Pssst: the loons have all moved to YouTube

If you’ve been missing the heady old days of creationists popping onto the blog to make outrageous claims, I smoked a few out in my last video. Here’s one who jumped in to tell me that all of science agrees with the Bible and that there’s tons of science in the Bible.

The Meek
The Meek
6 hours ago (edited)
There is more science in the Bible then in your head! You follow prooven liars who lost court cases for fruad all throughout history and we are the ones who are wrong? Nah, all the observable science agrees more with the Bible than with your science textbooks! How many debates do you guys have to loose, before you figure it out? We are all presenting the same evidence, but just interpreting it differently through our favored worldview! You have to look past your bias and go deeper into the false assumptions being taught in science in order to see through all the lies! The real issue is you just hate the idea of a God telling you how to live! Good luck with that when you die!

PZ Myers
6 hours ago
Cool. What chapter of the bible contains Maxwell’s equations, or Newton’s laws of motion, or a discussion of signal transduction in neurons? Or maybe something basic, like the importance of hygiene in preventing disease.

Hey! is the germ theory of disease in there?

1popblocker9er
1 hour ago
@PZ Myers The answer is not in said “which chapter,” it is in the actual event of following the instructions given as a whole and seeing the obvious results. We have literally been doing that for thousands of years. You will find that in the Bible, there are explanations for some of those very questions you just mentioned such as hygiene to prevent disease. Do you not understand homeopathic medicine, or how long it’s been successfully curing diseases and ailments? Of course logically you’re not going to see “theory” like newton’s own, or maxwells equations. I mean what kind of a silly question is that? The Bible has been here for thousands of years before those people were born, and it’s still the way of life provably, while everyone else is arguing over theories that were literally disproven many years ago, and on top of that it has been proven these men perpetuating these ideas and “scientific theories” were occult practitioners, and were steering their own beliefs and views onto the public domain, which were met with great resistance. I mean that is all public record sir. What reality are you living in my friend, you seem interested in intelligence so let’s utilize it shall we?

His answer is … HOMEOPATHY! Homeopathy is in the Bible. Therefore, it’s science.

I haven’t seen this degree of lunacy for a while.

How awkward

I got into the doctor’s office today. I was hoping for strep throat (what a thing to hope for!), and they ruled that out fast. Out came the inevitable COVID-19 test, and I got the stick up the nose and my olfactory lobe scrambled, and that’s being sent off for testing, which will take a few days.

Then, surprise surprise, the doctor informs me that while my test results are pending, I’m quarantined! And I’m supposed to teach a lab tomorrow! Frantic backtracking and trying to figure out alternatives ensues.

I really, really wanted this to be strep. I could clear that up pretty quickly.

I guess I can’t trust entomologists anymore

One of the winners of the 2020 IgNobels was this study of attitudes in entomology.

Richard Vetter won an Ig Nobel for his paper looking at why people who spend their lives studying insects are creeped out by spiders.

His paper, “Arachnophobic Entomologists: Why Two Legs Make all the Difference,” appeared in the the journal American Entomologist in 2013.

Vetter, a retired research associate and spider specialist who worked in the entomology department at the University of California Riverside for 32 years, found during the course of his work that many insect lovers hate spiders.

“It always struck me as funny that when I talked to entomologists about spiders, they would say something along the lines of, ‘Oh, I hate spiders!’” he said in a telephone interview.

He found that many bug lovers had had a negative experience with a spider, including bites and nightmares. The fact that spiders are often hairy, fast, silent and have all those creepy eyes freaks out entomologists, he said.

Except…the entomologists I know are appreciative of spiders. Unless they’ve been lying to me, I don’t know that this is really a problem.

Besides, once you get to know spiders, everyone loves them.

Getting worse!

This throat thing I’ve got made for an unpleasant weekend, and this morning I woke up with a mild headache and fatigue on top of a grisly meat tube that is oozing slime and sending rude signals to my brain. It better have cleared up by this weekend, and I’ve got enough of a challenge in having to give a one hour lecture this afternoon with a voice that wobbles in and out of the void.

I’m hoping to go in and get tested for the ‘rona this morning, just to get that possibility out of my mind. Also, Mary wants me to do a salt water gargle. This does not sound fun.

Grifters gotta grift

That Catholic reactionary, Michael O’Fallon, is running another “Sovereign Nations” conference. It’s very important you know.

The funny thing is that their #2 speaker, after O’Fallon himself, is James Lindsay, the regressive atheist buddy of Boghossian, who is so desperate for attention that he sells himself off to endorse a religious organization with religious goals.

Double irony: if you look at that twitter thread, it’s got angry Christians complaining that the conference includes a liberal atheist, with O’Fallon insisting that no, it’s entirely secular, when all the other speakers are Christian ministers, and the blurb describing the con is this:

The Christian Church finds itself societally in interesting times; times of rapid change, uncertainty, and division, where all that was our sure objective standards seem to be melting into air.

Also indicative is that there are no women speakers, although there are an awful lot of truly secular events that also forget the womz.

Another entry in the Carnival of Curiosity: Dr Myers’ Menagerie of Itty-Bitty Monsters

Next Sunday, our Carnival continues with a tour of the imaging side of my lab. I’ll just aim a camera at my microscopes and cameras and talk about how I put together a macrophotography and microscopy lab on a budget, and maybe put a few critters on the screen.

I might also remind you that this is a fundraiser, and you can optionally leave a tip at