Curious squiggles

On my walk to work this morning, I noticed these odd patterns in the snow and ice over the sidewalk. At first glance, I thought bird tracks or traces of squirrels rushing through the snow…but no, that makes no sense. They are variable in size and length and follow short meandering pathways, like this:

What’s your explanation? I don’t think it’s Cthulhu cultists leaving ritual markings around my house. My tentative explanation is that it’s an effect of salt — that we scatter salt on our sidewalk, which then generates the meandering scribbles as the sun rises and the warmth causes differential melt patterns in response to the local salt concentration.

Alternatively, I did initially try reading the markings. I couldn’t make sense of them, but maybe if I try harder the meaning will emerg…ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. Iä! Iä!

Their one true god is ignorance

Apparently, there’s a growing problem in the US.

Growing vaccine hesitancy is just a small part of a broader rejection of scientific expertise that could have consequences ranging from disease outbreaks to reduced funding for research that leads to new treatments. “The term ‘infodemic’ implies random junk, but that’s wrong,” said Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. “This is an organized political movement, and the health and science sectors don’t know what to do.”

Yes, yes, yes, I agree, there is a terrible strain of motivated ignorance running rampant in the nation. I rather resent the idea that this is an emerging problem — it’s been around as long as I’ve been alive, and longer. The focus shifts is all. The current focus in this article on vaccine disinformation is a symptom of the same old arrogance that fueled the anti-evolution movement. The people who promoted that nonsense are now the same people pushing climate change denial and COVID conspiracy theories — they’ve just expanded their Bible colleges and built conservative think tanks that are somehow regarded as reasonable sources of opinion, and they’ve set themselves up in institutions like the Federalist Society that have acquired the authority to corrupt the fabric of our government.

Don’t even try to imply that this is something new. We’ve let the seeds of decay incubate for many decades. Now news stories deplore this situation on one hand, while on another, in other news stories from the same organizations, they’ll blandly cite the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute or or the Cato Institute or, god help us, Republican Party figureheads as sources, never questioning ho they’re building up the reputations of these fallacious “authorities.” They don’t question. So when some Republican liar says a trivially recognizable lie, like the following, they just report it and don’t say what’s wrong with it.

As a result, many people felt betrayed when COVID vaccines only moderately reduced the risk of infection. “We were promised that the vaccine would stop transmission, only to find out that wasn’t completely true, and America noticed,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the Republican-led coronavirus subcommittee, at a July hearing.

No. No credible authority claims a vaccine will simply stop transmission with 100% certainty in its effectiveness. Brad Wenstrup is a liar and a fraud. Brad Wenstrup is an asshole. The media won’t say that, despite it’s truth, and so the infection spreads. Even in an article reporting on the deplorable state of critical thinking, a news source can’t bring itself to state the facts. They are still obligated to pander to the know-nothings who buy the crap they advertise.

They’ll never openly recognize the common fuel that drives this American problem: a fanatical religiosity. This problem will never go away as long as we continue to grant churches unwarranted privilege.

I almost forgot how dangerous philosophy is

I must say how much Florida looks like Russia. Russian academicians are proposing that it is necessary to disembowel philosophy.

Professor of the Department of Humanities at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Dmitry Vinnik called for overcoming “the traits of comprador domestic philosophy.” To these features he included “the collective conviction that a philosopher must always be against the state and that a philosopher simply must be a pacifist,” “overt cosmopolitanism and intellectual snobbery.”

“Government assignments and curricula must be reviewed to ensure compliance with the values ​​of our society and the interests of our state. All gender, feminist, postmodern and pacifist topics and courses should simply be abolished,” Vinnik noted.

Also, according to the professor, it is necessary to abolish “the courses of so-called critical thinking and fact-checking imposed abroad, which have nothing to do with philosophical skepticism or logic.” “In fact, this is a course in applied Russophobia,” says Vinnik.

I guess pacifism isn’t a legit philosophical position any more — philosophers must be militant and opposed to heresies like feminism. Also, critical thinking is anti-Russian…also, probably, anti-Floridian and anti-Texan.

