After our brown Xmas and New Year’s Day, we’re finally getting a good slosh of snow, with a prediction of 5 more inches today. Right on time, the administration has sent out an email telling us to “develop a plan” to deal with inclement weather when classes start next week. We get no resources to implement this plan, of course, we’re just on our own on that. Good thing I’ve been dealing with this stuff for 24 years!
These are two Steatoda borealis, happily coupling: male is on the left, female on the right.
Steatoda borealis!
If you’re confused about what’s going on, it helps to know that spiders are acrobatic, they don’t care much about up or down. Also, every time I catch S. borealis in the act, they mate face-to-face, with the male sliding his long palps equipped with multiple hooks underneath her jaws to lock onto her abdominal genital opening. Now you can tell what’s going on, right?
Orac called out Jerry Coyne on Threads!
Jerry Coyne is unhappy with Science Based Medicine!
Coyne was mad because SBM didn’t endorse his favorite flavors of transphobia — they rejected the hateful nonsense of people like Katherine Stock and Abigail Schreier. How dare they! SBM quoted an article that criticized Helen Joyce’s bad biology, which, unfortunately, Coyne is committed to supporting. This is embarrassing.*
The prohibition of trans women in female sports is to assure fair competition for women, not “mental and physical health”.
Joyce is no scientist. Joyce’s Twitter bio includes the line “show me the 3rd gamete & we can talk.” Joyce considers the term “TERF” a slur. It is evident throughout the painstaking reading of her online footprint and book that she labors under confusion, ignorance, and lack of scientific knowledge. And, of course, Joyce believes that trans activists are suppressing research.
I like the third gamete quote because it is indeed the presence of only two types of gametes that is the definition of sex: men have small mobile ones and women large immobile ones. And yes, “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) is indeed a slur by gender activists against “gender-critical feminists” like Joyce. Here’s the very first result I got when I googled TERF. DEROGATORY!
Oh, he likes “the third gamete quote”. He thinks he can shut down all those people arguing for trans rights by shouting Show me the third gamete!
which is so incredibly stupid. No one is arguing that there is a “third gamete”. This claim is directly comparable to a creationist saying Show me a dog giving birth to a cat!
, something no evolutionary biologist thinks is possible, that isn’t a conclusion from evolutionary theory, that reveals such a deep misunderstanding of the concept they’re trying to criticize that they ought to be just cast into the depths and ignored forever more.
There isn’t a third gamete, but no one is talking about gametes, except for the likes of Jerry Coyne and other TERFs. We are talking about the rights of full grown adult human beings, who are far more than a puddle of ejaculated goo or a sloughed off membrane. People are far more complex than a single-celled component of their bodies, and I would hope Coyne would realize that there are many more than two kinds of humans, and understand that what he’s trying to do is reify a category.
It really comes down to his narrow definition of sex: men have small mobile ones and women large immobile ones.
Nope. No one defines their sex by the kind of gametes they produce — sex is complex and diverse and idiosyncratic for everyone, and we all use varied criteria for identifying the sex of others and ourselves. Coyne has arbitrarily decided to be extremely reductive and key everything on one cell, because that supports his claim that there should be only two sexes, contrary to everything we can see.
As for his whine that the word TERF is DEROGATORY
, yes it is. It’s a terrible thing to be, no matter what words you use: gender critical or regressive dickhead or anti-trans, I don’t care. The derogatory nature of the term comes from the inherent substance of the person, not the dictionary. You could call them “sweet baboos” and they’d still stink, and the name would still be derogatory, because it is attached to an unpleasant and hateful person.
* Sorry, not linking. You can look it up if you must — the bit I’ve included is a direct copy & paste, you’re not going to find that I’ve misquoted him. He really said that.
Join me in getting a glimpse of the demented, broken minds of the people who idolize right-wing autocrats.
Here’s Neil Strauss, formerly best known for writing about pick-up artists, and then landed a job writing cover stories for Rolling Stone. I don’t know why. He wrote the November 2017 cover story on Elon Musk, the Architect of Tomorrow.
If we don’t send our civilization into another Dark Ages before Musk or one of his dream’s inheritors pull it off, then Musk will likely be remembered as one of the most seminal figures of this millennium. Kids on all the terraformed planets of the universe will look forward to Musk Day, when they get the day off to commemorate the birth of the Earthling who single-handedly ushered in the era of space colonization.
