Deep down, it’s because Republicans are cowards

Marco Rubio bought himself a handgun for Christmas. There’s nothing wrong with that, I guess; when asked why, he could just say because he wanted it, and he could afford it. But no, he had to spill his guts and expose the real reason.

In fact, if ISIS were to visit us or our communities at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability I have to protect my family from them or from a criminal or anyone else that seeks to do us harm. Millions of Americans feel that way.

There’s our problem in a nutshell. One of our presidential candidates thinks that ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is credibly going to invade Florida, that they’re going to break into his house, and that he’ll be able to fight them off with a pistol. That’s such a fantastically naive and childish vision of a sociopolitical conflict that it tells me he’s got an unrealistic view on how to handle a serious problem, and that what’s driving him is really an irrational fear.

Panadaptationism strikes again!

buttoning

I noticed something odd for the first time recently: women’s clothing buttons differently than men’s. I’d been previously oblivious, but just noticed because I put on this nice roomy button-down Christmas sweater my wife got, and realized that all the buttons are backwards from what I’m used to. How strange. I asked her if this was normal, and she told me that yes, this was the convention. Which made me wonder…why? It’s not as if women and men differ in handedness, or are consistently asymmetric in different ways. My first thought was that it was another arbitrary signifier of sex, like the absence of pockets in women’s clothing, only more random and less malicious.

And then Mary sent me a link to this article which assigns purposes to the different arrangement of buttons, and I simply found it galling. Their explanations don’t make sense.

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But that’s not how science works!

There will be an interesting meeting in London next fall, New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. The description:

Developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution, although the issues involved remain hotly contested. This meeting will present these developments and arguments in a form that will encourage cross-disciplinary discussion and, in particular, involve the humanities and social sciences in order to provide further analytical perspectives and explore the social and philosophical implications.

It’s interesting because it could be enlightening, but it could also be weird and chaotic and a magnet for crackpots. Larry Moran is attending — not as a representative of the crackpot contingent, but, I suspect, to cast a cynical eye on the shenanigans. The Third Way of Evolution gang seems to be excited about the meeting, which is not a good sign — these are people who have taken some useful ideas in evolutionary theory, like epigenetics and niche construction, and turned the dial up to 11 to argue that these concepts are so revolutionary that they demand a complete upheaval of neo-Darwinian thinking.

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Neil and Craig discover a dark secret about Miss Robinson

Or do they? Watch this Mormon video. At first you’ll wonder what dreadful Mormon horror is going to be revealed — do Neil and Craig share the love that dare not speak its name? Is Miss Robinson stalking the boys to exploit their youthful lubricity? — and you expect the cheesy boom-chika-chika-wow music to start up. But you don’t know Mormons.

Oh yes, when I lived in Mormonville in the late 80s I remember well how all the kids regarded coffee and coke as the Devil’s brews. It’s one of the reasons I could never be a member of their religion…in addition to the fact that it’s bugblatting coocoo.

“Every time these people open their mouths, it’s comedy”

Matt Taibbi has assembled all of the absurdity of the Bundy militia. From weepy oath taking to begging for snacks to their delusional belief that taking over a federal building will have no consequences, it’s all there.

The Bundy militiamen are an extreme example of a type that’s become common in America. Like the Tea Partiers, they seem to not only believe that they’re the only people in history who’ve ever paid taxes, but that they’re the only people who were ever sad about it. What they call tyranny on the part of the federal government just means putting up with the same irritating bills and regulations and other crap that we all put up with, only the rest of us don’t whine about it in the front seats of our cars while posing in front of tripods.

Again, these people may be dangerous, but their boundless self-pity, their outrageous sense of entitlement and their slapstick incompetence as rebels and terrorists are absolutely ridiculous. Sure, it may not help, but how can we not laugh?

These guys have done a wonderful job of making laughing stocks of themselves.

A good way to go

Pat and Peter Shaw were in their 80s, and experiencing physical and cognitive decline, so they decided to die. And they did. Quietly, at home, after talking it over with their grown-up children. It was all very dignified and sensible.

I’d like to fade out that way, except for one difficulty: my wife is going to still be kicking when I’m a doddering wreck, so the joint suicide pact is not going to happen.

Cage match idea: Christians Against Dinosaurs vs. Answers in Genesis

There is a group of Christians (maybe — could be a stupid Poe) who disagree with Ken Ham. Ham argues that dinosaurs were real, that they were created 6000 years ago, and the they were on Noah’s Ark, but were killed by dragon-slaying knights in the Middle Ages. Stop laughing. It’s what he actually believes.

This other group, Christians Against Dinosaurs, argues instead that dinosaurs never existed, they’re totally fake, and that paleontologists just assembled random rock fragments into phony assemblages, inventing dinosaurs.

So here’s one of their people trying to make the case that you can smash up anything and assemble it into a dinosaur skeleton, if you use enough spackle.

When I first saw this, I thought it had to be a hoax. Nobody could be that idiotic, could they?

But then I thought…if somebody suddenly sprang Ken Ham and his wacky ideas on me, I’d be thinking exactly the same thing. This guy is just a bad actor, right, trying to make religious people look like nitwits? Nobody’s going to fall for that goofy routine. You’re pulling my leg.

If you think it’s satire, tell me how you’d know…and sorry, but the argument that it’s too ridiculous to be credible is not valid in a world of Hams and Hovinds and Trumps and Bergmans.

My kid’s got bones

elbowscan

My peripatetic daughter, during her trip across Russia, took a fall on the ice in Irkutsk and broke her elbow. She didn’t see a doctor, but just kept going, stoically trudging across the vast wasteland of Siberia, no tears or whimpering, fighting off giant bears and the fierce nomadic horsemen of the steppes, etc., etc., etc., and didn’t bother with that doctorin’ thing until she got home.

She has posted the scans of her fractured joint! Now I’m going to have to ground her, or something.

Did you watch the Republican debate last night?

There’s no way that I would or did. Can we just scratch the capering clowns of the Republican party off our dance list? I can’t imagine any circumstances under which I’d vote for any of them; watching them argue is like trying to intellectually decide which shit-smeared boot I’d scrape clean first. Doesn’t matter, both get the treatment.

This is a competition between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and everyone else is the sideshow. And on that, Charles Pierce can speak for me.

Of course, the Republicans have little Jingo Girls singing about ‘crushing the enemies of freedom’ so maybe we should keep a closer eye on them, and their horrible fans.

I give it a 2 out of 10. The North Koreans would have provided more dignified formality in their rhetoric, but these kids have a lot of enthusiasm. Very classy, in a Trumpian sense.