Very presidential

Ladies and gentlemen, the pick of the evangelical Christian right.

Charles Blow is a bit upset.

Do you think this will change Trump’s supporters’ minds at all? Now you can find out! Breitbart has rather tersely reported the bare facts of this story. Just read the comments.

Lots of “Bill Clinton is worse!” comments.

TRUMP = boys talk. Clinton actually did attacked and raped woman against their will and used his position to do so.

If only it would sink in that Bill Clinton isn’t in the running.

Then there’s the “All men do it” excuse.

If You’re upset about this, you have never been in a mens locker room. Sorry, but men (if they’re straight) talk about women as women talk about men.

Sorry, nope, I don’t, nor do any of my friends.

There are people who are very happy about what Trump said. It makes him a manly man.

BFD! 2005 LMAO, Yawn! At least he’s not a fag!

TRUMP is a true red blooded American, he has AMERICAN CHILDREN not imports or one that is soley a CLINTON political set up

And then there’s simple denial.

Women love Trump and Trump loves women. Nobody cares.

Election fraud!

Oh, look here: the Christian Times has exposed a massive conspiracy, tens of thousands of pre-cast ballots for Hillary Clinton stored in an Ohio warehouse, ready to be released and cheat Trump out of his rightful victory.

According to sources, Randall Prince, a Columbus-area electrical worker, was doing a routine check of his companies wiring and electrical systems when he stumbled across approximately one dozen black, sealed ballot boxes filled with thousands of Franklin County votes for Hillary Clinton and other Democrat candidates.

“No one really goes in this building. It’s mainly used for short-term storage by a commercial plumber,” Prince said.

So when Prince, who is a Trump supporter, saw several black boxes in an otherwise empty room, he went to investigate. What he found could allegedly be evidence of a massive operation designed to deliver Clinton the crucial swing state.

Prince, shown here, poses with his find, as election officials investigate.

Prince, shown here, poses with his find, as election officials investigate.

The article then goes on to state that they don’t actually have any photos of the contents of those ballot boxes, but they have a picture of a sample ballot filled out for the Democrats.

You might be predisposed to be suspicious — wouldn’t this be big news? Why don’t they have any samples of the ballots? You might also look at that photo and be thinking…wait a minute, the words “BALLOT BOX” are just clumsily Photoshopped on, without even an attempt to tweak them into the appropriate perspective.

I bet you wouldn’t even be surprised if I told you that that isn’t Randall Prince. Or that the photo isn’t taken in Ohio. Or that while those actually are ballot boxes, they’re empty.

We know this because the origins of that photo have been tracked down. It’s a stock photo that has been poorly edited of empty ballot boxes being transported in Sheldon Heath, Birmingham, England.

Boy, the residents of Birmingham are sure going to be surprised to learn that they voted to elect Hillary Clinton to the US presidency.

If everyone from Yong to Zimmer says it’s true, it must be

You must have already read the tragic news: scientists have determined that I am doomed to die by 2072, when I turn 115, if not sooner. This was figured out by analyzing demographic data and seeing that people seem to hit a ceiling around age 115; the mean life expectancy keeps shifting upwards, but the maximum age seems to have reached a plateau. Carl Zimmer gives the clearest explanation of the methodology behind this conclusion, and Ed Yong gives a good description of the phenomenon of death in the very old.

The ceiling is probably hardwired into our biology. As we grow older, we slowly accumulate damage to our DNA and other molecules, which turns the intricate machinery of our cells into a creaky, dysfunctional mess. In most cases, that decline leads to diseases of old age, like cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer’s. But if people live past their 80s or 90s, their odds of getting such illnesses actually start to fall—perhaps because they have protective genes. Supercentenarians don’t tend to die of major diseases—Jeanne Calment died of natural causes—and many of them are physically independent even at the end of their lives. But they still die, “simply because too many of their bodily functions fail,” says Vijg. “They can no longer continue to live.”

I agree with all that. I think there is an upper bound to how long meat can keep plodding about on Earth before it reaches a point of critical failure. But I’m going to disagree with Yong on one thing: he goes on to explain it in evolutionary terms, with the standard story that there hasn’t been selection for longevity genes, because all the selection has been for genes for vigor in youth, which may actually have the side effect of accelerating mortality.

This is true, as far as it goes. But I think it’s a different phenomenon, that we’re seeing a physico-chemical limitation that isn’t going to be avoided, no matter how refined and potent ‘longevity genes’ become.