And then the article just goes on and on in this vein. I couldn’t get far before cramping up with all the cringing.
Matt Binder tells us about Kevin Sorbo’s January 6th Twitter epistles. It’s a classic, here they are in chronological order:
Beautiful descent. I remember watching Hercules with the kids years and years ago…if I knew then what we know now…
It’s January 6th! Not normally a date to party down, but if I were to celebrate it, this is a good way to do so: arrest more insurrectionists. Three more traitors got picked up from their hideout in Florida today. Three years after the fact…the wheels do grind exceedingly slow, but it means we’ll be getting these events for a while to come.
Daniel Pollock, Olivia Michele Pollock, and Joseph Daniel Hutchinson III
Stupid dupes. I feel no sympathy for these people who challenged the law in order to support a colossal fool and fraud like Trump.
I know it’s Saturday, barely. I’m on break. Time is beginning to lose all meaning, except for the fact that I’m aware that classes start up again in ten more days — I’ve got a doomsday clock ticking down to my doom in front of me. I have recieved a note from the administration informing me that they want my syllabuses submitted now, which is a bit daunting, since one class doesn’t have one (it’s all independent study and writing), another is a totally stock course we’ve team-taught for years (mainly, it’s going to be a ton of grading for me), and the final course is a big one that is still coagulating in my head.
That one is going to scramble my brains and confuse all the students. It’s an eco-devo course and I’m going to make it radically interactive, with the students doing a lot of the work within a loose structure I provide. What students look for in a syllabus is “how many exams?” and “when are the exams?” and “is there a term paper?”, and I’m seriously considering answering those with “there are no exams” and “exams don’t exist at any time in this classroom” and “you’ll be too busy reading all the papers I throw at you to write”, and making the grade entirely dependent on participation. Show me that you can engage with the subject and ask good questions, and that’s how you’ll get an A.
Is this too weird? Am I being too creative for a stodgy old STEM class? Will I get in trouble if I write this down in a syllabus and let an administrator read it? In my defense, Socrates didn’t give midterms, so I’m simply returning to a conservative style of teaching. (Socrates was also poisoned by his critics, I know.)
Anyway, that’s been my source of anxiety lately, looming deadlines and course design. You don’t want to hear about that, you want spiders, and spiders I will deliver.
I got a link to this video on our discord server. I’m not too keen on the particularly morbid YouTube channel — it’s by a guy who travels around visiting the locations where celebrities died, a kind of post-mortem paparazzi, but in this case he’s visiting an abandoned mansion and swimming pool in Hollywood. He succeeds in making it creepy, of course, because he has to talk about all the starlets who were tricked into appearing topless by the icky owner of the place. But the one redeeming feature is the cool, semi-legendary spider painting that’s still there, and apparently appeared in a lot of old cheesecake photos from the 40s and 50s.
OK, bear with me, this next one is really, really gross. It features Laura Ingraham. Also she looks thoroughly disgusted throughout. It’s about immigrants, in particular, those immigrants “who almost always come from Asia.”
It’s about Joro spiders. Joro spiders are awesome.
One more, and fortunately, there’s absolutely nothing horrible about this one: no yucky ghouls, just one particularly glorious spider. This is a video lots of people have been sending me, about the largest funnel web spider found in Australia. It does dwell a bit too much on how dangerous it is, but that’s what we always get from the popular press.
I’ll just say if anyone wants to send me funnel web eggs or a Joro egg sac, I’d be thrilled and would raise them to cuddly adulthood.
Do not send me more Laura Ingraham, or Laura Ingraham videos. She’s revolting.
I wonder what role Jeff Bezos played in getting this tripe published in the Washington Post? It’s an article talking about setting up concert halls in space — you know, small cozy venues in which musicians can play, surrounded by vacuum and radiation. It sounds like a gimmicky, expensive conceit, and while I do want to see the arts supported to the same degree as science and technology, this is just a weird idea. We can only keep people alive out there at great expense and great risk, with serious medical issues with long term residence, and this writer thinks it would be great to do one-shot shows in space?
It got me daydreaming about what it might be like to one day watch a live musical performance in space. Not in the void, where sound waves cannot travel, but within built habitats in near-Earth orbit — such as the International Space Station (ISS). Forget U2 in the Las Vegas Sphere. Take me to a real concert in the round, where I can float 360 degrees around the stage, watching a guitarist shred from the perspective of a fly and inventing dance moves that Earth’s gravity would forbid.
