Some celebration

Last night was the night we celebrated our wedding anniversary, and wow, but I am exhausted this morning.

Get your brain out of the gutter. It wasn’t like that.

We went out to a movie — Marry Me, a silly little trifle with an absurd premise (big famous pop star, Jennifer Lopez, discovers the man she was about to marry was cheating on her, so she picks a random guy out of her audience, Owen Wilson, and asks him to marry her. He accepts. Best part of the movie was when they go through the ceremony, the guy is asked “do you take this woman yadda yadda”, and he answers “OK” in a nasal Owen Wilson voice. Perfect. The rest was anticlimactic.)

Normally, I wouldn’t even consider going to this kind of movie, but it seemed thematically appropriate to the occasion.

You might think the evening had nowhere to go but up from there, except…when we visited our granddaughter earlier this week, she had a bad cold and a runny nose. Guess who got it? Me. I have been turned into a horrible snot monster. That’s an actual photo of me. I’ll spare you the sound effects, which are gross and glurbly.

Bad enough, you say, but then Mary got savagely sick. More ghastly wimperings, lying on the bathroom floor, I was kicked out of my slimy sleeping nest a few times.

Then the cat started vomiting in sympathy.

And now, my spring break is more than half over, and I have to get grading done.

I knew it was a horror show when I saw the name Barb Anderson

Everything she touches turns to poison. If you’ve never heard of her, she’s a notorious Minnesota hate-monger, a nasty, more bitter version of Michele Bachmann. She’s the master hater behind the Minnesota Child Protection League, one of those misleadingly-named right-wing organizations that swoops into schools to protect the kids from bullying, which usually translates into defending the bullies right to torment LGBT kids. She’s simply an awful person.

MCPL’s lead spokesperson is Barb Anderson, a ubiquitous figure in the school bullying debate. Anderson has long volunteered as a researcher for the Minnesota Family Council, which led two failed battles against marriage equality. She was also a vocal opponent of LGBT safety in the Anoka-Hennepin School District where she helped launch the Parents Action League. PAL is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its adamant demands to have the ex-gay movement in the Anoka-Hennepin School District.

Anderson has made some extreme statements about LGBT people, so much so that GLAAD has added her to its Commentator Accountability Project.

For example, she once said, “The greatest threat to our freedom and the health and well-being of our children is from this radical homosexual agenda that is just so pervasive.”

She was bad news several years ago, when a wave of suicides was sweeping through the Anoka-Hennepin school district — nine kids dead by their own hand in a couple of years. It was horrific. The school district was highlighted in a Rolling Stone (Massive trigger warning: that article recounts the personal experiences of many young people who were viciously bullied, and graphically describes several suicides).

There was another common thread: Four of the nine dead were either gay or perceived as such by other kids, and were reportedly bullied. The tragedies come at a national moment when bullying is on everyone’s lips, and a devastating number of gay teens across the country are in the news for killing themselves. Suicide rates among gay and lesbian kids are frighteningly high, with attempt rates four times that of their straight counterparts; studies show that one-third of all gay youth have attempted suicide at some point (versus 13 percent of hetero kids), and that internalized homophobia contributes to suicide risk.

Administrators denied that there was a problem with gay kids being bullied. They want to stop all bullying, which is a common defense for avoiding conflict with special interest groups targeting LGBT rights. They can’t possibly single out LGBT kids for protection, despite the fact that they’re getting bullied because they’re LGBT. They won’t even acknowledge that the behavior of these kids is perfectly normal, so they avoid useful approaches, like inclusive sex education. No, they just close their eyes to the issues, because they’d rather offend families of the bullied kids than the MCPL. They’ll even go so far as to blame “gay activists” for the problems.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have filed a lawsuit on behalf of five students, alleging the school district’s policies on gays are not only discriminatory, but also foster an environment of unchecked anti-gay bullying. The Department of Justice has begun a civil rights investigation as well. The Anoka-Hennepin school district declined to comment on any specific incidences but denies any discrimination, maintaining that its broad anti-bullying policy is meant to protect all students. “We are not a homophobic district, and to be vilified for this is very frustrating,” says superintendent Dennis Carlson, who blames right-wingers and gay activists for choosing the area as a battleground, describing the district as the victim in this fracas. “People are using kids as pawns in this political debate,” he says. “I find that abhorrent.”

