I get email

Seriously, people, I am so sick of the April Fool’s jokes. I just got this in my email.

Dear Dr. Myers:

I’m writing to you in your capacity as a biology faculty member at University of Minnesota Morris. I’m originally from Minnesota— I’m from just south of Mankato, and I’m a St. Olaf alum. Currently, I’m the Dean of Research at the National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, Oregon. My PhD is in Immunology, from the University of Colorado, and I did a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University. I noticed that you earned your PhD at U of OR. My partner’s daughter graduated from U of OR 2 years ago.

This past year at NCNM, we’ve launched a Master of Science of Integrative Medicine Research (MSiMR) program. It’s a 2 year accredited program that is a combination of an MPH and a Master of Clinical Research program. As integrative medicine is on the rise, it’s important to determine what works and what doesn’t. Our MSiMR students are building the evidence base for integrative medicine. We do applied, basic, and clinical research. It’s an exciting program that examines nutrition, exercise, behavior change, massage, herbal medicine, and other natural modalities.

In addition, the MSiMR program has the potential for international medical research. I personally have collaborations in Tanzania, Brazil, and Nicaragua, and will be taking two students with me to Tanzania this summer. Thus, students who are interested in global health may be interested in this program. I’m attaching 2 brochures so that you can get a flavor of the program.

I know Morris is a little out of the way, but I’m going to be in Minnesota visiting my family April 18th-22nd, and I’m happy to make the drive if you know of students who are interested in natural medicine (naturopathic or Chinese medicine degrees) or integrative medicine research. I interviewed at Morris when I was looking at colleges for undergrad. In the past, I’ve met with the pre-med clubs at St. Olaf, Gustavus, and Minnesota State Universities. I’d like to make sure that Morris students have the same opportunities. If you’d like me to give a seminar or an informal talk for pre-med or graduate school bound students, I’m happy to do so. I’m also available to drop by a classroom and chat for 10 minutes if you think your students would be interested.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best,
Heather

I am being teased. I would so love to have Heather visit my classroom, just to see the look on her face when the horde of students raise their heads, eyes all a-glitter, and smile and bare their needle-sharp fangs in those last few minutes before she is shredded. I suspect, though, that if I eagerly offered her access to the students, she’d look a little closer at the content of my site and flee like a tuna before the shark.

Have you ever noticed that real polymaths tend not to call themselves polymaths?

I was alerted to the existence of Jonathan Bishop on twitter: he is, apparently a super-genius who will “write papers on-demand” and “work with leading academics” in just about any field. As proof of his bonafides, he plasters a photo of him wearing a mortar board everywhere. I’ve got one of those goofy hats somewhere, I should start wearing it more often. So I’d look smart.

The hat is silly, but what he says is sillier.

I’d like to know whether HERV is linked to Lucy’s more rigid brain as I believe schizophrenia makes the brain less ‘rigid’.

My question now is: can/did retrotransposons viruses transfer from fruit flies to humans via fruit to create more rigid brains?

So many assumptions: what does Mr Bishop know about endogenous retroviruses? What does he know about the molecular biology of Lucy’s brain? What does it mean to say a brain is more or less rigid? Where’s the link between this putative rigidity and endogenous retroviruses? Why are we drawing a link between australopithecines, schizophrenia, and retroviruses?

To answer these questions, I checked out Mr Bishops’ website. Something about it reminded me of Kent Hovind, for some reason.

Hi, my name is Jonathan Bishop. I am an IT polymath with professional expertise and Masters degrees in the scientific, legal and economic aspects of online communities and e-learning systems. I have direct experience in working in government, industry and academia and using this to push the boundaries of online community and trolling research. I hope that by the end of my career to have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge, practice and policy in the fields of information technology, the arts, law and sciences.

Oh. Well. I guess that settles that. Of course, when I looked at his publications, just about all I see are conference presentations at IT meetings; I don’t see much evidence of a polymath.

You have reached The Official Website of Jonathan Bishop. I am regarded by Incisive Media to be one of ‘Britain’s foremost exporters of online community and e-learning research to the USA and Mainland Europe‘. I am regarded as the leading authority in the world on trolling and increasing participation in online communities.

Never heard of him. Oh, and the “trolling research”? He’s got a couple of blog entries about some incident at a football game. If that’s all it takes to be an expert in trolling, I must be the Einstein of trolls!

I told him that he was babbling BS. So he replied:

We’ll see Mr Myers when my empirical research paper on plasticity and social/emotional/cognitive imparment is published!

Oooooh, he’s submitted a paper. Where, I wonder?

I sent it to Nature Neuroscience, so it will probably get into the Daily Mail after! I am based at the Insitute of Life Science!

Heh. Chewtoy. He’ll probably appreciate the brief surge of traffic this post brings to him.

Who needs an IQ test when you’ve got coalescence?

I am just blown away by the consistency of this observation. You know, the creationists are not all stupid; there’s a wide range of intelligence in their camp, even if they are all wrong. But this one recent paper on the gorilla genome has become such an excellent tool for discriminating the competent from the incompetent.