Then they came for the sociology departments, but I was not a sociologist…

Respect. Sociology has been targeted for destruction by the raving mad conservatives of Florida. I guess it’s so dangerous that they fear it.

Last fall, with little explanation, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. proposed removing sociology from the menu of courses university students can take to meet graduation requirements. On Wednesday, he spoke more clearly, suggesting that sociology studies could veer into “identity politics or theories,” in violation of a new state law.

“Students should be focused on learning the truth about our country instead of being radicalized by woke ideology in our college classrooms,” Diaz said in comments to the State Board of Education.

Now sociology is woke and might steer students towards considering the broader implications of, for instance, racism and misogyny on, you know, society. Don’t worry, though, they’re going to provide an alternative.

The sociology option will be replaced with an introductory course about American history prior to 1877.

Let me guess: instead of teaching about the complexities of sociology, they’re going praise the Founding Fathers and how wonderful America is.

It requires that core courses “whenever applicable, provide instruction on the historical background and philosophical foundation of Western civilization and this nation’s historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments, and the Federalist Papers.”

Yep. You know, that isn’t even close to the content you’d find in a sociology course. Can you guess what the problem with sociology is?

“I think the statute is clear that, within the general education core code, courses may not distort significant historical events or include curriculum that teaches identity politics or theories,” Diaz said. “And I think when you go into the sociology course, you’re talking about theories, and that’s an option that students have to explore those theories in a nongeneral education course.”

It teaches theories. The people behind these prohibitions really don’t understand the meaning of “theory” in science! I teach theory in all of my classes — it’s how you learn and progress, by teaching the ideas behind a subject and discussing the evidence that led to those theories. To exclude a subject because it incorporates theory is absurd, and to suggest that it is inappropriate for a specific, more advanced course and should only be taught in a broader, more general course is exactly the opposite of what should be done. I think the idea is to put know-nothing ideologues in charge of interpreting the subject.

It’s all part of policies intended to neuter any political implications of…knowing stuff. Learning is dangerous. Especially if it’s DEI, that might expose the biases of the status quo, and might lead to educated adults working to change the flaws in the “perfect” country established by omniscient 18th century landowners.

In their rules, the State Board and the Board of Governors focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, often referred to as “DEI.” They define them as “any program, campus activity or policy” that classifies people by race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation and “promotes differential or preferential treatment” based on those classifications.

They define political and social activism as actions that would “affect or prevent change in government policy based on social issues.” And social issues are defined as issues that would “polarize or divide society along political, ideological, religious or moral beliefs.”

Sorry, guys. I want my students to be engaged with the important issues in society, such as correcting the howling ignorance of conservatives. More activist students, please.

First round of Survivor: Morris cleared

Class went fairly well this afternoon, mainly because I’ve got a good, engaged bunch of students. The omens bode well for a good semester.

Me, lecturing

One catch: I haven’t spoken in over a month. Little bits of conversation, sure, but I haven’t used my voice in a sustained discussion in all that time, and I think it’s atrophied a bit. I made it through an hour, but at the end, it was all rough and gravelly and actually starting to hurt a bit. I’ve got to practice more.

I was also feeling a bit dehydrated. I’m going to start bringing a water bottle to work and take regular swigs throughout the day. Minnesota winters don’t help much, either: humidity bottoms out when it’s this cold, as my spiders will attest.

Is ignorance a prerequisite for being a Tory?

Sometimes it’s good to see that conservatives in every country are freakin’ morons. Look who the Tories appointed to be Space Minister in the UK:

The Conservative space minister has apparently confused Mars with the Sun.

Andrew Griffith, who has been in charge of the space sector since November, also mistook Jupiter for Saturn.

On a walk around the Science Museum in London, Mr Griffith pointed to an exhibit showing the surfaces of different planets, the House magazine reported. “Now we have got Mars,” he said, before being told by a member of museum staff that it was actually the Sun.

He went on to say “that one is Saturn”, after the display changed, before the employee said “no, no, that is Jupiter”, according to the magazine.

Insisting he is learning on the job as space minister, he said: “I’m not an encyclopaedia.”