That is explicitly Barb Anderson’s approach. If LGBT kids are being bullied and committing suicide, that’s the fault of the kids themselves and of schools that permissively tolerate the pied piper of perversion and that GSAs [Gay-Straight Alliances] will draw more confused and questioning youth into gay experimentation which will lead schools to affirm sexual disorders, which is why all those kids killed themselves.

Anti-gay backlash was instant. Minnesota Family Council president Tom Prichard blogged that Justin’s suicide could only be blamed upon one thing: his gayness. “Youth who embrace homosexuality are at greater risk [of suicide], because they’ve embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle,” Prichard wrote. Anoka-Hennepin conservatives formally organized into the Parents Action League, declaring opposition to the “radical homosexual” agenda in schools. Its stated goals, advertised on its website, included promoting Day of Truth, providing resources for students “seeking to leave the homosexual lifestyle,” supporting the neutrality policy and targeting “pro-gay activist teachers who fail to abide by district policies.”

Asked on a radio program whether the anti-gay agenda of her ilk bore any responsibility for the bullying and suicides, Barb Anderson, co-author of the original “No Homo Promo,” held fast to her principles, blaming pro-gay groups for the tragedies. She explained that such “child corruption” agencies allow “quote-unquote gay kids” to wrongly feel legitimized. “And then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death,” Anderson said. She added that if LGBT kids weren’t encouraged to come out of the closet in the first place, they wouldn’t be in a position to be bullied.

It’s deja vu all over again. The Anoka-Hennepin catastrophe, fomented by Barb Anderson and her cronies, was nine years ago. So she pulled up stakes and moved to another school district to dispense her venom. The latest episode? The Becker school district invited the MCPL and Barb Anderson to present an alternative view point at a meeting of the school board.

That’s right. The fools running the Becker school district invited a known hate group to speak to the board about adopting their hateful policies. So they did.

The school board invited the Child Protection League to speak at a special meeting following outrage from some community members when OutFront Minnesota — an organization supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights — presented at an August meeting.

The Child Protection League describes itself as an organization committed to protecting children from exploitation and indoctrination. Barb Anderson helped form the group, along with the Parents Action League, which was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-gay rhetoric and involvement in the Anoka-Hennepin School District when it saw a rash of suicides and a lawsuit claiming the district didn’t respond to harassment on the basis of sexual orientation.

GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, also lists Anderson on an anti-LGBT watchlist for saying LGBTQ antibullying efforts are the “pied piper of perversion” and affirm sexual disorders.

Anderson was not at Monday’s meeting but Child Protection League Board Chair Julie Quist spoke about children’s books she said violated the beliefs and norms of the community by accepting different gender identities. Quist previously served as district director for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. Also speaking were former Becker board members Betsy Armstrong and Chris Klippen.

Armstrong spoke for about 50 minutes and was interrupted several times by protesters — mostly Becker students — questioning her statements or chanting “gay rights are human rights.”

She spoke mostly about what she called the “worrisome” increase in the number of transgender youth in the last decade and cited possible reasons as anxiety, autism or sexual trauma exacerbated by peer and social media influences — something Armstrong called a “social contagion.”

Armstrong also referenced a Bible quote that says God created two sexes — male and female — and said people who follow religious teachings are constitutionally protected and their opinions ought to be given equal consideration.

Notice one aspect of their tactics: emphasizing trans kids. Focusing on gay kids, while still something they do, has had diminishing returns as homosexuality is gradually, increasingly acceptable. Trans kids are fair game! Let’s pick on them until the community wakes up to the fact that this all the same horrendous game of finding someone to ostracize and abuse.

The kids are all right, though. They showed up to protest, and were a lot more intelligent than the sick grownups who brought on this spectacle.

