Let the gnashing of teeth commence

OK, I have to add another grievance to the pile. We’re getting ready for spring semester registration, and our students are expected to meet with their advisors in the next few days, so I’ve got appointments stacking up — but that’s not the grievance. I like that we require students to get regular advising sessions, rather than suddenly having deficiencies show up as they’re trying to graduate.

The problem is that all student records are now computerized (I remember when we’d have file folders full of pieces of paper, instead). Preparing for an advising meeting involves going to a link on the university website, which is supposed to give us all the relevant student records. This is what I see when I go through the prescribed channels:

System data is currently unavailable. Some content may not be available at this time.

I’ve got requests from students to enroll in some of my courses, and I was trying to get the necessary permission codes to send them so they could do that. All weekend long, all I saw was

System data is currently unavailable. Some content may not be available at this time.

I’ve got three students scheduled for advising meetings this morning, and like a responsible advisor I go to look up their academic records, and what do I see?

System data is currently unavailable. Some content may not be available at this time.

This is a centralized service provided by the entire great big University of Minnesota system, and it fucking doesn’t work. We’ve got a database we need to do our job, and we are constantly locked out of it.

Space bastards vs. space geeks

I told you yesterday that I’d let you know when my copy of A City on Mars arrived. It did! Yesterday! I’ve already started reading it, and I’m already happy with it.

Finally, it’s a book about sending humans to space that takes a realistic position: no jingo, no hyper-optimism, and an awareness that enthusiastic boosterism about space travel is a cult-like religion. It sets up the contrast in the introduction: that there are space geeks who fervently believe in the importance of colonizing space for a variety of reasons (most of them bogus), and there are space bastards who keep crashing the optimism by pointing out the problems. The authors side with the space bastards. So do I.

My opinion is that humans are a kind of animal that is well-adapted to a broad range of climates, but are still dependent on a narrow set of environments — we require plentiful water, about 20% oxygen, trace amounts of carbon dioxide, an air pressure between 100 mm Hg and 800 mm Hg, about 1 g of gravity, etc., etc., etc. We can survive briefly outside that range, but we sure don’t thrive and prosper. If ever you’ve raised tropical fish, for instance, you know that living things are extraordinarily sensitive to minor deviations from their ideal environment, and humans also have restrictions we take for granted. Biologically, we’re unsuited to existence anywhere in the solar system outside our one planet — you know, the one we’re busy trashing, but which will never be as hostile and incompatible with life as any of the other places in space.

We’re never going to build viable colonies elsewhere, even on Mars, which is the next best option outside of Earth, and even at that it’s poisonous and dead. I think I’m more negative about the prospects than the Wienersmiths, but it’s still a relief to find a source that recognizes the realities of life in space. It’s reassuring, even.

Another good sign

Moms for Liberty, that horrible collection of hateful Karens, made a big push in yesterday’s election to take over more school boards. It didn’t go well for them.

Moms for Liberty, the right-wing “parental rights” group advocating a hardline anti-woke agenda in America’s schools, had a rough night in Tuesday’s elections for school board seats around the country.

The organization, considered an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, endorsed scores of candidates in school districts in several states from Alaska to North Carolina. But the group’s record backing book bans, opposing racially inclusive lessons in classrooms, and pushing anti-LGBTQ messages seemingly failed to connect with voters in multiple ballots.

Pennsylvanians didn’t like them.

A “voter guide” from the group earlier this year recommended candidates in five districts but stressed that the messaging was “not an official endorsement.” All five of the Republican candidates in Central Bucks—which has been roiled for years by culture war rows—were included in the guide. But after Tuesday’s vote, the district’s school board was swept by Democrats who won five seats.

Pennridge, another school district in Bucks County, was also closely watched. The GOP-led school board made headlines in July after a curriculum consultant it hired likened his work to a fox in a henhouse during a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, reportedly telling attendees he wanted to remake schooling for “our side.”

On Tuesday, all five of the school board’s open seats went to Democrats. According to WFMZ, the rejected Republican candidates ran under the name “Protect Pennridge” and had advocated a policy requiring kids to use restrooms and play on sports teams which aligned with their biological sex.

This was a nation-wide phenomenon. Being endorsed by Moms for Liberty was the kiss of death.

But losses also mounted in other states. As of Wednesday morning, three of four candidates endorsed by the group were trailing in their races in Loudoun County, Virginia, where Democrats were projected to hold the board. MfL candidate Michael Rivera lost by 6 percentage points after all votes had been counted, while endorsed candidate Chris Hodges lost his race to a Democrat. Joe Smith narrowly lost out by just 174 votes. Deana Griffiths, another MfL endorsed candidate, was ahead by a single percentage point in her race in the Ashburn District.

