Republicans’ weird library policies

Idaho Republicans have taken a different tack in their approach to limit access to books they don’t like. They now require the ‘bad’ books in library to be sequestered into a special section that requires special permission to access, and that requires children to be accompanied by an adult. They have to sign in every time they enter the Forbidden Room, so they’ve got a record of who wants to access the naughty books. One woman named Carly took her 11 year old child into the Den of Sin to get a specific book.

Carly explains, “The sign says that if you are under 18, you’re not allowed up there unless you have an unrestricted library card or your parent that is over 18 signs an affidavit for you.” So Carly shows her ID and her daughter’s library card, thinking she’s in the clear. But the librarians still don’t allow her to enter the adult section.

“But no, why don’t they let me? Because I’m holding a baby, my 1-year-old.” Yep, you read that right. Even a literal baby now needs the proper documents to be in Carly’s library. “They said that because I had a baby there (who can’t read), I’m not allowed in the library with her unless she has a library card or I signed an affidavit. So me and Daphne just watched from the edge while Scarlett goes in to find her book. The librarian ended up helping her.” Carly’s clear in her video that she doesn’t blame the librarians, saying, “They were being so nice and patient… I felt like the librarians are sick of it. They feel so bad turning kids away from going into the library.”

The wicked book? The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien.

This is a lovely example of how Republicans are weird — this is a silly law against a non-existent problem promoted by lawmakers who are completely out of touch with their constituency.

Most Idahoans — 69% — trust library staff with book selection, while 23% of Idahoans do not, according to this year’s Idaho Public Policy Survey. More than half of Idaho librarians are considering leaving library work as a result of library-related legislation, according to an informal survey conducted by the Idaho Library Association.

This is not new. When I was a young kid, my local library put all the science books in an adult section and would shoo kids away if they tried to enter — I had to call my parents to get permission to read books about dinosaurs. By the time I was in high school, they’d so thoroughly loosened that stupid policy to the point that they openly displayed copies of Playboy on the periodicals rack. I wasn’t interested in Playboy, but much appreciated free access to all the other books in the library.

I coulda told you so

Destin Sandlin is an enthusiastic and cheerful engineering YouTuber, who spoke at Skepticon seven years ago. I was there. And I remember it, because I really disliked his talk. He’s got this “Aw shucks, I’m just a redneck engineer from Alabama” style that started to grate minutes into his presentation, and also he’s a Christian. That wouldn’t have been bad, except that that was his whole schtick — he’s a Christian speaking at an atheist conference! He must spend much of his time defending his faith and telling the audience to be tolerant of different perspectives, because obviously the Skepticon organizers must be intolerant despite the fact that they invited him to speak. It’s not as if they were unaware of his religious views, after all he mentions it and includes a Bible verse in every video.

I was really annoyed with the last 20 minutes, in which he showed off a bicycle that he’d modified to reverse the steering — it goes right when you turn left, etc. — and spent a year practicing riding it. His point was that different people have different backgrounds and expectations, so yeah, once again, you atheists who invited me here need to learn to respect other points of view.

Hated it.

Anyway, my response was to simply ignore him ever after, and had no interest in seeing any of his videos, until now. He has been written up by the Discovery Institute! He recently put up a video that was “golly gee, the flagellum sure is complex and awe-inspiring.”

A popular YouTube science channel called SmarterEveryDay has 11.5 million subscribers. The channel recently posted a fantastic video about the bacterial flagellum titled, “Nature’s Incredible ROTATING MOTOR (It’s Electric!).” It has been up for less than a week and already has over 1.9 million views. In the video, engineer Destin Sandlin explains how he became captivated after watching an online animation of the bacterial flagellum. He notes that the flagellum “is a really big topic, not only in biomechanics” but also in “philosophy.” That’s because “the complexity of the flagellum implies many things about the origin of life” and “raises questions that people are debating and they’re talking about how can this be?” Sandlin says that he’s “not going to answer” those deeper questions in this video and he doesn’t explicitly endorse intelligent design — but he clearly appreciates the importance of this tiny molecular machine.

Sandlin is very careful about walking a thin line. He clearly believes that complex molecular machines were designed, but he doesn’t have even basic knowledge about protein chemistry or how organisms work (at one point, he says that sperm flagella have rotary machinery like the bacterial flagellum — they don’t), so he’s conscious that he’s not at all qualified to discuss this stuff and that all he brings to the table on this topic is his religious bias, so he doesn’t come right out and say it. He’ll let the viewer fill in the blanks for him.