No one expects a bureaucrat to be an encyclopedia, but why does he even have this position? He’s clearly not very curious or informed about space — last summer, my 4 year old granddaughter was getting hooked on space science, reading children’s books about the planets, drawing pictures of different planets…maybe the UK can appoint her to the position of Space Minister?

Evolution is the control of development by ecology

Today is my actual first day of classes. We had MLK Day off, and I have no classes on Tuesday, and today I get to meet the 12 students in my Ecological Developmental Biology course. It should be fun. I plan to present that famous aphorism by Van Valen, “Evolution is the control of development by ecology,” and then I’m done for the entire semester — once they’ve grasped that, there is nothing else left to teach, so we can just coast through February, March, April, and May.

OK, so maybe we should also think about the details. We’re going to spend the first two weeks diving into Lewontin’s The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. It’s short but clears the stage beautifully of any vestige of genetic determinism and primes us with an introduction to some fundamental concepts. Everyone ought to read it!

The rest of the semester we’ll work through Gilbert and Epel’s Ecological Developmental Biology. We’re going to talk about plasticity, epigenetics, symbiosis, developmental physiology, and the book has lots of material on teratogenesis, cancer, and aging (those are all developmental concerns, you know — we’re doing all the interesting and important stuff).

We’re also going to dig into the primary literature. This week, we’re reading a review by Sultan, “Development in context: the timely
emergence of eco-devo” to get everyone filled in with the background, but subsequent weeks will be mainly about primary research papers. There’s going to be a fair amount of reading in this class!

I’ve also made the radical decision to abolish all exams: about 60% of the grade is derived from just showing up, alert and ready to contribute. We’ll see how well that flies.

I’ll let you know. I’m thinking I’ll try to post a weekly wrap-up here, so that if I fail it’ll be visible.

Headhunting

Remember when Harvard president Gay, UPenn president Magill, and MIT president Kornbluth were pilloried for being insufficiently outraged about Palestinians on their campuses? They did give pretty tepid and timid answers to questions about campus protests, but I hate to break the news to you about college presidents: that’s their job, being professionally tepid and timid about everything in order to avoid antagonizing politicians and donors. They could have done better, but they never received any training in being forthright.

Then, strangely, everything shifted from being about their responsibilities to all sides on a politically contentious issue to…plagiarism? Not that that isn’t an important matter, but it’s peculiar how we got this abrupt change in focus. What had happened is that certain ideologically motivated people had decided to really get those college presidents, and they’d been doing their best to dig up dirt on them. They didn’t find evidence of anti-Semitism (that would have been a bad tactic, since the dirt diggers tended to be anti-Semitic themselves), but they did find that one nasty little nugget, the horrible secret that plagues a lot of academics who are pressured to churn out lots of papers.*

Well, unsurprisingly, it turns out that neither anti-Semitism or an epidemic of cheating were the actual motivations behind the assault on university presidents, or universities in general. They really, really hate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). This was another anti-woke crusade all along.

Gay’s resignation almost a month after Magill’s had initially redirected the backlash onto Kornbluth, who has largely evaded the brunt of the outrage, kept her job and remained relatively silent amid the calls for her ouster. But as the focus of the online outrage now trains on Business Insider, the calls for the presidents’ firings — once primarily fueled by concerns over antisemitism on campus — are shifting to a broader campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at U.S. colleges and then detouring into seemingly tit-for-tat plagiarism probes. The shift appears to reveal that the initial uproar was never really about protecting Jewish students, scholars told Salon.

“Given how quickly the focus of the people claiming to be concerned about antisemitism on our campuses shifted to academic dishonesty, it certainly appears that the focus was never really about antisemitism and protecting students,” Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Presidents told Salon. “It’s part of a long-running, well-funded effort to create a false narrative for the public that higher education is broken.”

What’s driving that well-funded effort are conservative billionaires, like Bill Ackman. Ackman’s campaign got briefly short-circuited when it was discovered that his wife, Neri Oxman, had the same plagiarism sins that were used to get Gay fired. Uh-oh. Need to recalibrate. Suddenly, Ackman is babbling about “nuance” and “context.” It would be funny if this weren’t a rich, powerful guy looking for pretexts to get people he doesn’t like fired.

