Don’t try to tell me this isn’t cosmic horror

Rabbits in Colorado are being found with these horrifying growths on their bodies.

The scientists have an explanation: the rabbits are infected with a papilloma virus.

The cottontails recently spotted in Fort Collins are infected with the mostly harmless Shope papillomavirus, which causes wart-like growths that protrude from their faces like metastasizing horns.

Viral photos have inspired a fluffle of unflattering nicknames, including “Frankenstein bunnies,” “demon rabbits” and “zombie rabbits.” But their affliction is nothing new, with the virus inspiring ancient folklore and fueling scientific research nearly 100 years ago.

Yeah, right. It’s a coverup. The truth is that the rabbits were nosing around in a blasted heath, and…

They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large coloured globule imbedded in the substance. The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor’s strange spectrum, was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all. Its texture was glossy, and upon tapping it appeared to promise both brittleness and hollowness. One of the professors gave it a smart blow with a hammer, and it burst with a nervous little pop. Nothing was emitted, and all trace of the thing vanished with the puncturing. It left behind a hollow spherical space about three inches across, and all thought it probable that others would be discovered as the enclosing substance wasted away.

Run away!

I’m supposed to be on sabbatical!

Fall semester begins next week. That means that we’re having all kinds of meetings this week.

I just got back from a morning of meetings. Tomorrow will be worse: I’ll be in meetings all day long.

But wait, you say, aren’t you on sabbatical? I am, but it’s a one semester leave, I have to get back in the saddle in January, and they present a lot of new stuff at the start of fall term, including some significant changes to the Morris Core Curriculum, so I had to show up this week so that I’m not clueless for spring term.

It was not fun. I found myself thinking that Aristotle never had to count credits, but I’m feeling like I’m supposed to be an accountant, with 7 (or is it 8?) categories that students have to work through in order to graduate. We also were given a 10-page assortment of information that we must include in our syllabi…which has me wondering, if every single class every term has to include all this same stuff, isn’t that a massive duplication of effort? And are any students going to bother to read all this repetitive material, most of which has nothing to do with the content of my courses? Twenty five years ago, when I started here, every syllabus had a paragraph or two of boilerplate at the end, with a link to where the student can get more details.

Now the curriculum is a collection of fiddly little details and every syllabus has a massive addendum that dwarfs the actual description of course content.

Good thing I just have one more day of administrative noise, and then 15+ weeks of blissful spider research which might reduce my cranky surliness a bit.

But don’t count on it.

He’s useless

It’s cute how the awareness that Jordan Peterson is just a cranky, opinionated ass is slowly seeping into the general zeitgeist.

Don’t worry that this perception is going to hurt Peterson. I’ve found estimates of his net worth that range from $10 million to $90 million. He really should just sit back, hang out with his family, take long vacations, maybe get a hobby (spider watching is a good one). We’d all be better for it.

Kent-Meridian High School Class of 1975 50th Reunion!

One of the lesser phenomena of the summer is the blossoming of high school reunions. Remember high school? Or are you trying to forget it? I’ve been contacted by one of these companies that hosts online sentimentality about being 18 years old, and tries to organize these events where old classmates get together awkwardly to shuffle their feet and try to have conversation with people they used to be forced to share a room with lots of desks with, and try to reconnect and figure out what the heck everyone is up to now. That could be fun, I’m sure my peers have gone off in all kinds of interesting directions and I wouldn’t mind catching up.

The pressure is particularly high this year because it’s been 50 years. I graduated from Kent-Meridian High School, out there in western Washington state, in 1975, and that’s a nice round number, so of course we have to have a party. Unfortunately, I’m not motivated enough to fly 1500 miles to meet with people I’ve grown away from for so long. Why are we even doing in-person meetings for this purpose when we have technology that would allow us to have those conversations online?

Then I saw that there are two separate reunion events for my class this week. I realized that there are no central organizing principles behind these events — it’s just people stepping forward to host little parties called “reunions”. Hey! I can do that! So I’m creating an online event (like they ought to be) to talk about high school. Everyone is invited!