In the end, Sandlin expounds upon his emotional reaction to seeing the complexity of the flagellum. He says its complexity gives him “joy” and makes him feel “awe and reverence,” and even brings him to give thanks to God. What a beautiful reaction to such a little thing!

Gee whillikers, he’s just a good ol’ country boy letting you know how he feels…and providing fodder for creationists.

I’ll continue to ignore him, but now with additional vehemence.

That’s a whopper of a retraction

The Boston Globe seems to have noticed that they made a libelous claim.

Editor’s note A significant error was made in a headline on a story in Friday’s print sports section about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif incorrectly describing her as transgender. She is not. Additionally, our initial correction of this error neglected to note that she was born female. We recognize the magnitude of this mistake and have corrected it in the epaper, the electronic version of the printed Globe. This editing lapse is regretful and unacceptable and we apologize to Khelif, to Associated Press writer Greg Beacham, and to you, our readers.
The Boston Globe

I wonder if they’ll learn their lesson — that TERFs and transvestigators are not trustworthy sources — and if other nasty accusers will follow suit? JK Rowling & Jerry Coyne come to mind as two people who leapt on a lot of false premises and faulty conclusions in this non-story.

Boeing gets another black mark

This shiny new Boeing spacecraft, the Starliner, went up to the ISS in June. They were supposed to return on 14 June. It is now August. It’s beginning to look like the Starliner is too unreliable to make the return trip, and NASA is going to have to ask SpaceX to rescue the crew. This is another embarrassing failure for Boeing. On my recent trip to Seattle, I flew on a 737, but it was OK, it was one of the older models, built before the disastrous takeover by incompetent MBAs.

Maybe the astronauts should have prayed harder?

You can call me weird, I don’t mind

We’ve got to be careful about the whole “weird” thing. I saw this story about a
man in Oklahoma who raises spiders and felt a moment of self concern.

His life’s mission is to save spiders for a greater purpose. Edmond resident Nick Krueger said spiders are important to the environment and science.

He sends the spiders he collects to researchers worldwide to help solve problems. Inside Krueger’s home, people would discover a whole new world.

“There’s always something new to learn,” said Krueger, inside his “spider room. “Most people hear that you do that, and they say, ‘What? Why?’”

He uses the words “weird and enthusiastic” to describe his hobby, but Krueger loves being unique.

“It’s fun to be weird,” Krueger said. “Being normal is boring.”

Some people might think I am weird, and I really don’t mind. Maybe I would if I were running for high office. I still think it’s a good tactic to label this current crop of Republicans as weird, though. I remember the Republicans way back, when their schtick was that they were staid, sober, strait-laced, boring conservatives who wanted no nonsense and just wanted to get the job done…the job of making money. They were bankers and shop-keepers. They didn’t like Communists. That was their whole image, and they rode that reputation into office, promising stability and restraint.

Now they’ve morphed into creeps who obsess over bathrooms and want to ban books and are upset about non-white people having civil rights. Their whole rep rests on being the boring guys wearing suits, and it’s fair to point out that no, they’re not that any more at all, they’re fanatical freaks who are trying to control other people’s lives.

And they’re not cool enough to raise spiders in their living room.

It’s worth pointing out that where, once upon a time, the Republican agenda was mainstream and entirely comfortable for the typical middle-class family, they have evolved into this weird alien anti-American freak show that is “at odds with the average American’s life”.

They have become the party of the wealthy elites, out of touch with the day-to-day reality of the people. Thomas Paine wrote about what happened to the French nobility, and it’s exactly how to make them hurt.

The more aristocracy appeared, the more it was despised; there was a visible imbecility and want of intellects in the majority, a sort of je ne sais quoi, that while it affected to be more than citizen, was less than man. It lost ground from contempt more than from hatred; and was rather jeered at as an ass, than dreaded as a lion. This is the general character of aristocracy, or what are called Nobles or Nobility, or rather No-ability, in all countries.

We know this. Mel Brooks spelled it out.

You know that Trump hates being made to look like a fool. Keep it up.

Blood quantum is back, baby

First of all…Mike Lindell has a TV station? He’s got something called “Lindell-TV,” anyway, which seems to be nothing but a streaming channel on an off-brand service. The costs for a kook to get online and make noise just gets lower and lower.