When organized pieces of matter are stressed or experience wear, their level of organization decreases. You simply can’t avoid that. Expose a piece of metal in a car to prolonged periods of vibration and it will eventually fail, not because it was badly designed, but because its nature and the nature of its activity dictates that it will eventually, inevitably break.

Likewise a soap bubble is ephemeral by its nature. The same fluid properties that enable it to be blown doom it — the film will flow over time, it will tend to thin at the top, and eventually it will pop. There’s no way to suspend the physics of a soap bubble to let it last significantly longer, shy of freezing it and defeating the whole point of a soap bubble.

In people, we have a name for this wear and tear and stress: it’s called “living”. All these different things we do that make it worth existing are also fundamentally damaging — there’s no escaping the emergence of an ultimate point of failure.

115 years sounds like a reasonable best estimate from the current evidence. I’d also point out that this does not imply that we won’t find a common critical failure point, and find a way for medical science to push it up a year or five…but every such patch adds another layer of complexity to the system, and represents another potential point of failure. We’re just going to asymptotically approach the upper bound, whatever it is.

That’s OK. I’ll take 115 years. It also helps that it’s going to really piss off Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil.

A sharp knife cuts both ways

This is funny. Trump supporters are illogical and full of contradictions.

But it’s also troubling. What would happen if you sent a similar crew of interviewers to a Clinton event? Are they also nonsensical in their reasoning?

I also wonder whether there were Trump supporters who were not amusingly stupid, who weren’t used in the video. How many of them were there? What’s the difference in frequency of idiots between Democratic and Republican voters?

Yeah, I’m looking at a comedy bit and wondering about control groups and sample size and data representation. I’m a science nerd. No apologies.

This stuff matters. We’re kind of lucky that all the witty, sharp, funny comics tend tend to be on the liberal side, while the conservatives have nothing but unfunny smirking dudebros who use racism and misogyny to get laughs, but imagine if a talented, insightful comedian arose among the far-right and turned this same strategy against us. Shall we get into an arms race in which we each raise the worst of the other side as their champions?

What about the men who play chess?

queens

The Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) has foolishly scheduled the world chess championships for Tehran, Iran, which has declared that The Islamic Republic … demands even non-Muslims visiting Iran to wear the hijab. This is contemptible, and we should not tolerate that kind of sexist imposition. People are planning to boycott the event. However, I’ve noticed something peculiar about the reporting of this boycott.

“Top female chess players in the world say they won’t compete in Iran if they’re forced to wear the Islamic headscarf,” says The Atlantic.

The Independent declares, “Female chess players from around world outraged after being told to wear hijabs at tournament in Tehran.”

“Female chess players protest wearing hijab at Iran world championship,” says CNN.

Hey, I say, what about the men? Shouldn’t the male grandmasters also be announcing their solidarity with their colleagues?

Perhaps male chess players tend to be insensitive sexists who don’t care what happens to the women players. Or perhaps they are cowards who are relieved that the theocratic rule is going to eliminate much of their competition. Or perhaps journalists assume that only women can get outraged at discrimination against women.

I don’t know. I’m just making reasonable guesses.

Thursday goddamn

Labs, classes, committee meetings, and now I have to somehow squeeze my flu shot into the schedule. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Thursdays this semester?

Oh, yes, you should get your flu vaccination too. For the good of your community. And so you’re less likely to spend a day or two puking your guts out at some time this year.

When homeschooling sucks…

I was sent a link to the science curriculum for the Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool program. I managed to get through Day 1 of the program, in which a speech is delivered.

