Cocaine Bear

Huh. All I had to do was write the title and my review is done. That was easy.

OK, a little more.

I’ve got so much grading to do that I have to prod myself with little rewards. I had to compose an exam yesterday, and I told myself if I got it done before 7 I could go to the theater. I finished at 6. The choices available to me were Creed III, which is probably the better movie, but I’m not into sports movies at all, or Cocaine Bear, which looked entertainingly stupid. I went for the light entertainment.

There was a real cocaine bear, a black bear that discovered a drug dealer’s stash, ate 70 pounds of cocaine, and died. That would make for a short, sad, boring movie. In this movie, a plane drops cocaine into a park, and the bear finds scattered drops and turns into a raging drug fiend, flitting everywhere and ripping the limbs off various ne’er-do-wells and goofballs while collecting face-fulls of cocaine.

It was Ray Liotta’s last movie. It features a couple of kids who are cute, sassy, and don’t get eaten. The adults meet their demise in various creative ways. It’s a bit gorey.

Final assessment: it was honest schlock, and much, much better than Quantumania.

(I’ve got lots more grading to do, and am about to head off to the coffee shop with a stack of papers. When I get that done, the reward is to spend a little spider time. Then more grading this afternoon — maybe I’ll goad myself on with something on Netflix tonight. Then more grading tomorrow.)

I think I could agree with this guy fairly well

This is a good summary of my position on all the sex and gender chatter going on, except that I really don’t care at all what sex an imaginary god might have.

I’m a bit more flexible than he is on the question of biological sex, though. It’s more than just a small number of people on the saddle of a bimodal distribution, I think there are multiple parameters that define our sex that allow people to possess aspects of both male and female sex.

Naomi Wolf thinks my penis is going to rot and fall off. Should I be concerned?

It’s looking diseased.

I hadn’t heard of the “Daily Clout” before, it’s just another far right histrionic pseudo-journalistic platform for particularly ignorant pundits. This morning I learned that they’re claiming the COVID vaccine will make your penis rot and fall off. I’ve had four shots, I guess I need to worry.

Or not worry. This woman is reading through Pfizer’s internal documentation of their trials, and jumping on every chance occurrence as a causal indictment of the treatment. One person got an epithelial cancer, another had a blood clot, etc., etc., etc. — but that’s to be expected in an large sample of the population in a clinical trial. Some of the participants might have died in a car accident, but you don’t leap to the assumption that the vaccine caused the accident. You have to compare the frequency in the test group to the frequency in the general population.

Then I learn the “Daily Clout” was founded by Naomi Wolf. OK. I’m done. My penis is relieved.

Disappointed, and relieved

This was supposed to be a heavy research morning — we’ve started a new experiment in the lab and spiders need to be assayed, and we were going to do some scanning of egg sacs with our confocal, and I was figuring I’d be neck deep in spider work until at least noon. But then my student called in sick, which was exactly the right thing to do (COVID is going around the student body again), and I had to postpone everything until Monday. I wouldn’t want to deprive her of the fun part of science!

Instead, I did the drudgery part of science, feeding all the animals. They didn’t really need it, they had mealworms earlier this week, and look like little brown beach balls right now. I wouldn’t want them to wake up feeling peckish and discover the larder was empty this weekend.

I found two new egg sacs. Two others look very close to emergence, so I sorted those out into new small containers. The confinement makes it easier to remove newly scampering spiderlings.

Now I’m staring at a stack of lab reports and exams and senior thesis drafts that I’m going to have to get done this weekend. I also have to compose a genetics exam to mail out this evening. First, though, I have to deliver another lecture to my other class. There will be no joy in Morris today.

This was supposed to be my light semester.

It’s too early in the morning for this crap

Did you know that Charles Darwin caused the Vietnam War? The Answers Research Journal says so!