Anyway, one of the babblers on that network wants Kamala Harris to take a DNA test.

A host on Mike Lindell’s television network called on Vice President Kamala Harris to take a DNA test to prove a demonic spirit wasn’t prompting her to say she was Black.

During his daily “Let’s Talk About It” program on Lindell TV, host Will Johnson defended former President Donald Trump’s claim that Harris had only recently “happened to turn Black.”

What does demon DNA look like? How would we tell?

But Johnson suggested Thursday that Harris was lying about her race and should take a DNA test.

“How about we get Kamala Harris to do a DNA test like him and like Elizabeth Warren?” Johnson said. “Then we’ll put it to rest. She comes back, and she’s a little bit more Black than Elizabeth Warren is Indian, then we’ll, OK, go, she can be Black half the time.”

“Why not do that?” he asked. “And then they say we are the weird ones — we’re the weird ones because we don’t want to go along with the insanity.”

Elizabeth Warren was negligibly Indian, and most importantly, did not have any cultural connection to any tribe. Harris has a father who is black, so she’s roughly half black genetically, but what matters more is that she grew up with black and Indian heritage. You don’t get to tell her what her background is. She’s black and Indian. That the Republicans are diving into this weird obsession with inventing criteria for people’s cultural and genetic heritage is creepy.

Mr Johnson is the insane weird guy who wants to quantify how “black” a person is allowed to be. It doesn’t make any sense — if 23andme comes back and says she is 43.5% black, how does one “be” black 43.5% of the time?

I’ve had 23andme analyze my DNA, and this is what it tells me.

I guess I’m 2/3 Scandinavian. What does that mean for my allowed behavior? So two of my 3 meals per day should be matpakke, herring, or kjøttkaker, and the other meal should be pasties, bangers and mash, or mushy peas? Since I’m an atheist, I’m probably fractionally demonic, so my snacks should probably be demonic.

This is what we mean by calling these bozos “weird” — they have this twisted idea that people must conform to the stereotypes rattling around in their heads.

As we all know, real women lose at sports

As usual, the conservatives have found an absurd issue at the Olympics to have a screaming fit over. First it was an opening ceremony that they thought mocked the Last Supper (it didn’t, unless you think Jesus’ last meal was a wild bacchanal), and now it’s a women’s boxing match that the transvestigators have decided was unfair because the winnner was a man.

She wasn’t.

The inaccurate statements about her identity were boosted by prominent anti-trans individuals like Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, as well as politicians like US Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Their statements stirred up a storm of anger on the right despite the fact that Khelif is a cisgender woman.

As Vox’s Alex Abad-Santos has explained, there aren’t any transgender athletes at the Olympics this year who are competing outside of the sex they were assigned at birth, though IOC rules don’t bar their inclusion so long as they meet certain eligibility criteria. “There has been some confusion that somehow it’s a man fighting a woman,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams told reporters. “The question you have to ask yourself is, are these athletes women? The answer is yes.”

Imane Khelif is not trans, and was assigned female at birth. She’s a cis woman! But somehow, because she’s strong and can punch hard, attributes any woman who becomes an Olympic boxing competitor would share, her sex and gender are called into question.

That reaction has since spawned scrutiny of Khelif, who was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman. False claims that she is a trans person or that she is a man pretending to be a woman quickly spread thanks to reports she was disqualified from a 2023 International Boxing Association event and the resurfacing of comments by the president of that organization suggesting that her elimination was because she failed a hormone test.

She probably has some unusual physiological characteristics that confused officials of the IBA, but every Olympic competitor is a genetic freak, or they wouldn’t be operating at such a high level of performance. Simone Biles is way out there on the edge of human capability; Michael Phelps has an unusual morphology that made him a strong swimmer. Shall we disqualify them because they don’t have average athletic ability? That’s the whole point of the Olympics, to single out people with exceptional physical characteristics! You don’t get to whine that it’s unfair when an athlete at that level is amazingly good at what they do…or even worse, call into question their identity or history or social role or sexual preferences because you don’t like that they win.

There’s another ugly side to this whole affair.

Beyond questions of sex, there are racial dynamics at play in the perceptions of this match. Female athletes of color — particularly those of African and African American descent — have long been accused of being men when they’ve beaten white women in competition. This happened most notably with tennis phenom Serena Williams and track star Caster Semenya, both of whom endured tropes that cast Black women as more masculine and threatening.

I guess conservatives just want to police women’s behavior. Surprise.