I’m a board member at the local theater!

I’m doing my part to support the Morris Theatre — I volunteered to serve on the board. That also means I’ll do occasional work in concessions or as a projectionist, so do stop by for a good movie sometime.

The theater is struggling — it’s losing money, I think about $2000 per year, and there are pending maintenance issues that need to be handled eventually. I’m happy to help out, and there are suggestions to increase community involvement, which I think is going to be the trick to eventually make it profitable.

I play no role in booking, unfortunately for me. There was some discussion at the meeting of how to get better movies shown. I am relieved to see that Melania is not on the list of future showings! There was a suggestion that we get more Christian movies, and get direct involvement from local pastors and congregations, but despite the fact that I think that would be a disaster that ultimately would kill the theater, I kept my face shut. I can be a team player, sometimes.

The problem with Christian movies is that are all bad fucking movies. Without even considering the ideology behind them, they are technically awful and intellectually stupid. They make Marvel movies look like works of genius. I saw God’s Not Dead at the Morris Theatre, and it made me ashamed to live in this community (it also made bank, disgracefully, so I can see where some would look on it as a good thing). If the theater resorted to exploiting dogma for profit, though, I’d have to resign.

No worries right now, though. I hope I can help make the theater a communal success that enriches the lives of our citizens.

Grading day

All of my students are above average, and handsome, too

The students have survived their first genetics exam, everyone passed, hooray! Now I have to figure out went wrong in the problems they missed, and shore up their weaknesses in the next week.

First thing I notice is that they are rock solid on simple Mendelian genetics, but that’s not a surprise. Mendelian genetics is dead easy, which is why I have to roll my eyes when I see racists and eugenicists babbling out terms from high school genetics — it’s all the later, more sophisticated stuff that trips them up every time. Getting cocky about the basics is a sure way to fail when reality makes its ugly appearance.

What I really have to work on are probability and statistics. Some of the students are unclear on what a p value implies, and they’re getting tripped up by simple things, like the binomial theorem. I had no idea when I got my biology degree that I’d end up having to teach math!

(Really simple math, too. High school teachers, make sure your students are aware that biology is not a math-free discipline!)

The Minnesota governor race will be a blend of boring and insane

We had our caucuses this week, which started with an unfortunate announcement: Walz has stepped down and will not be running for governor. Who will run, who will win?

On the DFL side, it’s a cakewalk. Amy Klobuchar, our senator, is running for governor, and the party caucuses approved by giving her 79% of the vote. She’s OK, she won’t propose anything radical, even though we need radical right now. I feel like we’ve had an anointing of the status quo. I’ll vote for her, no question.

On the Republican side, we’re getting the crazy.

Republican house speaker Lisa Demuth actually won the caucus straw polls and is likely to be the leading candidate. Kendall Qualls came in second. Mike Lindell was in third place, but you know he’s going to be trotting around the state, speaking like the lunatic he is, and will draw lots of public attention and maybe get a Trump endorsement.

Lindell is not going to win. He’s not in this to win. He’s in it for the grift.

Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, spent more than half the money he raised for his campaign last year buying copies of his book, according to Minnesota Campaign Finance Board data released Tuesday.

That’s right. He’s taking in any donations and using it to buy copies of his book, which launders the money into his own pocket. What a deal.

At least it’s another reason Lindell doesn’t have a chance of winning.

Don’t believe Tom Homan

He claims he is already reducing ICE presence in Minneapolis, that he’s getting cooperation from county jails, and that they aren’t harassing random citizens anymore.

White House border czar Tom Homan announced Wednesday that he’s immediately pulling 700 federal agents from Minnesota, citing “productive discussions” with state and local officials and “unprecedented cooperation” from county jails.

The Trump administration official, who recently took over Operation Metro Surge, said the reduction in agents is the result of “smarter enforcement, not less enforcement.” He pledged to continue to enforce immigration laws, with the goal of helping the president “achieve mass deportations.”

I can believe that they have reduced the number of ICE agents, but it still leaves 2000, outnumbering local police.

