They’re not hiring the best

A stupid man

Do you like NASA and space research? Sorry, it’s all going away. The man in charge is not qualified, as if that is any surprise.

Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA for a little more than a month, has vowed to make the United States great in space.

With a background as a US Congressman, reality TV star, and television commentator, Duffy did not come to the position with a deep well of knowledge about spaceflight. He also already had a lot on his plate, serving as the secretary of transportation, a Cabinet-level position that oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies.

Sean Duffy is not the right person to run just about anything. My brain shut down at “reality TV star”.

What he’s planning to do is worrisome.

Nevertheless, Duffy is putting his imprint on the space agency, seeking to emphasize the agency’s human exploration plans, including the development of a lunar base, and ending NASA’s efforts to study planet Earth and its changing climate.

Putting humans in space? Robots do it better. Let’s not look at the damage the Trump administration is doing to the Earth — turn off the satellites that are looking at the planet.

This is a good time to say “NO!”

There’s a letter floating around among American universities. It’s a good letter that expresses some commendable statements, but is a bit light on specific actions they’re going to take. They “reject the coercive use of public research funding,” which is nice, but how?

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.

America’s system of higher learning is as varied as the goals and dreams of the students it serves. It includes research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses. Some institutions are designed for all students, and others are dedicated to serving particular groups. Yet, American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good. Colleges and universities are engines of opportunity and mobility, anchor institutions that contribute to economic and cultural vitality regionally and in our local communities. They foster creativity and innovation, provide human resources to meet the fast-changing demands of our dynamic workforce, and are themselves major employers. They nurture the scholarly pursuits that ensure America’s leadership in research, and many provide healthcare and other essential services. Most fundamentally, America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.

The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.

The letter has over 200 signatories, a good start. I notice, however, that the University of Minnesota is not one of them. Even Columbia has signed on, but my university is taking their sweet time. I heard from our chancellor that there is going to be a meeting this week to discuss our response to the Trump regime. I hope they come up with the right answer.

GLADIIATOR

I feel like I need to apologize for whatever smug twit thought it was clever to put that “II” in the middle of “Gladiator”. Its appearance in the title card was, however, the last bit of wit in this entire movie, and was also representative of the botched, gimmicky plot of the sequel.

First, the historical background, even though it really doesn’t matter. In the early 200s CE, Caracalla, a Gallic soldier, was emperor of Rome for about 20 years; his brother, Geta, was briefly co-ruler before he was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard. Caracalla himself was also murdered by the Praetorian Guard, and was succeeded by Macrinus, the Praetorian prefect, who only ruled for about a year before he lost a battle near Antioch and got himself executed. There. That’s more history than you need, because this movie is going to jettison everything but the names and compress everything down to a couple of days one summer in Rome. Time has no meaning.

The gladiiator in the title is a soldier who is captured in the battle which led to Rome conquering Numidia…sometime around 200 CE. Wasn’t Numidia annexed by the Emperor Augustus, somewhat before then? No matter, this isn’t history. He’s hauled off to Rome as a slave, thrown into the arena, and kills a mangy monkey (I’m not belittling the accomplishment, it really is one hideous, terrifying baboon with huge fangs and a temper, so good on him.) The emperors, a pair of drooling psychopathic halfwits that I mentally labeled as Short Ed Sheeran and Tall Ed Sheeran, were impressed, as were some rebellious senators, as was his mom. It turns out that Gladiiator is the son of the gladiator from the first movie! It’s a hereditarian miracle!

Anyway, there are some more fights in the arena, including a spectacular naval battle. Tall Ed Sheeran gets murdered, and then Short Ed Sheeran gets murdered, and then, somehow, Gladiiator gets a legion to march on Rome, which is confronted by a Roman legion. The ending gets very confusing as Gladiiator is teleporting all over the place to wherever the plot finds convenient; also, Rome seems to be very tiny, as he ends up posing by the singular Gate of Rome, with the whole city laid out behind him, which is mostly empty except for one prominent feature, the Colosseum, of course.

In a climax fitting for a Marvel superhero movie, the cunning, scheming, clever primary bad guy gets on a horse and gallops to the space between the two legions, dismounts, and gets into a one-on-one swordfight with the monkey-killing gladiiator. It made no sense. Nothing in this movie makes sense. Time and space are meaningless. Murderous ridiculous clowns can rule the world, which is at least believable now in the 21st century.

I was not entertained.

This summary of Chris Rufo is tight

Here’s everything you need to know about Chris Rufo.

In case anyone forgot Chris Rufo posted a $5,000 bounty for a video of Haitians eating cats in Springfield then posted a video of unknown people with chicken on a grill in Canton then we remembered he was married to someone who came to the US illegally then it turned out he had an Ashley Madison account and he threatened to sue @lawindsor about it and said it was a lie but then @stevanzetti showed how the Ashley Madison database has gps coordinates for Topanga where Rufo lived at the time and then Rufo started deleting tweets about Topanga and wowza.

There’s more! He called on his wife to write about her experience as an undocumented immigrant.

There have been rumors circulating that call into question the harassment against my family. Here s a statement from my wife Suphatra: | came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant in the late 1980s. My mother brought me here to escape abuse and human trafficking in my native Thailand. | grew up in a small town in New Hampshire where we were the only minority family. I experienced a lot of intolerance growing up. | remember being refused service in a restaurant. | remember boys holding back the doors at my school so | couldn’t get in, yelling “go back to your country.” | remember the school librarian asking me if | was a child prostitute in Thailand. | remember my college boyfriend being stopped at a grocery store and asked if he had purchased me abroad.

So…someone very close to him is a witness to the injustice and discrimination perpetrated against immigrants in this country, but Rufo has so little concern about that personal testimony that he goes on to promote the same kind of hatred against other immigrants? OK.

I think that in order to be a conservative you have to go to a filthy back alley clinic where they take a flaming red hot wire, ram it into your ear, and scour out your empathic nucleus to leave only a charred black lump in the middle of your brain.

Good news, bad news

The good news: we’ll have the mortgage on our house paid off by next month!

That’s it. That’s all the good news.

The bad news: we have some major repair work to do on the house. The estimate for that involves many, many zeroes.

Worser news: my mother is in the hospital again. COPD is an evil, vengeful bitch. Didn’t my kind, tolerant, loving mother suffer enough with having to raise me?

I am proud to be non-religious and non-Christian

Since this is what it means to be a religious Christian:

“We are a religious state. We are going to fight to keep that (LGBTQ) filth out of the state of Oklahoma, because we’re a Christian state.”

He makes a good case for keeping Christians out of the state government. That’s a very un-American sentiment, to claim that our government is sectarian and religious.

Reminder: here’s the “LGBTQ filth” he wants to eradicate.

What’s an arachnophile who needs his morning coffee to do?

She looks very happy in there — she’s been expanding her web, dropping gumfoot lines to the bottom of the cup, scouting out the slippery edge of the cup, and grooming herself. I don’t think it’s a great spot to capture small insects (but what do I know? I’ve got a spider in my coffee cup, maybe flies visit it all night long), so I’m going to have to relocate her.

Also, I need my coffee.