It is amusing that she had to make an aside about not doing it in a vacuum — gotta squeeze a little science in there. But this sounds like the worst concert ever, with some vain people floating around trying out their flamboyant, jinky dance moves and trying to put all the attention on themselves. The article is even illustrated with a cartoon of her egotistical fantasy.
That must be extremely strong radiation proof glass around that giant dome. Isn’t it funny how NASA isn’t making space stations or space craft out of it? Also, why is the floating musician wearing a helmet and no one in the audience is? Do they know something the rubes don’t? Maybe it’s a trick to get a bunch of rich parasites into a floating bubble for a thorough irradiation.
But the author thinks this isn’t really a rich person’s idea of a wonderful way to flaunt their wealth. No, us peons who can barely afford a concert on Earth will be able to take advantage of this!
Before you dismiss this as a hallucination, consider that we’re on the cusp of a new era of space travel. Engineer and space architect Ariel Ekblaw, founder of MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative, says that within a decade, a trip off the planet could become as accessible as a first-class airline ticket — and that, in 15 or 20 years, we can expect space hotels in near-Earth orbit. She’s betting on it, having founded a nonprofit to design spherical, modular habitats that can assemble themselves in space so as to be lightweight and compact at launch, much like the James Webb Space Telescope that NASA vaulted into deep space two years ago. “The first era of space travel was about survival,” she told me as I recently toured her lab. “We’re transitioning now to build spaces that are friendlier and more welcoming so that people can thrive in space as opposed to just survive.” There’s no reason, Ekblaw said, that a concert hall can’t be one of those structures.
How many of you routinely buy first-class airline tickets for a quick jaunt to a show? Is Ticketmaster going to be in charge of pricing the seats? After you’ve spent, optimistically, $10,000 on your night in space, are you going to be pleased when Bina Venkataraman floats in front of you, gyrating and wiggling and trying out her dance moves?
At least she’s making some specific predictions. Within 10 years, you’ll be able to buy a ticket to space for a few hundred to thousands of dollars. Within 20 years, there will be “space hotels” in orbit, no doubt to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of space tourists. You’ll have to let me know if any of that comes true. I rather doubt it.
For a scientific source, she cites Ariel Ekblaw, a smart, creative person who has been promoting theoretical space habitats in collaboration with Blue Origin (there’s a Bezos connection), and the best endorsement the author can get is “there’s no reason a concert hall can’t be one of those structures.” Yeah, I can use my imagination, too, and there’s no reason a giant shark-filled swimming pool can’t be one of my imaginary structures. Sure, why not? We’re not actually building any of that, but maybe someday…
By the way, the nonprofit the author links to is The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, a pie-in-the-sky group that endorses more scientific exploration (good for them!) but is all about deep space, not space hotels in near-Earth orbit, and mainly writes reports and press releases that are sent to congress and to defense contractors. They don’t actually do anything.
While the WaPo laid off 20 journalists and got bought out by Jeff Bezos for $250 million, this is the kind of ascientific PR fluff they publish now…alongside a fine collection of conservative idiots as op-ed writers. It’s a real shame. Maybe they’ll be putting an astrology column on the front page next?
The Washington Post featured this messy caricature of the 147 Republicans who opposed the election of Joe Biden, and are now trying to get re-elected, in spite of their opposition to democracy. I don’t care for it.
There were 147 members of Congress who supported at least one objection to counting Biden’s electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. From that group, this piece highlights those who are still in government and who have declared that they will be running for federal office in 2024, or who have not yet announced, as of publication date.
The problem is that it exaggerates the surly, nasty, hateful expressions of each individual to the point that they are unrecognizable. I stared at this image for a long time trying to figure out who was who, and just couldn’t do it. At least the article provides a labeled key, which in this case is absolutely essential.
For instance, here’s my state representative, Michelle Fischbach.
If all you knew was the caricature, would you recognize her walking down the street? I don’t think so. Even familiar, easily cartoonish people like Cruz and Green are harder to identify than they should be.
Sure, it accurately captures the spirit of the person — Fischbach is a nasty regressive Catholic culture warrior — but a caricature should at least give us a hint of the physicality of the figure being mocked, or it’s going to miss every time.
I know they have to have good people working there, and any major state university is going to be providing support to valuable programs, but…if you asked me to name something memorable about Auburn, I’m afraid my brain is going to be flooded with nothing but FOOOBAAAWWW. It’s a sports school. They seem to think that’s the whole raison d’etre for existing. They spent $30 million on football alone last year. And that’s their reputation.