Working with the counties is a good idea, except then they’re only going to pick up immigrants that have committed a crime. They won’t achieve their deportation quotas that way, so I don’t believe a word of it. We do have red counties that would eagerly turn over any brown people that were arrested for jaywalking or murder, but then, why would we need any ICE at all?

Operations have become more efficient through coordination with county jails that are allowing ICE to take custody of undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes before they’re released into the community, according to Homan.

“Rather than having whole teams out looking for a criminal alien who was just released, now we have one agent at that jail picking that person up. That, and the operation has been successful in the number of arrests, so the target list is reducing.”

Homan can’t resist threatening us with another ultimatum.

He added that his goal is a “complete drawdown” as soon as possible, but again said the end of Operation Metro Surge is “largely contingent upon the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ICE and its federal partners that we’re seeing in the community.”

NO.

Protesting is not an illegal activity, and we’ll continue to oppose the criminal and racist goal of achieving “mass deportations”. We like our immigrant neighbors, we are most of us descended from immigrants, we don’t share Stephen Miller’s horrific white nationalist vision, so get the fuck out of here.

I’m too old for a naked Vampirella now

Way back in 1975, when I was a college freshman, Ian and Betty Ballantine visited my university to give a talk about publishing fantasy and science fiction. In particular, they were there to promote Betty’s latest project, The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta. This was catnip to a young nerd who was already playing Dungeons & Dragons, so of course I attended. So did two other people. It was embarrassingly poorly attended.

To my advantage, though — she just gave out pages from the book, and poster-sized prints of the art from the book, so we got all this wall art for our rooms, in addition to stories about Frazetta and the publishing industry. I had a poster of Vampirella!

I lost my nerve and didn’t tack it up in my dorm room — it was just a little too wild and racy.

And now I learn that Frazetta was fond of reworking his paintings, even after he’d sold them for pulp magazine covers, and that he’d updated Vampirella. The repainted version is up for auction now, but I’m not putting in a bid, and I wouldn’t hang this one on my wall, either. The revision involved completely removing her skimpy red costume, and I’ve never considered redecorating my house with sultry naked vampire paintings.

Save us from the glut of ugly statuary

Donald Trump has a new stupid, pointless plan for Washington DC: he wants to put up a statue to Christopher Columbus. He’s not very bright, so he thinks that pandering to an ethnic group is how you convince them to favor Republicans. Only stupid Italian-Americans will fall for it.

President Donald Trump is planning to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds, according to three people with knowledge of the pending move, in his latest effort to remake the presidential campus and celebrate the famed and controversial explorer.

The statue is set to be located on the south side of the grounds, by E Street and north of the Ellipse, two of the people said, although they cautioned that plans could change. The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak on private discussions. The piece is a reconstruction of a statue unveiled in Baltimore by then-President Ronald Reagan and dumped in the city’s harbor by protesters in 2020 as a racial reckoning swept the country.

Great. Another lump of rock to dump in the Potomac in a few years. It does kind of suit this administration.

“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.”

But of course they would consider an imperialist, murderous slaver who maimed and killed the people of a small Caribbean island to be a hero.

But there’s more! A group of cryptocurrency assholes commissioned an 18 foot tall bronze statue of Donald Trump for the launch of another memecoin.

He was put in touch by phone with a group of 16 cryptocurrency entrepreneurs — one in Canada, the others mostly in the United States — who wanted to create a giant bronze Trump commemorating his survival of the assassination attempt at Butler.

“It was a turning point in world history,” Stockton told The Times in 2025. “It would have been a full-blown civil war.” They wanted to capture “one of the most iconic moments and to show our appreciation of his embrace of crypto”, he said.

Their knowledge of history is on par with their aesthetic taste.

Oh, wait. That’s not good enough. It had to be gilded.

It’s possibly the most Trumpian thing ever, but there’s one additional detail. The statue is currently stored in the creator’s workshop, because the people who commissioned it haven’t paid for it.

He is still owed $91,200, Cottrill said. And the giant Trump is staying with him until he gets it. He added: “I can’t trust them to pay me otherwise.”