Hundreds of students, parents, and residents in the Becker, Minnesota School District showed up, mostly to protest, a special presentation by an anti-LGBTQ group that offered what it called an “alternative viewpoint” on transgender people. The group, the Minnesota Child Protection League, has been cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“This is disgusting,” said Skyler Seiler, identified by Fox9 as a transgender student at the school. “I can’t believe this, we are humans too. I don’t know why they’re treating us like we’re not. Is it not your job, as school board members, to make students feel safe and welcome?”

The school board on Monday voted to allow the group, which Fox9 says is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, to deliver the special presentation. It’s unclear why the school board agreed to allow a third party organization to deliver a message of hate and discrimination that directly affects the students and families it is supposed to support, protect, and defend. It’s also unclear if that information was vetted or fact-checked before being delivered. Attendees say the group’s information was not from credible sources.

“Human rights don’t have two sides so bringing in another side just doesn’t make sense to me,” Heather Abrahamson told Fox9.

“They were not credible sources that they were citing, and it was completely biased and really offensive and insulting,” Maggie Seiler said. “This is painful, I’m sure those kids in there feel even more ostracized and like the school doesn’t back them and like they have even less rights.”

Those kids would be right. It was school board members who brought in the hate-mongers and who argued that “free speech” trumps the kids’ right to learn in a safe environment. They don’t care about the students, prioritizing the horrid discriminatory religious beliefs of people like Barb Anderson over the experiences of people who have to live with the discrimination.

Look, people, you probably don’t like the optics of citizens turning out en masse to call you a bigot. There’s a solution: never ever pay attention to hate groups like the MCPL or the Parents Action League or the Minnesota Family Council. Don’t invite them to your meetings. Burn their recommendations. Drive them out. Or get more of this from the families you claim to support.

Now here’s a political nightmare for you

This bozo, a right-winger running for US Congress from Minnesota, made a stunning proposal last year.

What is it with Republicans who can’t get support for their bad ideas deciding to split states so they can get a majority somewhere, anywhere? This idea doesn’t even make sense from their selfish perspective: those regions of the state already elect Republican representatives, and they’d be merging with a Republican state, so they wouldn’t gain anything in the Senate.

I presume that a more politically savvy Republicon took Mr Munson aside and explained how stupid this idea was, since it never got anywhere.

Did I really need to spend an hour to hear Kent Hovind debunked?

No, I did not. It’s still a pretty good basic deconstruction of the man, by another person with the first name “Paul” who refuses to ever debate the clown.

If you’ve ever considered debating Hovind — he’s cheap and easy, he’ll do it with anyone — watch this to learn that he is godawfully repetitive and ignorant, and there is absolutely no point to engaging with him. He’s still using the same slides from 30 years ago, and always says exactly the same thing, right down to the cornpone dull jokes that were too old-fashioned for Hee Haw.

Good news from outer space!

How about if we just send them all to live on the ISS?

I didn’t even know that we had an astronaut on the International Space Station, but we did, and the good news is that the Russians won’t be leaving him there.

Roscosmos, the Russian state space agency, has announced that they will not be stranding United States astronaut Mark Vande Hei on the International Space Station (or ISS) While this would seem like a bizarre statement to have to make (via the Russian state-owned news outlet TASS, no less) even just a few months ago, this is the world we now live in. Vande Hei, a former US Army officer and highly experienced astronaut and engineer, has been aboard the International Space Station since April 2021. Last year, he had his assignment extended in duration for another six months, and recently broke the record for the longest stay in space by an American astronaut. However, mounting tension between Russia and well, a whole lot of other countries in the world, led to some doubt whether the plan for Vande Hei to leave the station via Russian transport would be honored.

Of course, we all knew they’d let him go. It’s not as if Russia is the kind of country that would murder astronauts or blow up babies, after all. Well, maybe they’d do the latter, but only because mass graves are easier to ignore than dead astronauts drifting through space.

But that’s not what caught my eye about this particular article. Apparently, the author dislikes Elon Musk about as much as I do.

The International Space Station was launched in 1998 as a five-part collaborative effort by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and a conglomerate of European nations. For the 23 years it has been in operation, it has been a marker of relatively benevolent international cooperation and goodwill. Unfortunately, we live in an increasingly bizarre world where the planet’s richest man (whose best long-term idea has been “a subway, but real fast”) uses social media to challenge the President of Russia to single combat. For the record, an estimated three million refugees have fled Ukraine during the ongoing invasion by Russian forces, while Elon Musk makes bear and flamethrower jokes about it.