Darwinism was a major influence on those persons who birthed, inspired, and supported the Vietnam War. This includes Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Ho Chi Minh. Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) ideas helped to guide these leaders to Social Darwinism, which was an underpinning of the Communist and the National Socialist (Nazi) ideologies. Darwinism also played a central role in contributing to the conditions that eventually led to the American involvement in the Vietnam War, including the Communist Movement. The decade-long war, from 1965 to 1975, cost as much as three million lives during the time the U.S. was involved.

Darwinism, especially Social Darwinism, played a central role in contributing to the conditions leading to the communist domination of North Vietnam. Social Darwinism is the belief in the importance of the “survival of the fittest”—the idea that certain people are innately better than other people. Marxism, the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, was developed by their followers to form the basis for the theory and practice of communism. Darwinism is a biological theory of the origin of different life-forms through the natural selection of life forms better able to survive their environment. In contrast, Social Darwinism, is a consequence and progression of Darwin’s theory best summarized as “survival of the fittest.” Social Darwinism is an underpinning of communism and National Socialist (Nazi) ideology.

It’s a Jerry Bergman production (remember Jerry Bergman?), so it rambles on and on with nothing but bald assertions and a lot of ahistorical nonsense. It scarcely touches on the role of colonialism and capitalism, which all preceded Darwin, and instead what drove the Vietnamese revolutionaries was Darwinism. Not French oppression, not a desire for independence, naw…they read the Origin of Species and bam, decided to overturn the natural order.

It really is typical Bergman. Repetition, repetition, repetition, and I couldn’t finish it.

They should never have increased the Twitter word count

It was a terrible mistake. They bumped the character limits from 140 to 280 for most people, and I have no idea what the limits are for the suckers who paid for their blue checks, but now we’re getting these long rambling rants from all the weirdos.

Ken Ham bought his precious blue check mark, of course.

He doesn’t like public schools. Take a deep breath.

Well, I realize this post may “stir the pot” somewhat, and I’ll brace for the responses! Should Christians send their kids to public schools? Now firstly I want to say it’s the parent’s decision as to where they send their kids to be educated. And I do recognize in a fallen world there are all sorts of family issues (eg: single parent families) for varied reasons.

However, at the very minimum, each Christian should build their thinking on God’s Word in regard to the training of children, and do the best they possible can, with much prayer & God’s help and hopefully the help of God’s people in the church, to attain to what God instructs as much as we are able.

From God’s Word we do get answers to: Who owns children? Parents & ultimately God. Who is responsible for the education of children? Parents, & in particular Fathers as the spiritual head. What is the priority of education? Spiritual/biblical worldview. What should we understand about children? They are not miniature adults & they have a sin nature. What warnings are there? Bad company corrupts bad character.

Many people in the church have told me their kids should be in the public school to witness to other kids. But what’s the biblical basis for this? When I ask, I’m usually told, “we are to be light and salt in this world.” Yes, true, but one can only shine light if one has it to shine. Yes, Matthew 5:13 states “you are the salt of the earth,” but Mark 9:50 also states, “Have salt in yourselves.”

Your kids can’t be salt till they have salt. And by salt it means they are to be filled with biblical truth, but also prepared with answers (1 Peter 3:15) to be able to withstand the attacks of the devil in the world they live in. That’s why @AiG provides all sorts of curricula for churches & homes to help raise generations filled with biblical truth & equipped to defend the Christian faith against the attacks of our day.

Now Scripture also warns in Matthew 5:13, that “But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” In other words, contamination destroys.

Before our kids can be a witness to the world, they need to be filled with salt, as uncontaminated as possible, to know what they believe and why and be equipped to defend their faith.

Let’s face it, most of the public school system indoctrinates kids for 6 or so hours a day in the secular worldview of evolutionary naturalism & sexual humanism. Most churched kids have not survived the public education system and have walked away from the church. Very few exceptional kids from church homes survive and are able to be salt and light. Most become severely contaminated. This is reflected in the fact there’s been a massive generational loss from the church.