Now that is definitely the most Trumpian thing ever.

I don’t know where it will end up, but it’s just going to end up in a nearby river or harbor eventually.

Upper Midwest, Unite!

Maybe you aren’t aware of our local biases, but Minnesotans do look down a bit on Wisconsinites (could the reverse also be true? Unthinkable). And then I hear that there have been anti-ICE protests in Green Bay, and that that’s where Alex Pretti was from, and suddenly I feel fellowship coming on.

Never thought I’d fight side by side with a cheesehead
How about with a fellow anti-fascist?
Aye, I could do that

That’s a relief, especially since my daughter has become a Wisconsonite. I can live with that.

A seismic change

Today has been a day full of meetings (with another to come tonight!) and now I’m tired. One of the meetings gave me mixed feelings: a division meeting of all the science faculty to give our final approval of a decision to get rid of our geology discipline.

OK, that’s overly dramatic. We’re not actually getting rid of any of the geology classes, or any of the geology faculty, we just won’t be giving out geology degrees, and the existing structure of the discipline is getting folded into our Environmental Science program. Nothing will be lost, it’s more of an administrative shift, and apparently this is a common kind of change at many universities, but I still feel like it’s a historical break. Before there was a biology, there was geology, and geology was one of the core research fields in natural history. It’s being absorbed into a broader academic discipline, which is OK, I guess, but as an old guy I feel like something is being lost.

I wonder what will happen to biology in a few decades…what grander concept will expand to encompass my little domain?

Don’t tell me physics.

“renovations”

Donald Trump has announced that he is closing the Kennedy Center — pardon me, the Trump Kennedy Center — for two years starting this July. This is for necessary renovations, he says. He also says he’s awaiting approval from the board.

The president said that this would take effect July 4, pending approval of the board, a group that he has appointed and made himself the chairman of.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold prediction that on July 5, he will start “renovating” with backhoes and bulldozers, that he will proceed with no plans for what renovations will be done other than a vague demand for more gold-plated geegaws, and further, that no one in congress will raise a hand in protest, and the laws regulating historical buildings in Washington DC will be ignored.

Another prediction: the building doesn’t actually need major renovations, but that this demolition will occur solely because artists around the world are cancelling engagements at anything with the Trump name on it, and he finds this embarrassing.

He really is determined to leave his mark on the country, even if it is only a mark of shame.

Why is conservative music so awful?

The Super Bowl is coming up! This weekend, I think, but I haven’t been paying much attention.

I don’t like football, and I don’t think I’ve ever watched it for the sports. I’ve tuned in to the half-time show a few times, and it’s always disappointing — there’s a musical act drowning in a sea of ridiculous commercials, and from what little I’ve seen of broadcast television, a lot of those ads will be for gambling services. No thank you, I’m well informed on how probability works. The musical act this time around is Bad Bunny, and I’ve liked what I’ve heard of his music, but not enough to wade through all the Super Crap.

But Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican, so some people are furious that he’s featured on an all-American event — these are the same people so ignorant that they don’t realize that Puerto Rico is American. Apparently, we’ll have some counterprogramming available, from TPUSA, an anti-American white Christian nationalist organization.

Conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA has announced Kid Rock will headline its counterprogrammed halftime show, dubbed “The All-American Halftime Show,” when Bad Bunny takes the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show stage on Sunday, Feb. 8.

Along with Kid Rock, The “one-of-a-kind streaming event,” which will celebrate “American faith, family, and freedom,” will feature performances from “Bottoms Up” singer Brantley Gilbert, “I Drive Your Truck” singer Lee Brice, and “I Hope” singer Gabby Barret, according to a press release.

Oh god. That sounds awful. Couldn’t they sign up Lee Greenwood, even? They’re all country-western singers, my least favorite music genre, I’ve never even heard of the songs they mentioned, and Kid Rock is a washed-up hack. Television is going to be more of a dead wasteland to me on Sunday than it usually is.

Hey, I’m a washed-up hack, too — maybe I should schedule a livestream for that hour. I promise I won’t try to sing.