As a true gesture of good will, I suggest we let Musk take Mark Vande Hei’s place.

Seriously, Georgia? Is this the man you want representing you?

Herschel Walker is trying to win the Republican nomination to the senate from Georgia. He’s popping into churches to reach his electorate.

Ooops, wrong clip.

He actually said that. Walker trotted out the most busted-ass, dead stupid, ignorant pony in their whole stable of broken-on-arrival, crippled, brain-damaged nags the creationists have, and the pastor praised him for getting too smart for his audience.

At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not? Walker asked Chuck Allen, lead pastor of Sugar Hill Church, during Sunday’s event.

Every time I read or hear that, I think to myself, ‘You just didn’t read the same Bible I did,’ Allen replied.

Walker continued: Well, this is what’s interesting, though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.

You know, now you’re getting too smart for us, Herschel, Allen responded.

“You know, morons,” I finished for him.

He’s probably going to win the nomination.

Forty Two (42)

This week’s number is much nicer than last week’s number. Not only is it the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, it’s also our 42nd anniversary, which means this must be the year we finally get it. What “it” is remains to be determined…maybe it’s the secret to living happily together with another human being for an indefinite length of time? That would be a good one. We seem to have wordlessly figured it out, but it would be nice if I were able to put it into words and sell it as one of those saccharine self-help books that make millions of dollars.

Somebody is going to have to revise the FAQ

In the Index to Creationist Claims, rebutting the claim by Henry Morris that No new species have been observed, it is written:

New species have arisen in historical times. For example:

A new species of mosquito, isolated in London’s Underground, has speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).

This claim that a new species arose since the London Underground was built has been widely reported.

In 1999, an English researcher named Katharyne Byrne went underground to investigate further. When she compared Underground mosquitoes and compared them to others found in London houses, she learned that they were a distinct subspecies.

After ruling out migration from elsewhere in the continent, Byrne concluded that the London Underground was colonized by mosquitoes a single time, then achieved “reproductive isolation,” or barriers to reproduction with different species, in the subway tunnels.

“In the continent” is the critical phrase here. As it turns out, they didn’t look far enough afield — they needed to look at species in North Africa. The London Underground mosquito has a deeper history than the London Underground!

The northern house mosquito Culex pipiens sensu stricto is one of the most important disease vector mosquitoes in temperate zones across the northern hemisphere, responsible for the emergence of West Nile Virus over the last two decades. It comprises two ecologically distinct forms — an aboveground form, pipiens, diapauses in winter and primarily bites birds, while a belowground form, molestus, thrives year-round in subways, basements and other human-made, belowground habitats, bites mammals, and can even lay eggs without a blood meal. The two forms hybridize in some but not all places, leading to a complex ecological mosaic that complicates predictions of vectorial capacity. Moreover, the origin of the belowground molestus is contentious, with iconic populations from the London Underground subway system being held up by evolutionary biologists as a preeminent example of rapid, in situ, urban adaptation and speciation. We review the recent and historical literature on the origin and ecology of this important mosquito and its enigmatic forms. A synthesis of genetic and ecological studies spanning 100+ years clarifies a striking latitudinal gradient — behaviorally divergent and reproductively isolated forms in northern Europe gradually break down into what appear to be well-mixed, intermediate populations in North Africa. Moreover, a continuous narrative thread dating back to the original description of form molestus in Egypt in 1775 refutes the popular idea that belowground mosquitoes in London evolved in situ from their aboveground counterparts. These enigmatic mosquitoes are more likely derived from populations in the Middle East, where human-biting and other adaptations to human environments may have evolved on the timescale of millennia rather than centuries. We outline several areas for future work and discuss the implications of these patterns for public health and for our understanding of urban adaptation in the Anthropocene.

It’s still evolution, just evolution over millennia rather than less than a century.