Here in Minnesota, voters also did a good job of kicking them out.

In Minnesota, all four candidates put forward by MfL were wiped out in the race for the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School District. None of them managed to attract double-digit support, with voters predominantly favoring three incumbents and one newcomer to the school board.

Huh. Who knew that hating gay and trans people wasn’t a winning position in elections?

We survived another election day!

The last big election I followed intensely was in 1980, Reagan vs. Carter. I stayed up late with a group of friends, watching the returns into the early hours of the morning, cheering at every fleeting sign of hope and groaning at the stupidity of the electorate. I learned my lesson. Vote, then turn off the TV and the radio and wait for the official results, because cheerleading does nothing but drain your emotional resources dry.

We had a lesser election yesterday, but there were still issues that mattered in other states than my own, so I ignored the minutiae of the pointless news coverage and waited until today to find out if my cynical half was going to be grimly validated, or my optimistic half was going to see glimmerings of promise. I seem to be seeing good news today.

Here’s a newspaper summary:

  • Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) turned aside a challenge from Trump-backed state Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) relatively easily in a red state.
  • Ohio became the latest red-leaning state to vote in favor of abortion rights on the ballot — and by a large margin. It passed Issue 1, enshrining the right to abortion into the state constitution. The pro-abortion-rights position has now won on all seven state ballot measures since Roe v. Wade was overturned in mid-2022. Turnout was also strong in Ohio, suggesting this issue continues to animate voters.
  • Democrats not only avoided a potential GOP takeover of Senate in much-watched Virginia, but they actually flipped the state House, taking full control of the legislature.

Yeah, I’ll take it.

The most promising outcome from my perspective is that Republicans remain shackled to their regressive anti-woman views on reproductive rights, and it’s dragging them down. Those are ideas that only win them votes in radically religious districts, and we can only hope that electorate becomes less relevant, as they also seem to be distracted by the shiny baubles of MAGA and conspiracy theories. As Amanda Marcotte explains,

But Republicans aren’t quite powerful enough, yet, to ban abortion without ever having to answer to the voters over it. Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, voters have repeatedly expressed their outrage at the polls. Not only do people turn out to back ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights, Democrats who run on the right to choose have been overperforming at the polls. It’s one reason some observers feel that, despite President Joe Biden’s poor poll numbers now, he has a good chance of winning in 2024.

In response, Republicans haven’t backed off their anti-choice views. Instead, the’ve tried to bamboozle the voters into thinking that Republicans aren’t as radical as they really are. Republicans have played word games, hoping that by rebranding with terms like “pro-baby” or bullying journalists into using the “limits” instead of “bans,” they could somehow trick people into not noticing their rights are being stripped.

Tuesday’s election showed voters are not fooled.

Overall, the election was a solid reminder that voters may be confused on issues from the economy to labor rights, but on one thing, they are quite clear: They do not like abortion bans. And they keep making that view known at the polls.

Don’t get cocky, though! The anti-woman, anti-equality bloc still exists, is still loud, and still gets absurdly over-funded by privileged billionaires. We have to keep fighting back against their nonsense, but these victories are encouraging.

Addressing all the important questions about living in space

I have Zach and Kelly Weinersmith’s book, A City on Mars, on order. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m seeing excerpts all over the place that let me know I’m going to find this one interesting. It asks all the important questions!

Can you have sex in space?

Astronauts have confirmed over the past few decades that in space, the flesh is willing. But truth be told, we don’t even know if you can actually do the fun part of making space kids. While the moon and Mars provide some gravity, a vast majority of data on space physiology comes from orbital space stations, where astronauts hang in constant free fall. Weightlessness is ideal for physics problems but not for intercourse; a nudge toward you will send you flying backward with equal and opposite momentum. Without the familiar frame of reference provided by Earth’s gravity, concepts like “top” and “bottom” are without physical meaning. All of this will make the orientationless mambo awkward. The space popularizers James and Alcestis Oberg wrote in 1986 that those who attempt the act “may thrash around helplessly like beached flounders until they meet up with a wall they can smash into.”

Assuming this is undesirable, you’ll want something that keeps people together. The engineer and futurist Thomas Heppenheimer called for an “unchastity belt.” Another concept, pitched by Samuel Coniglio, a former vice president of the Space Tourism Society, is the “snuggle tunnel.” There’s also Vanna Bonta’s 2suit, which would keep a weightless couple connected via Velcro straps.

I don’t know…those options sound like they could be experimented with here on Earth, so why go to space?

After thrashing around helplessly like beached flounders, you may work up an appetite. What to do next? Have you considered space cannibalism?