But the act backfired for the financier, whose involvement in the controversy had brought him his fair share of criticism according to Bloomberg, last Thursday after Business Insider released reports accusing Oxman of failing to cite and copying passages from other authors without proper citation in her 2010 MIT dissertation, claims The New Republic notes are similar to those thrown at Gay. While Oxman acknowledged some of the claims and apologized for errors in a post to X, the outlet published a second report the day after alleging at least 15 new instances of plagiarism in her dissertation, including segments claimed to be directly lifted from Wikipedia.

With the ire aimed at his spouse, Ackman’s strong-minded stance against plagiarism in all forms suddenly became more nuanced, with the billionaire arguing in a post to X that charges of plagiarism in academia should be more context-reliant and weigh intentionality. The Business Insider reports prompted Ackman to expand his campaign against higher education to the journalism industry, with the Pershing Square CEO announcing his plans to launch an AI-powered dig for potential plagiarism in the outlet’s work.

What’s this about “intentionality”? I suspect he means plagiarism with intent to lend support to the poor and oppressed is bad, while plagiarism with an intent to enrich billionaires is good.

He just hates DEI. It is the root of all sins.

In the same post in which he detailed a strict stance on plagiarism, Ackman also gave voice to a conservative talking point about DEI, concluding, after meeting with students and faculty at Harvard, that DEI was at the core of the antisemitism cropping up on the campus in the wake of Oct. 7.

I think it would be a stronger point to argue that evangelical Christianity is at the core of that anti-Semitism. Except that conservative evangelical Christians also hate DEI, so he can’t blame them.

You know that DEI initiatives strongly oppose anti-Semitism, along with any racial or ethnic discrimination, right? You can’t be a DEI proponent and also promote bigoted ideas about any group.

This is really all about finding any excuse to cut down anyone who opposes the billionaire agenda.

Is too on the nose?

There are jerks on Mastodon, too

It’s too bad that social media has to have that “social” component — as we all know, Hell is other people. I got some comments on this post about the ongoing atrocities in Israel/Palestine on Mastodon that earned someone an instant block. Look at this facile nonsense:

@escarpment@mastodon.online
@pzmyers It says in your profile you are an atheist yet you still seem to have been convinced by the religious moralizers that there exists a clearly defined objective standard of good and evil, which there is not.
@escarpment@mastodon.online
@pzmyers Also, though many people claim half-heartedly to condemn both Israel and Hamas (which in my view is unjustified), they spend the majority of the time and effort condemning Israel, therefore tacitly endorsing Hamas. They hold rallies against Israel, not against Israel and Hamas. They bring cases to the ICJ against Israel, not against Israel and Hamas.


First, they argue that because I’m an atheist, I can’t recognize good and evil. Those are religious concepts only! As if an atheist can’t have a moral standard based on entirely human values, and as if religious values aren’t totally fucked up and invalid. Checkmate, atheist! You are not allowed to condemn violence and genocide, because you don’t have a holy book telling you what’s right!

Next, now that they have established themselves firmly on the moral high ground vs. the trough of futility and despair that is the atheist position, they go on to read my mind. My condemnation of Israel and Hamas is “half-hearted”? Say what? I despise both with my entire heart — even an atheist and humanist can regard terrorist violence as brutal and cruel. That’s their justification for suggesting that I am “tacitly endorsing Hamas”?

No, I am not. I think both the Hamas leadership and the government of Israel should be dragged before the Hague and receive their just punishment. The difference between the two is that 1) right now, the Hamas leadership is being bombed into bloody gibs, and 2) my country is actively supporting the state-run terrorism by Israel, so I feel that condemning the violence my government is “tacitly endorsing” is more important today. There’s also the fact that the Palestinians are clearly the underdog, with about 24,000 dead citizens so far.

No matter, though: my perspective as an atheist and humanist is that no one should be butchering either Israeli or Palestinian civilians. No one should be arming the butchers, either.