I want to teach you something about science. Science is a collection of observations about the world. When something has been observed enough, it becomes scientific law. [That is not true. This person doesn’t understand even basic concepts of science.] That means that scientists say that what they have observed will always be true. [My cat pestered me to feed her this morning. I’ve seen that many times. Therefore, it is a scientific law that my cat is always hungry.] It is stated as fact. But even these “laws” have been broken at times when all of a sudden, something different is observed. [Scientists will actually tell you that all knowledge is provisional and subject to revision in the light of new evidence. I wonder who regards their knowledge as absolute and unchanging?] It was believed that the atom was the smallest thing in the universe. It was called fact. Then someone figured out how to split an atom. [Nope. No one just “figured out” that. It was a huge research program involving many scientists who worked hard to challenge the claim that it couldn’t be done] The point is that science only really tells us what has been observed. [This is a version of science that is purely descriptive — glorified stamp-collecting. It is not how any scientists work.] It doesn’t prove truth. [First week of my introductory biology course, I explain that there are two words you should never use in science: “proof” and “truth”.] It just states what is observed and measured in the world around us. [So science is like a list? Why is this person teaching this crap?] Why am I making sure you understand this? Because who was there to observe the creation of the universe? God alone. [Oh, that’s why. She’s been steeped in the pseudoscience promoted by Answers in Genesis, that the only true things are the things that you can see with your own two eyes] Science can’t prove anything about the creation of the world because it can make no observations about it. [Actually, we do observe many things about the beginning of the universe: cosmic background radiation, the distribution of stars and galaxies, their current movement, etc. If the cat’s food bowl is empty, can I not infer that she ate the food?] It takes what it observes in the world today and makes hypotheses, guesses, about the creation of the world. Until pretty recently most Western scientists were Christians. [Irrelevant. In the past, you were unemployable if you were non-Christian, and in some cases, were condemned to death. The intolerance of Christianity is not an argument for its positive role in science. ] Never let anyone make you feel stupid for believing God created the world. Many scientists that you read about in history believed in a Creator, some of the smartest people that have lived. [This is true. Also irrelevant. Some of the smartest people in the 1970s wore polyester bell bottoms, it doesn’t make fashion true] The Bible contains all truth. [Wait. Didn’t you just condemn science for having a false belief in possessing absolute truth?] You never have to be afraid to believe the truth in the Bible. There may seem to be things that couldn’t possibly be true. Say, we measure stars at being billions of light years away. That means, in order for us to see its light, that light would have had to be traveling for billions of years to reach us. Well, a Christian mathematician and scientist has shown how it could appear that way and still only be less than ten thousand years away. [Who? How?] No one has yet been able to dispute the math he used to show it. [What math?] Here’s an article about it that your parents might be interested in. [You will not be surprised to learn that it is an article on Christian Answers that has no math in it, is not written by a scientist, and that it argues that light was created in transit to earth, giving an appearance of age.] One method science uses to try and observe something’s age is carbon dating. There are some that say carbon dating shows that there are bones that are millions of years old. [Only creationists say that, who know nothing about it. Carbon dating is a technique that has an upper bound of about 50,000 years.] Here are two articles that talk about how carbon dating isn’t accurate. [Again, articles on two creationist sites by non-scientists that argue backwards from a desired conclusion] These are articles for adults. You don’t have to read them. [Both articles are foolish instances of twisted illogic that only an ignorant adult would find interesting. I’ve known children who would see right through them.] The first is much easier to read than the second, but if you or your parents are interested, please go ahead and read them. I just want to show you that there are scientists that believe the earth is young. [Irrelevant. Being a scientist does not confer infallibility. ] I personally know a scientist, a physicist with a PhD, who has studied the topic and believes the earth to be less than 10,000 years old. [Yeah, so? I know some ‘scientists’ like that, too. They’re idiots.] It’s not silly to believe it. It is silly to let someone change your mind with “facts” that aren’t proven true. [Hold that thought.] Remember this: Scientists don’t agree on things! Anytime you hear someone say, “All scientists say that…” It isn’t true. [We actually think that disagreement and testing conflicting hypotheses is a good thing] It’s propaganda to try and get you to believe something. Don’t be afraid to believe the Bible. It will always prove to be true in the end. [It is silly to let someone change your mind with “facts” that aren’t proven true.] God is Truth and cannot lie! You can trust His Word. [How do you know that? The evidence suggests that the Bible is scientifically unreliable.]

This curriculum consists of 180 superficial, brief, day-by-day descriptions of what to do — it focuses almost entirely on descriptions of anatomy, and on “plants”. Any child subjected to it is going to learn absolutely nothing about science. They don’t get to do any. The ‘teacher’ has cut off any synthesis of ideas by denying that you are allowed to integrate knowledge and test explanations because All Truth Is Biblical. It’s exhaustingly depressing.

Dang, that’s a clever move

I didn’t watch the debate, and I’ve already said I’m unimpressed with trying to declare a winner. The impression I’m getting, though, is that there’s a consensus that Pence was more slick & polished…not that I care, I want to know about the content and the policies. I do think this is neat, though: the latest ad from the Clinton/Kaine campaign shows very clearly that Pence was lying all night long.