Bottom line, are you putting your own kids at risk from contamination because you want them in the system to witness to others? But how much have parents & the church really made sure such kids are truly filled with salt to be able to do this? Most churches have not taught apologetics and most have compromised God’s Word in Genesis, opening the door for that contamination to take hold. Most father’s have not been the spiritual head of their house as they should. Look at the evidence, most of the younger generations have walked away from the church. Generation Z is the first post-Christian generation & very atheistic in worldview.

Remember, when your kids are born, they don’t know about the bible, or Adam and Eve, or sin, or the promise of the Savior, or the Flood, or Babel, or the cross, or resurrection, or the saving gospel, or how to answer the attacks of our day. Our job as parents is make sure they are taught and equipped so they can impact the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. Where are your kids spiritually? What legacy are you leaving in the younger generations? Who really has the greatest educational impact on your kids and grandkids?

I can answer that last question. If you’re talking about educational impact, it wasn’t my parents. I loved my parents, I thought they were great role models, they taught me to love knowledge, but I had to attend a public school to learn algebra, and grammar, and spelling, and basic chemistry, and home ec, and to read Melville and Dickens and Austen and Baldwin, and the framework of history. They weren’t educated as teachers and had work to do, and when they had free time, they wanted to enjoy being with their family.

Mr Ham’s problem is that he was never educated at all, and thinks learning about the bible, or Adam and Eve, or sin, or the promise of the Savior, or the Flood, or Babel, or the cross, or resurrection, or the saving gospel is an education. It wasn’t. He was fed lies.

Oh, but wait. To prove his point, Ham gives us some helpful illustrations.

Don’t go to college!

If you go to college, you’ll fill up with corruption that will make non-Christians happy.

But church will fill you with salt.

And the salt will poison all the non-Christians, because they’re like slugs or something.

Well, now I’m convinced. He’s an idiot, but he has some cheap-ass graphic illustrators working for him who can churn out appallingly bad images.

There’s more from the loquacious Mr Ham! Wait until you see his rant about science.

Want to learn about true science? Are your kids being indoctrinated by secularists in our secular institutions who don’t teach kids correctly about what science is and isn’t? Tired of the secular science programs that brainwash generations of kids in the anti-God religion of evolution/millions of years?

Real science confirms the Bible! But, sadly, many science programs don’t glorify God as the Creator. Instead, they teach humanism and atheistic evolutionary ideas to children. Because of this, many parents find it challenging to find engaging science programs that glorify God—but not anymore!

[cut short because it’s a lot of boring lies]

Real science is honest inquiry in which you can question and test your assumptions, and aren’t required to distort your answers to fit the Bible, which is not a science text. But Ken Ham has lots of money to fund his propaganda.

Also, I get more email

When the gender essentialist scum get stirred up on Twitter, that also means my in-box becomes a cloaca. A representative example:

Your twitter account looks like it belongs to a psychopath. You retweeted something from another psychopath re Libs of Tiktok’s children’s book claiming she was presenting a ram as a ewe. She wasn’t. He didn’t open up the book to let people see the full illustration which shows a ram and a ewe.

Your page looks like it belongs to a man with a perverted interest in spiders (why not? I mean we have furries and adult diapers wearers). Apparently you don’t understand there are two sexes in humans, although apparently there are in spiders.🤡

There’s no point in arguing with them. The kind of doofus who assumes that saying “sex is more complicated than a simple binary” means “I don’t believe sex exists” is too thick to waste time on.

Also, defending Libs of Tiktok is too deranged.

Spider sex is more complex than the binary paradigm

It looks like it’s time for me to go on a blocking rampage on Twitter, because the TERFs/GCs are flooding my account with stupidity. There’s only so much of that that I can take. The problem is that Graham Linehan noticed me, and the flock of dim & bigoted fanatics who follow him are piling on. One of them noticed that I breed spiders and thinks that is an excellent gotcha.

One thing I find gratifying is that sex-denialists like @pzmyers wibble on about sex being socially constructed and bimodal. But when they actually want something done (in this case breed spiders) – they suddenly know there are exactly 2 sexes and it’s the females that make eggs!

