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.

An amusing evo-psych put-down

From Kevin Bird:

“Postmodern NeoMarxist” is just an insult Jordan Peterson uses for anyone he dislikes. It’s another example of projection; you know how wingnuts like to claim that the libs call everyone a Nazi? The truth is that they like to call everyone a postmodernist or neo-Marxist.

Stephen Jay Gould is just an evo-psych boogeyman, and Geoffrey Miller is an ass. This is a great rebuttal, though:

Yep, spot on.

A productive weekend!

We vanished for the weekend and went out into the great wide world for a day and two nights. We got a lot done, even masked and avoiding most other human beings.

  • We visited our son Alaric in St Cloud. He’s doing well, his only complaint right now is that it’s impossible to get his hands on a PS5, which tells me he’s not facing any major worries right now.
  • We upgraded our phones, something we’ve put off for a few years, even as screens cracked and their batteries got weaker and weaker. We now get 5G, which is great, since it means our brains are also mutating to receive telepathic signals from the Pleiades, and our new third eyes are beginning to erupt. The downside: a few hours spent getting them all reconnected with our passwords.*
  • I got my birthday present. We stopped by Cabela’s and I got a pair of good hiking boots. Some of my pedal miseries lately have been a consequence of always picking up the cheapest pair of shoes possible, and wearing them to destruction (it doesn’t take all that long, cheap shoes last about a year). Now I’ve got a solid pair of boots with firm ankle support and a good fit. We’ll see if they help.
  • We visited our daughter, Skatje, in Wisconsin. She’s finishing up a PhD in computational linguistics, and her subspecialty is Russian. She’s not happy about the situation over there, but she’s very much into the Russian culture and language. So we had syrniki for breakfast. Do not speak to me of the decadent West, when Slavs eat fried cheesecake for breakfast.
  • Then of course we also played with Iliana all day long. I had forgotten how exhausting kids are at three.

Now we are home again. It’s time to get back into my mundane responsibilities.

*Passwords ought to be trivial, except I’m too old. I was an early adopter of the Mac (1984!) and signed up for mac.com network a few years later, which is now defunct. But every time I upgrade an Apple device, it insists on avidly taking up the mac.com network identity and telling me to log in to an extinct service in order to prove I am who I say I am.

Learning more about Russia than I expected

Today, I have ended up in Wisconsin, just for the day, and I thought it was going to be time to play with a 3-year-old. But hey, here’s an interview with Stephen Kotkin that I thought was a solid overview of the Russian perspective. And it turns out my daughter Skatje is a moderator for r/russian, and knows a fair bit about the language. I should have expected that, since she’s working on a PhD in computational linguistics and specializes in the Russian language. Russian is close enough to Ukrainian that she can read that, too.

Anyway, I’m busy for a day. Three year olds are not that interested in Russian politics.