In recent decades, Auburn University added hundreds of millions of dollars in spending to its budget. The additional money didn’t go to the English department, nor to the sociology department. Some science departments only got a trickle more.
Instead, much of the money went toward administrative salaries, buildings and, no surprise, sports.
Auburn piled millions more each year into paying down the debt it borrowed for campus upgrades, including an $84 million basketball arena. It hired hundreds of administrators and professional staff. Spending on the president’s office and other administrative departments often increased far faster than that on many academic subjects.
That’s from a breakdown of Auburn’s budget. They’re pouring money into everything but education, and guess how they’re paying for it? By raising tuition to cover a spending spree.
Among Auburn’s projects built between 2002 and 2016: A $20 million building that is home to information technology staff. A $20 million kinesiology building with labs focused on physical activity and human movement. A $16 million indoor sports facility project that allows student athletes to practice during bad weather.
In 2013, Auburn opened a recreation and wellness center that cost $74 million to build. It includes climbing towers, an indoor track and an outdoor pool with a diving well, basketball goals and its own wet climbing wall.
In 2009, students voted to increase fees to finance the center’s operations, and each paid $450 toward it last school year.
In addition, in 2016, the university began a multiyear $15 million renovation of the president’s house.
Though donors sometimes help with building costs, Auburn paid for many buildings in part by borrowing money, which shows up in annual budgets as debt service. In 2016, Auburn spent about $60 million paying down its debt, much of which was related to buildings. That’s roughly triple what it spent in 2002.
You know, I can’t blame them. They are merely serving the demands from donors, alumni, and potential students — the reason many people go to Auburn is foobaww. If the administration were to pare down athletics expenditures, if they were to stop promoting football, football, football and try to become the intellectual powerhouse they have the potential to be, the citizens of Alabama would rise up in fury and cut them off at the knees, and their students would flee to some other Southern state that is still pushing football. They’ve got a donor base that is rich and wants “their” team to win, and students who are there on Mommy & Daddy’s money and want their perks and privileges.
The school’s student body is unusually well-heeled for a public school. Only 11% of full-time freshmen received federal Pell Grants, reserved for low-income students, in 2021-22. That’s one of the lowest percentages of any public U.S. university and also the vast majority of private colleges.
Auburn also ranks among the most expensive public schools for poor families, who attend some state schools for almost nothing. Auburn freshmen from families earning under $30,000 annually owed an average $17,481 in total costs after scholarships in 2021-22, federal data show.
Interesting, given that Alabama is the 6th poorest state in the nation. Auburn does not serve the general population, but rather the wealthiest citizens. It is officially a public state college, but looks more like a private college with specialized appeal.
They’re also afflicted with the parasites that infest every educational institution in the country.
But Auburn has disproportionately hired administrators and staff. Between 2002 and 2016, Auburn added nearly 600 full-time employees, numbers published by the college show. The number of faculty grew by 10% while the number of administrators grew by 73%.
Though average salaries for professors climbed in the mid-2000s, over the next decade they roughly kept pace with inflation, Auburn’s figures show.
In Auburn’s academic colleges, spending on the administration—usually the dean of a college and his or her staff—often rose faster than spending on individual academic departments.
In some administrative areas outside of Auburn’s academic colleges, spending often rose even faster.
Gogue earned $846,000 in salary, bonus and benefits in calendar 2016, the last full year of his first term as president, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which tracks pay for public college presidents.
He earned more money in other years. In 2017, for example, his total compensation topped $2.1 million because he received a payout of deferred compensation that had been previously set aside. Gogue said he doesn’t remember details from his compensation at Auburn.
I’d love to see a similar analysis of the University of Minnesota system. I often feel that we’re busily hiring administrators, while academic departments are scraping along understaffed, begging to fill faculty lines that are empty because of attrition or retirements or people looking for better positions, and we’re told there is a hiring freeze or worse, only a limited number of slots are available, so departments are expected to fight with each other to see who gets the position. When we’re down to 3 people teaching all of science, or 2 people teaching all of the humanities, I don’t think our surplus of administrators will step in to teach our classes (and we wouldn’t want them to — we’ve got standards.)
I’m also thinking that $2 million would cover the salaries and benefits of about 20 entry level faculty.