I make movies of spiders mating, as he notices, but somehow he thinks I’m a “sex-denialist” and that somehow this contradicts my position on trans rights. Surprise! I actually know how sex works. I understand that making an embryo requires a fusion of two gametes. I would think all of the trans folk he despises would be more conscious of these distinction than he is.

I also know the logical difference between the fact that many females make eggs, and the idea that all females must make eggs. I also know that even in spiders there’s more to sex than tab A goes into slot B.

I also have information on that. I’m mainly interested in spider sex as a means to an end — I need lots of embryos — but to get there I’ve been making observations of spider behavior. Every morning I move a male spider into a container with a female spider, slide it under a dissecting scope, and watch what happens. Sometimes courtship and mating are swift and dramatic, and I click a button and record the whole process, and that’s what you see. Sometimes they take their time, and I have to watch them dawdle and fumble around for a half hour before anything happens. Sometimes I give up and put the pair in an incubator overnight and hope something happens. Rarely, the female just murders and cannibalizes the male. Of the clutch of spiders that emerged in January, I’ve got 11 females who successfully mated and produced an egg sac; I’ve got 16 that spurned the male I provided and are effectively childless. Those I don’t record, because two wallflower spiders avoiding each other isn’t particularly interesting.

What’s going on? I don’t know. My focus isn’t on the behavior, but on the development of embryos. But who knows — maybe there are gay and lesbian spiders. Maybe some are asexual. Maybe there are timid spiders and bold spiders. Maybe some spiders are unattractive and no one wants to have sex with them. Maybe the Adult Spider Female is focused on her bug-munching career, and doesn’t want to make babies. Maybe some pairs of spiders have cellular incompatibilities that prevent fertilization. Maybe for some spiders the behavior works, but the plumbing is atypical. These are all interesting possibilities, and if a student were to come along and ask to make a quantitative analysis of mating behavior and reproductive success, I think there are a lot of good questions to ask and some useful studies to make, because sex, even in a small arthropod as driven by instinct as a spider, isn’t binary, isn’t a question of did they or didn’t they, and exhibits a range of complex variation that I haven’t tried to plumb.

Other people are looking into that! A paper by Angelekakis, Turutzek, and Tuni (2022) looked into mating rates in Parasteatoda, and as I’d expect, it’s complex. Spiders can be choosy — the majority of females didn’t mate at all (as I’m seeing in Steatoda), and many would mate only once and then be done with the whole messy business (they store sperm, so one successful mating is sufficient for a lifetime of egg production.)

As usual, the TERFs/GCs try to ignore all that and shoehorn everything into a simple binary. It doesn’t work for spiders, and it especially doesn’t work for humans, who have layered on so many variations and subtleties and tangled them all up with non-reproductive cultural behaviors. This @nathankw nitwit tried to argue that sex can’t be bimodal because I can’t provide a single numerical parameter that shows a range of values for sex. The problem isn’t that I can’t, it’s that I can provide so many. Receptivity, courtship initiation, web twanging frequency, successful insemination frequency, dancing intensity, abdomen size, interval since last courtship, metabolism levels…I can think of so many measures that don’t exhibit the kind of fixed values that he wants for males and females. It’s overlapping ranges all over the place! In spiders! But he wants to pretend that human sex is simple, nothing but sperm and ova.

Graham Linehan really didn’t have anything to contribute, other than to claim my biology is a religion, and to add this silly little bon mot:

A biologist who pretends to believe that humans can change sex. What a time to be alive.

But if humans can’t change sex, why is this crowd so opposed to gender affirming care, hormonal treatments, and surgery? If sex is an unstoppable freight train that can’t be diverted, then let them continue with their ineffectual efforts to change sex. Except that they keep seeing the inescapable evidence that sex can and does change.

Angelakakis A, Turetzek N, Tuni C (2022) Female mating rates and their fitness consequences in the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Ecology and Evolution, doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9678.