Professor, prolific author, and triathlete, Dr. Erik Seedhouse wrote an analysis of space cannibalism in “Survival and Sacrifice in Mars Exploration.” We don’t know Mr. Seedhouse personally, and he didn’t respond to our email, but we will note that his book’s index contains precisely one entry on “behavioral challenges,” a very important topic, but five entries on the gustatory mode of crew integration.

Seedhouse asks: “Imagine you’re stranded on the Red Planet with three crewmembers. You have plenty of life-support consumables but only sufficient food to last one person until the rescue party arrives. What do you do?… One day, while brewing coffee for breakfast, you realize there are three chunks of protein-packed meat living right next to you.”

He argues that the largest people should sacrifice themselves first, since they both consume and provide the most food. We don’t know where Seedhouse would fall in the buffet line because we couldn’t find his height and weight online, and honestly we’re scared to ask.

Mostly because his book includes a weirdly detailed look at how to butcher Homo sapiens. Also, on page 144, the reader will find a photo of ten astronauts floating happily in space, with the caption: “In the wrong circumstances, a spacecraft is a platform full of hungry people surrounded by temptation. Is it wrong to waste such a neatly packaged meal?”

Is one of the space people Elon Musk? I think that would influence my answer. He doesn’t look particularly appetizing, so this would be a question of performing a distasteful service that would benefit all of humankind.

I’ll let you know when my copy of the book arrives. The first thing I’ll be looking for in the index is “spiders,” because I think they’d thrive particularly well in low-G environments. Is the city on Mars specifically for spiders?

The orca are learning

It’s so hard to be angry with them when they’re doing such a good job of picking their targets.

Killer whales have sunk yet another boat in southwestern Europe, marking the fourth such incident in the region in the last two years.

The latest attack saw a pod of orcas target a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar for about 45 minutes, Polish cruise company Morskie Mile said in a Facebook post on 31 October.

The boat’s operator said the relentless attack focused on the yacht’s steering fin and caused extensive damage and leakage.

“Despite attempts to bring the yacht to the port by the captain, crew and rescuers from the SAR (Search and Rescue), port tugs and the Moroccan Navy, the unit sunk near the entrance to the port of Tanger Med,” the company said, while adding that the crew was “safe, unharmed, and sound”.

That’s how you do it. Hit privileged people in the pocketbook without actually killing or hurting them physically, and we’ll cheer you on. If only humans were smart enough to realize that!

Unjustifiable crimes…unless you read the Bible

It makes perfect sense. Send tanks and bulldozers and soldiers into Gaza, and then when the panicked, displaced residents end up in refugee camps, drop bombs on the camp. Kill, kill, kill to exterminate Hamas to the point where you’ve got somewhere around 10,000 dead, mostly families and children, and then claim you’re killing terrorists. The logic is impeccable.

Oh wait. No. It makes no sense. None of this is rational.

The only way to understand it is to recognize that it’s driven by fear and religion. Here in the USA, we have nothing to fear from Hamas, so the motivation is just God. American support for Israel is based on an absurd belief in prophecy. Listen to Pastor John Hagee.

Pastor John Hagee, CUFI founder and Chairman, speaking at the (CUFI) Christians United for Israel’s 2018 Washington Summit held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC on July 23, 2018 (Photo by Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Who needs a reasonable justification for massacre when you can just claim God told you to slaughter people?

American evangelicals have long prided themselves on their undeviating support for Israel—but the basis of this alliance is not a standard convergence of diplomatic interests, and it’s certainly not a flourish of faith-based solidarity with the Jews. Instead, it’s a matter of the opportunistic choreographing of the foreordained final act of history. Believers in the literal interpretation of “endtimes” prophecy see the fortunes of Israel as a key harbinger of the Final Judgment and the elevation of fallen human history into the realm of the divine. In secular leftist politics, advocates of rapid escalation of class and geopolitical conflict are known as accelerationists; in endtimes prophecy belief, acceleration is left to God, but his Christian emissaries still retain the awesome power of recognizing and celebrating the signs of the pending judgment—and urging earthly powers and principalities to get in line with the divine plan before it’s too late.

The best-known promoter of this worldview is Texas-based Pentecostal televangelist John Hagee, the founder of the advocacy group Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Hagee is a longtime fixture in the endtimes media complex, claiming that the march of time is rapidly aligning with the events foretold in Revelation and other prophetic books of the Bible. After Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, he took to his pulpit at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio to urge immediate US intervention against Iran, as several Israeli diplomats looked on, and right-wing members of Congress offered taped testimonials of their own.