Faculty diversity has a lot of catching up to do

Over the years, I’ve noticed a steady increase in the number of minority students in my classes, which is great…but strangely, there hasn’t been any increase in the percentage of minority faculty over the same period. One possible explanation is that since the tenure of faculty is so much longer than the tenure of students, student numbers are going to be more responsive to current demographics. But I can’t help but feel that there’s more going on. That we current faculty are not doing our part to create a professoriate that reflects our culture.

Here’s a blunt assessment of the problem. Why don’t we hire more faculty of color? Because we don’t want them. The author lists a whole series of excuses we white faculty make, and I’ve heard them all.

First, the word “quality” is used to dismiss people of color who are otherwise competitive for faculty positions. Even those people on search committees that appear to be dedicated to access and equity will point to “quality” or lack of “quality” as a reason for not hiring a person of color.

Typically, “quality” means that the person didn’t go to an elite institution for their Ph.D. or wasn’t mentored by a prominent person in the field. What people forget is that attending the elite institutions and being mentored by prominent people is linked to social capital and systemic racism ensures that people of color have less of it.

This is slightly less of a problem in my current liberal arts, teaching-focused institution, but boy, I heard a lot of it in the big state schools I worked at before. I knew faculty who went through job applications looking only at the name of the institution/faculty member they worked with on the first pass, and if they didn’t come from a Name university or worked with a Name scientist, they were round-filed.

Second, the most common excuse I hear is “there aren’t enough people of color in the faculty pipeline.”

It is accurate that there are fewer people of color in some disciplines such as engineering or physics. However, there are great numbers of Ph.D.’s of color in the humanities and education and we still don’t have great diversity on these faculties.

In biology, we have a reasonable number of minority faculty applying for jobs — there are historically black colleges, like Howard University, that have excellent biology programs and turn out a good number of well-qualified black biologists. We just don’t hire them.

Third, I have learned that faculty will bend rules, knock down walls, and build bridges to hire those they really want (often white colleagues) but when it comes to hiring faculty of color, they have to “play by the rules” and get angry when any exceptions are made.

Let me tell you a secret – exceptions are made for white people constantly in the academy; exceptions are the rule in academe.

Oh man yes. Faculty tend to resent rules — this is a job that encourages independent thinking — and are accustomed to using the rules to get what they want. There is a kind of adversarial relationship between faculty and administration, and I suspect deans have all kinds of stories about how faculty try to work the system.

Fourth, faculty search committees are part of the problem.

They are not trained in recruitment, are rarely diverse in makeup, and are often more interested in hiring people just like them rather than expanding the diversity of their department.

True confession: I’m on the search committee for a tenure track cell/molecular biologist this year — we meet with our human resources person next week for the mandatory diversity training, which I have been through several times now. We still tend to hire our fellow white people every time. I will try to pay more attention to minority applicants, and will avoid insisting that faculty at UMM must fit the Lake Wobegon stereotype.

Fifth, if majority colleges and universities are truly serious about increasing faculty diversity, why don’t they visit Minority Serving Institutions — institutions with great student and faculty diversity — and ask them how they recruit a diverse faculty.

Now that is a really good idea. We should be sending out our job ad specifically to minority serving institutions with strong graduate programs in biology, which would also enrich our applicant pool significantly. Please do suggest such places in the comments and I’ll be sure to add them to our mailing list.

Of course, once we hire a diverse faculty, there’s the next problem: community and university attitudes. Science just ran an article on doing science while black.

But my experiences with the larger scientific community still made me feel like I didn’t belong. A few years after becoming a professor, for example, I went to a social event at a society meeting with an international, multiracial group of colleagues. I was the only black researcher among them. When we walked into the room, the crowd fell completely silent, apparently uncomfortable with my presence. I considered myself a scientist with great potential, but that experience made me feel that, to others, my skin color was more important than the quality of my work. The next year, as I was starting a sabbatical in a lab at another institution, I asked one of the researchers in the group whether the PI was in. “Are you delivering a package?” he asked. “I can pass it on to him.” These and other encounters imply that, no matter how productive my research is or how professionally I present myself, I and other black scientists do not belong in academia’s hallowed halls.

Ouch. That’s going to be another difficulty here in the blindingly white Minnesota farm country.

Oh, hey, the other committee I’ve been assigned this year is to serve on the multi-ethnic experience committee, which works to promote “campus-wide understanding of racial and ethnic minorities”, despite the fact that I am made of doughy Wonder Bread and was raised in the same kind of Scandinavian-American household that just about everyone grew up in around here. You might notice that I’m trying hard to educate myself on these phenomena.