This was the paper that unsurprisingly explained that gorilla genes reveal a mosaic; that some gorilla genes are closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other. If you understand the logic of coalescent theory at all, you know this is an expected result. The only way you could fail to see the distribution we observe is if the population went through a bottleneck of exactly two individuals.

But once again, one of the so-called scientists of intelligent design creationism blows it. Doug Axe has announced that the ape family tree is hopelessly broken, and that the gorilla data should call evolutionary theory into question.

Until recently, the answer was that a real family tree should generate a fully consistent pattern of similarities. [Not true at all. Coalescent theory is an extension of Fisher/Wright models of large populations, and the formal mathematics were worked out in the 1980s] For example, we are told that chimps and humans came from the same ancestral stock (call it CH stock) and that gorillas, chimps and humans all came from an earlier ancestral stock (GCH stock) [Correct so far]. If so, then the human and chimp genomes should consistently be more similar to each other than either is to the gorilla genome [WRONG. They should not be consistently more similar. Does he know nothing of probability?], since the human and chimp histories were one and the same thing more recently than the human and gorilla (or chimp and gorilla) histories were.

Well, the recent publication of the gorilla genome sequence shows that the expected pattern just isn’t there [Jebus. Read the paper. The pattern observed is the expected pattern.]. Instead of a nested hierarchy of similarities, we see something more like a mosaic [AS WE’D EXPECT.]. According to a recent report, “In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other…”

That’s sufficiently difficult to square with Darwin’s tree that it ought to bring the whole theory into question. And in an ideal world where Darwinism is examined the way scientific theories ought to be examined, I think it would. But in the real world things aren’t always so simple [And yet the creationists keep throwing up their simplistic models and being surprised that they’re wrong].

Axe is the one guy the creationists keep touting as a real scientist, a guy with genuine chops in molecular biology, the man who is doing serious scientific work. You know, if you’re going to publicly criticize an observation and claim it calls into question the entirety of evolutionary theory, you ought to first look into it and see whether that observation actually fits a prediction of evolution — actual evolutionary theory, not that cartoonishly naive caricature of evolution the creationists all have in their heads.

Here’s a nice, short history of coalescent theory by Kingman. It’s been around for decades, long before the gorilla genome was sequenced, and it predicted what kinds of distributions we ought to see in our comparisons of different species…predictions that were borne out by the paper Axe thinks contradicts evolutionary theory.

“Athiests” actually is a misunderstood word

Oh, great. Now we’re being hectored by sorcerers. In An open letter to the New Athiests, some guy Who peddles a One Year Intensive Course in real magic wags his finger and lectures us on what’s wrong with “athiests” — we’re all a bunch of dicks.

In short, you have a lot of important things to say but as long as you continue to prenent yourselves like obnoxious zealots far keener to argue than discuss and talk at rather than with, you will actually only set yourselves further back and make the word “Athiest” into an even more misunderstood word than it already is. It wont be because you are wrong necessarily. It will just be because no one likes you.

Right. I’m going to take advice from a self-proclaimed sorcerer who makes a long tirade against atheists and misspells the term every single time.

Here’s the problem: I’ve noticed that people who deeply wrong, like sorcerers, Christians, and creationists, love to tell us that being right isn’t as important as being liked. I suspect they’re driven by self-interest rather than honesty.

All I can say is…you don’t understand me at all if you think I’m trying to persuade you to like me, dumbass.

Hey, Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio!

What the hell is wrong with you, stupid hospital?

I just got an email from the parent of one of your patients. He reports that there are four bibles in the hospital room, and further, as an organization with a mind so open that the contradictions and conflicts blow breezily by with no actual interference with the substance of your brains, patients can also request copies of the Qur’an, Jewish holy books, or any other religious text they can imagine; further, the wireless internet available in the room allows patients and visitors to visit the Vatican website, or browse Pat Robertson’s pit of misinformation, or watch Kent Hovind’s videos, or cruise on over to Answers in Genesis or the ICR. How nice.

However, you’ve also put nanny filters on the web, and block access to anything in the category “Alternative Spirituality/Belief”, which, apparently, you get to define. The above listed loathsome lairs of liars are OK, but guess who gets blocked? American Atheists, and the entirety of Freethoughtblogs.

I suspect you’ve got some pious goon in your IT department. You might want to slap them around a bit and tell them that they don’t get to impose their religious bigotry on every patient in the hospital. Who are you to tell the patients in your hospital what religious beliefs, or in this case absence thereof, they are allowed to practice?

If you don’t watch out, I’ll have to sic JT or some of the other nearby SSA staff on you. Then you’ll be sorry. They’ll gnaw on you just for fun.

The future of Republican health care

Here’s how it’s going to work. You’re a 68 year old black man with a serious heart condition, and a medic alert bracelet, just in case. You accidentally press it one night.

Don’t expect an ambulance with EMTs. The police will come to your door and demand admission.

You will say, “Please leave me alone. I’m 68 with a heart condition. Why are you doing this to me? Can you please leave me alone?”

The police will tell you they don’t give a fuck. They will call you a nigger. They will force open the door as much as the chain allows.