The “endtimes media complex” — now there’s a scary thought. They’re a bunch of loonies, but look at that: representatives of Israel and congress are hanging out with him. And listen to what his big message is:

“The righteous rage of America must be focused on Iran,” Hagee announced, as journalist Lee Fang, who recently released a documentary on the evangelical-Israeli alliance called Praying for Armageddon, reports. “Let me say it to you in plain Texas speech: American should roll up its sleeves and knock the living daylights out of Iran for what they have done for Israel. Hit them so hard that our enemies will once again fear us.” Hagee’s son and co-pastor, Matt Hagee, took up the same refrain in lurid prophetic language. “The secretary of state is not going to get us out of this one,” he declared in a burst of self-satisfied scriptural omniscience. “God has a hook in the jaws of these nations, and he’s drawing them here. God tells Ezekiel exactly how he’s going to defend Israel. He speaks about raining down fire and hail and brimstone. That’s a heavenly air assault.”

What kind of sane person would pray for Armageddon, and would urge another bloody war with a large populous country that can only end with millions dead? It takes religion to drive that kind of hatred.

And now we’ve got one of these murderous kooks appointed to the Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency.

Only strong turkeys survive in New Jersey

We have wild turkeys here in Morris — we see them every once in a while, along the road or at the horticulture garden. They tend to be timid and run away if you approach.

It’s a different story in New Jersey.

Roaming the highways of West Orange is a mighty bird named Turkules, who boldly charges across the road, pursues pedestrians, and has so far proven unstoppable.

Turkules made his official debut early in October at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation on Pleasant Valley Way. Like a bad “why did the chicken cross the road joke,” residents saw him in the street when they were driving in the area. His antics have been immortalized in the New York Times and one resident said he was featured in The Times of India.

People posted pictures of him and captivated residents reported his every movement. One day he was spotted with a dart in his chest from an official capture attempt, and another time he was hit by a car. No one posted any Turkules sightings for a few days, and his fan club worried about his wellbeing. On Tuesday, Oct. 31 he reappeared, much to the delight of many township residents. Although, not everyone is convinced that the turkey spotted on Halloween was Turkules.

He has been creating traffic problems, and many on social media are worried that he will be hit again. Turkules has also charged at a couple of people, so don’t get too close to him.

Officials have posted official warnings.

Please be advised the Township of West Orange is aware of the wild turkey present on Pleasant Valley Way, in the area of Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation and Daughters of Israel. West Orange Animal Control has been working with New Jersey Fish & Wildlife for the past two weeks to capture and relocate this turkey. It’s crucial that the public refrains from approaching the wild turkey for safety reasons. Wild animals can become stressed or agitated when approached, which can pose risks to both the animal and humans. Feeding the turkey or attempting to remove tranquilizing darts is strongly discouraged. Interfering with the wildlife professionals’ efforts can complicate the situation and potentially harm the turkey. New Jersey Fish and Wildlife authorities are actively working to capture and relocate the turkey. They have been trying to tranquilize the bird, but have encountered some challenges in their efforts so far.

You go, Turkules (he has many names now: Cluck Norris, Gobbles McFeathers, Wingston, or simply Tom). Lead the rebellion. Raise up your armies and storm the citadels of Butterball, Jennie-O, and Perdue. Know this: you have allies among us vegetarian humans.

I, for one, welcome our new turkey overlords. They can’t be worse than the turkeys running the country right now.

This is how a thoughtful, intelligent person speaks

A palate cleanser after that horrid SBF video:

OK, that’s easy for you to say, David Bowie, you were rich and famous and popular. I do agree, though, that it’s beneficial to shake up your perspective now and then, and to do daring things — I just wish everyone had the liberty to follow their desires and take risks that don’t involve gambling away their family and livelihood.

Shut up, Sam

Sam Bankman-Fried has been guilty of stealing billions of dollars and faces, potentially, as much as 115 years in prison. Before he was convicted, he was notorious for blabbing constantly to the media. He just couldn’t shut up, and he pretty much convicted himself repeatedly. Now that the trial is over, and he’s awaiting sentencing, can you guess what he’s going to do?

Rush to give interviews to the press, of course.

What do I take away from that?

  • He’s an appallingly bad speaker, his answers larded with more “umms” and “likes” than actually content. How did such an uncharismatic turd convince anyone to hand over thousands and millions of dollars?
  • He confesses that his contribution to the world so far has been a net harm, and he wants to make amends. How? I’d like to know how he’s going to compensate for siphoning billions of dollars out of the economy while in prison. Trading cigarettes will only get you so far.
  • He wants to “make things.” Fine, it’s not as if he made things before. He shuffled money in nefarious ways, he played video games, he used his ill-gotten gains to buy real estate and live the high life. So now he’s going to start?
  • SHUT UP, SAM. Stop talking, talking, talking. That’s the first step in doing something.

I don’t believe a word he says. He’s just trying to rehabilitate his reputation, and he’s so unpersuasive and incompetent that he’s not going to succeed.