I knew that

Why else do you think I’ve been aghast at our university’s policies for starting up school as if we’re back to normal?

Somehow, though, the lyrics for “Enter Sandman” seem entirely appropriate.

Just basic science

I want to know where these people learn their “basic science”.

That reminded me of this post on We Hunted the Mammoth.

They are so confident and certain when they state absolutely batshit looney misinformation. Where do they learn that kind of confidence? In church, I suspect, because they aren’t getting it in any legitimate school.

I wonder if he confused conception with photosynthesis? Nah, that would be light plus carbon dioxide.

Don’t worry that something might shatter that astonishing confidence. He’s currently doubling down.

Today’s agenda

I slept in until 8:30. I have now lingered over my coffee for a whole hour. Time to get to work!

  • Get my shoes on. (this is a major thermodynamic hurdle — I’m hoping the coffee provided enough activation energy to get the process started.)
  • Walk out the door to the lab. Usually by this point the reaction is mildly exothermic so it should go smoothly.
  • Say hello to the grass spiders living in the shrubbery outside my lab.
  • Feed all the spiders inside my lab.
  • Walk home.
  • Stretch. Crack my knuckles. Open up all the lab reports my students submitted to Canvas last night. Stare at them, mildly stupefied.
  • Start grading them, eventually. Do that all afternoon.
  • Return to awareness. Eat dinner. Wonder where the day went.

Tomorrow they turn in a homework assignment, and I’ll do exactly the same routine on Monday.

The bee don’t care about deadlines either, she’s just doing her thing.

There’s one thing my students haven’t quite figured out yet. I do set deadlines on all the assignments, because the software requires it, but…I don’t care. I just want them to do the work so they know how to do the work, and so I can see where maybe they’re going down the wrong path, but deadlines are an invention of The Man (or maybe Satan). Try to turn things in on time so they don’t pile up on you, but if it’s a few days late, I’m OK with that.

But these are all conscientious Midwestern kids, many of them first generation college students, so I get an amazing flood of email the day of, full of apologies and reasons why they didn’t meet the deadline, which I have to read, too. I get all these panicky messages sent just before midnight, “oh no I couldn’t solve this problem, I’m struggling with it, I can’t get it done on time” followed by a 3am follow-up, “I figured it out, I submitted it a little late, I hope that’s OK”.

I just want to say…Dudes. It’s fine. The software sets this specific 11:59pm deadline minute, but I’m sleeping then. I’m not hovering over the computer, ready to dock points from anyone who turns it in at 12:01am. Or even noon the next day. The only real deadline is when I go over the answers in class a few days later, because I want you to think them through yourself, rather than getting handed them. If you turn something in a little late, well, that’s a time-management issue you should work on, but I’m going to pretend it was turned in precisely on time and give you full credit, because I don’t care. All I care about is whether you learned the subject matter.

I guess I’d have to worry if every student procrastinated and I couldn’t get the bulk of the grading done at the time I set aside for it, but that hasn’t happened yet in 40 years, and the Midwestern work ethic means it’s not going to happen in the near future. Chill. Go for a walk. Enjoy the flowers and the spiders while you can. Biology isn’t a punishment drill, it’s supposed to be something that makes you happy.

I never thought I’d want people to stop sending me free books

I know, I should be grateful. Unfortunately, Sturgeon’s Law applies, maybe especially to free books.

So I got one yesterday, and the back cover was simultaneously tantalizing and repellent, which much I agree with, and other bits that sound like nonsense, and I think the author’s confidence is unwarranted.

I don’t know what the hell the book is about, or who it’s for — it seems to be trying to get an atheist audience, with a little sop thrown in for theists. I gave it the benefit of a quick glance, and opened it to see…

Oh, no. Not this creationist nonsense. I tried to figure out the context — is he arguing that this is wrong or right? (It’s not right.) Is he just trying to present different perspectives? I couldn’t tell. If you can’t be clear about your intent and meaning, I’m not going to work extra hard to extract it for you. All I know is he has a great fondness for logic games, frequently breaking into numbered syllogisms that left me bored.

I tried to find the bit where he explains how he knows a god is the energy source for the universe, but I gave up.

You get a reputation as an atheist, and suddenly everyone is sending you bad proofs. It gets wearing.

The thing I want to tell every jerk who is prolonging the pandemic

I need a great big box of these cards.

I’d give the first one to Joe Rogan, who was diagnosed with COVID-19, and thought it serious enough to spend buckets of money on treatments — mostly useless crap — and is now going around and saying it was no big deal

I got up in the morning, got tested and turns out I got COVID. So we immediately threw the kitchen sink at it — all kinds of meds: monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin … everything. And I also got an NAD drip and a vitamin drip, and I did that three days in a row.

Vitamins and NAD will not treat a viral infection. Ivermectin is garbage. The monoclonal antibodies would help, but you know, if he’d been vaccinated he’d be making those himself.

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized monoclonal antibody therapy as an emergency treatment for COVID-19 to fight off severe illness. The FDA has not, however, approved the use of ivermectin, which some vaccine skeptics swear by — despite a lack of scientific evidence to support their claims, not to mention the potential harmful effects of taking the anti-parasitic drug at high doses.

IV treatments such as NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) and vitamin drips are usually administered in an effort to improve general fitness and wellness — though there isn’t much scientific proof to back their efficacy either.

I’m sorry he got better. People might have noticed and done the sensible not-like-Joe-Rogan thing if he’d died.

I’m gonna need a big box of those cards. After Rogan, I’d have to hand them out to everyone in my university administration, and then I’d have to go to the local grocery store and carpet the floor with them, and then walk the streets and stick them in the windshield of every over-sized pickup truck driven by maskless yahoos, and then…