. I’ve irritated Campbell (president of the ACSH more than a few times.

So that’s the conundrum. He’s now hosting my evil socialist anti-religious rants on his site (oh, and I don’t get a penny from that) — how long will that last? Even more interestingly, he’s now hosting anti-ACSH arguments, like this one from Mark Hoofnagle. Will the ACSH start deleting posts, or worse, editing them, now that they own the code?

It’s not as if I can do anything about it. It’s just remarkably sleazy. Unsurprisingly, since that’s been my opinion of Campbell for years.