They will taser you. You’re a 68 year old man with a heart condition, remember?

They will shoot you with a beanbag shotgun.

Then, they’ll shoot you dead with live ammo.

Sounds like some grim dystopian fantasy, doesn’t it? Nah, that could never happen. In what insane world would police, rather than doctors, respond to a medical alert, and treat it with deadly gunfire rather than medicine?

It happened in America, in White Plains, NY, last November. It happened to Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr.

What the hell is wrong with this country?

Wait, faking kidnaping is better than doing it for real, right?

We should congratulate them on the improvement in their tactics. Rather than molesting children for real, a church group cleverly thought they’d pretend to kidnap children.

Adults, including an off-duty cop, brandished weapons and put bags over the heads of the children, ages 13 through 18, and forced them into a church van. The group was driven to the home of an assistant pastor, who was presented before the group with a seemingly bloodied and bruised face, according to Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo.

One of the adults used a real AK-47, though the gun was unloaded, Chardo said.

PHOTO: Members of a youth group were tied up and blindfolded as part of a lesson in religious persecution at a church function in Middletown, Penn., and now an investigation is being launched to see if the teens were aware of what was going to happen.

The church leaders who organized the fake hostage situation later told law enforcement that the event was meant to be a lesson to the children on how Christians are persecuted in places around the world, but the "educational" event may actually constitute a crime, Chardo said.

Terrifying children is a fantastic way to gain converts. They claim they were ‘training’ kids in what they might experience for real, because Christians are persecuted…in America? Really?

I’m sure the Christians behind this were certain that any indoctrination tool is fair game.

Who else hates the Transportation Security Administration?

You can’t imagine how much I detest TSA. OK, maybe you can; I think my contempt is widely shared. It’s the arbitrary rules, the immediate awkward responses to last week’s threat, the implicit understanding that the overbearing security theater is going to continue forever without end, with ever-escalating nonsense, and the fact that you do not dare voice that outrage to the TSA, or they can and will make your travel unpleasant or even impossible. They are anti-free speech and anti-reason.

You know one little thing that just annoys the heck out of me? When I travel abroad, other countries don’t make me take my shoes off to go through security. Are they seriously at greater risk than we are? Or is this just random rules-tossing that we are obligated to suffer through?

One guy who has been fighting back is the security expert, Bruce Schneier. Right now, this week, he’s in a debate on The Economist with Kip Hawley, former head of the TSA, defending the claim that “changes to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good“. Schneier is cleaning Hawley’s clock. It’s one of the more entertaining and informative online debates that I’ve ever read.

Of course, it really helps that Hawley’s opening statement is this exercise in absurdity:

More than 6 billion consecutive safe arrivals of airline passengers since the 9/11 attacks mean that whatever the annoying and seemingly obtuse airport-security measures may have been, they have been ultimately successful.

You have got to be kidding me. Seriously? That’s your opening salvo? You know, I’ve got this lucky coin in my pocket that scares away tigers. Here’s the proof: I haven’t been eaten by tigers yet.

Schneier, on the other hand, punches hard. I like that in a guy.

Kip Hawley doesn’t argue with the specifics of my criticisms, but instead provides anecdotes and asks us to trust that airport security—and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in particular—knows what it’s doing.

He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).

If you’d like to learn more about Schneier, here’s an entertaining account of how he taught a journalist to circumvent airport security. There’s one thing you need to know: TSA is a collection of ineffectual buffoons who are keeping themselves lucratively employed by inventing ever more elaborate, clownish schemes that don’t touch the real security issues.

1.5 million children stolen

If you kidnap one child, there’s an APB and a massive police response and if you’re caught, you’ll be spending a good long while in jail. If you kidnap a million children over decades, you’re a source of morality and goodness. So think big!


Just needs a clerical collar…

In some cases, mothers in Australia were drugged and forced to sign papers relinquishing custody. In others, women were told their children had died. Single mothers also did not have access to the financial support given to widows or abandoned wives, and many were told by doctors, nurses, and social workers that they were unfit to raise a child. Siewert says, “We heard practices that were either illegal or unethical and downright cruel.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the same thing happened elsewhere,” continues Siewert, “…the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Ireland. So you could, I think, expect that those countries also had these sorts of practices.”

I suspect you can guess who’s behind such contemptible acts: it’s the Catholic Church, of course, arbiter of morality, who have long held that a woman has no autonomy at all and must be supported by a good strong manly man…so single mothers are obviously unfit to care for a child.

Ironically, Bill Donohue has issued a press release whining about how the Reason Rally singled out Catholicism for venom (it didn’t). He takes vindication in our contempt for his religion.

Catholics take note: The fact that the atheists always attack us more than any other religious group is a backhanded compliment. They know who the real enemy of hate is, and who they must defeat. They don’t have a prayer.

Sorry, Bill. The record is clear. Your church is not an enemy of hate at all; it’s a sinkhole of depravity and oppression. The church is attacked because it’s a monstrous institution. And if it is attacked more than other religions, it’s only because it commits more crimes than others.