There are a few obstacles to doing this. I live 1500 miles away from my old high school, and I have no ongoing connections to my former peers. Also, to be fair, I was never one of the popular kids, and I suspect that most of my ex-classmates would say “who?” if my name were mentioned to them. It’s rather bold for one of the uncool, most forgettable students in the class of ’75 to have the affrontery to host a reunion event. I’m doing it anyway. I’m opening the virtual door to anyone who wants to show up and say, “you haven’t changed a bit, man” to some old guy and tell him about your used car lot/insurance business and hand out business cards.

I don’t care if you are a Kent-Meridian alumnus, or when you graduated, or even if you graduated at all. We can have a conversation about standards of public education, or popular ’70s music (we can be sad together about Ozzie Osbourne), or reminisce about antiquity, or whatever. Pester me about anything.

I don’t expect anyone from my high school to show up, and that’s OK.

(It’s really an excuse for a live stream.)

It’s a cult

That Tesla Diner in LA is rousing some controversy. There’s an apartment building right next door, and as this article describes there was a long period of loud construction, and even now there’s traffic noise. It has movie screens set up around the restaurant, which are actually gigantic electronic screens with loud fans whooshing noise at the building. It’s so unpleasant that residents have moved out, which is good evidence that the diner is not a good neighbor.

Except the article found one guy who is pleased to have a garish loud business next door.

“We see these people at 10 p.m. at night,” he said, “just happy, having their burger, putting some light show on in their Tesla and seeing some old school film. I mean, how can you not like that? This is the pinnacle of happiness and excitement.”

How can you not like a business next to your home that is open 24/7? I’m kinda doubting the honesty of this one guy. But you know what really bothered him? The protesters picketing the place.

The construction hadn’t bothered him either. “It was peaceful before until they showed up,” he said, indicating to the protesters, “I cannot sleep with this. And luckily, this is just for a short time.” He hopes the diner will bring more tourism to the neighborhood. “I’ve never seen so many happy kids and so many happy families,” he said. “I’m actually closer to buying a Tesla than I was before… Not because of Elon, but I saw the joy over here.”

What kind of clown wants more tourism to a residential neighborhood?

Think someone is sucking up to Elon hoping for a Cybertruck discount.

Happy day?

We had another storm blow through last night, and our basement is soaked. We might get some more thunderstorms today, but I think the worst is over.

But I think it’s going to be a good day because my role as the executor of my late mother’s estate is nearly done — all accounts and goods have been liquidated and turned into money in a bank account, and got the final distribution of that money to all of the heirs, so I’m about to sit down and do the final steps: accounting. It’s the final chore, so that’s good.

Today I just have to write a lot of checks — Mom had too many kids, and they had too many grandkids — double-checking sums and making sure everything is correctly put into a ledger. Then that stack of checks gets bundled up and mailed to our lawyer in the Pacific Northwest, who will then create a Declaration of Reasonable Diligence and the Declaration of Completion that will need my signature, and then he sends a statement to all of the heirs that I have done everything correctly, which the heirs must then formally approve, and then, finally, the lawyer will send them the money. Then I am done!

That’ll be a relief, getting that burden off my shoulders. Sadly, it feels a bit like my mother’s legacy has been turned into a few numbers that will be dispersed to her descendants, and will then fade away.

Time to turn into an accountant for a day. This is about the last thing I would ever choose to do.

It’s derecho time

A derecho is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system. Derechos cause hurricane-force winds, heavy rains, and flash floods. In many cases, convection-induced winds take on a bow echo form of squall line, often forming beneath an area of diverging upper tropospheric winds, and in a region of both rich low-level moisture and warm-air advection.

We were hit hard last night — our windows were rattling and banging with hail and savage rain smashing into our house, our basement was flooded, and the cat was stricken with mortal terror and freaking out in the house. We lost power briefly, and I notice some of the milkweed Mary is cultivating was smashed. No serious damage was done, fortunately.

Except…it’s predicted that we’ll probably get another one tonight.

True superheroes can resist the malign influence of plague rats

If alien invaders wanted to take over Earth, the most efficient strategy wouldn’t be to bomb things, or zap them with lasers; it would be to sow the planet with custom viruses that wipe out those pesky humans. To be really effective, they might want to indoctrinate the people psychologically to avoid basic prophylactic measures (this has already become a conspiracy theory). SMBC plays out this notion to its logical conclusion, and postulates that the triumphant survivors of this alien assault would be kindergarten teachers.

I support this conclusion. I think we ought to give all kindergarten and preschool teachers a massive raise, or at least issue biohazard gear to them.