That’s how much smug costs, I guess

Until recently, Congress had a mask mandate, and if you showed up without a mask, the first time they’d hit you with a $500 fine…the second and subsequent times, it shoots up to $2500. Guess who refused to wear a mask?

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Rather than just putting on a mask, she decided to stand up for her rights and refused to wear one or to pay the fines. Except she decided to sue to have the fines revoked. Guess what? She lost.

All those fines added up to more than her yearly salary of $174,000 (she’s grossly overpaid), so we basically got her ‘services’ for free.

You get what you pay for. Or in this case, a bit less.

More short-sighted stupidity from an institution of higher learning

The university will have to get me one of these masks if they expect me to be nice to COVIDiots.

It’s official. The University of Minnesota is taking tentative steps to dismantle mask requirements. I’ll still have to wear them in the classroom (I’m not planning to discontinue that, no matter what the administration says), but you can go to football games, plays, and social events without them now.

For our faculty, staff, and student workers in instructional, clinical, and transit settings, face coverings will continue to be required. Additional information on where and when masks may be required is available from Safe Campus.

Those who work in other settings—including residential housing, dining facilities, and offices—will not be required to wear a mask while at work. However, you may continue to wear a mask in these settings based on your personal preference and expect support from your coworkers and leaders in creating a positive workplace that is welcoming and respectful.

It’s too soon. We’re always doing this — backing off on the preventive measures as soon as they show signs that they’re working. And then everyone is going to act surprised when we get another spike!

I’m also a little peeved at that admonition to be “welcoming and respectful” to the conspiracy theorists, like this guy, who is a pastor in Benson, just an hour away.

…Jason Wolter, is a thoughtful, broad-shouldered Lutheran pastor who reads widely and measures his words carefully. He also suspects Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic as a political tool, doubts President Joe Biden was legitimately elected and is certain that COVID-19 vaccines kill people.

He hasn’t seen the death certificates and hasn’t contacted health authorities, but he’s sure the vaccine deaths occurred: I just know that I’m doing their funerals.

He’s also certain that information will never make it into the newspaper.

Wolter’s frustration boils over during a late breakfast in a town cafe. Seated with a reporter, he starts talking as if Anfinson is there.

You’re lying to people, he says. You flat-out lie about things.

No, he is not thoughtful, he doesn’t read widely, and he doesn’t measure his words carefully. He’s a dogmatic, blinkered COVIDiot, and no, I’m not going to be welcoming and respectful towards that kind of inane attitude. We’re going to get another spike thanks to the people who think we have to make nice with the ignorant.

If you want to see what I anticipate for our future, look to China.

In Shenzhen, officials ordered the city’s more than 17 million people to stay at home starting on Monday through March 20, after just 150 new cases were reported over the weekend.

The city is home to key Chinese companies like Huawei, electric carmaker BYD and Tencent. Apple supplier Foxconn suspended operations, as did circuit board makers Sunflex and Unimicron, also a supplier to Apple and Intel.

Authorities in the northeastern province of Jilin on Monday barred its 24 million residents from leaving, marking the first time officials have sealed an entire province since January 2020 when Hubei was put under lockdown.

Health officials said hospitals were overrun because of the rapid increase in cases since Friday. The province recorded more than 4,605 coronavirus cases on Saturday, while 3,868 residents have tested positive in preliminary tests but were not yet included in the official tally, officials said.

Somebody is smart enough to see that when 150 people sneeze, it’s a harbinger of millions getting flattened by a disease. We’re not that clever. We’re instead sending out memos telling us to be welcoming and respectful to plague rats.

Hey, check out Hong Kong.

There are no funeral ceremonies for some of the hundreds of elderly Hong Kong residents dying every day of covid. Their bodies are instead sealed in plastic bags and then quickly cremated, freeing up space at the morgue for more arrivals.

Hong Kong — a wealthy financial center — now has the highest covid death rate in the developed world. More than 2,300 people have died since the start of the city’s most recent outbreak, compared with just 213 in the two years prior. Those dying are overwhelmingly elderly, unvaccinated residents, but they also include toddlers and children too young to be immunized.

Gosh. Those vaccines must be killing all those unvaccinated elderly people and children.

We’ll never learn.