Hoo boy, the Discovery Institute is pathetic

Everyone seems to be “pivoting to video”, including the creationists, so I might as well join in the fun. The Discovery Institute put out a quasi-animated video with a young hipster narrator to promote science denialism — they want to claim that the whale transitional series is bogus, and that all those fossils are just a random jumble of unconnected species that somehow just appeared, and none of them are really intermediates. So I had to expose the flaws in their thinking. Unstylishly, of course.

If I look a little bit squinky-eyed, it’s because I only noticed after recording it that the sun was glaring in through the window to one side. Next time I do one of these, I’d better draw the blinds.

Yeesh, but anti-choicers are terrible people

The word from our regional Planned Parenthood is that quacks are using the COVID-19 epidemic as a pretext to shut down abortion services.

This is absurd. A pandemic is not a reason to shut down essential medical services. If I had a heart attack, would they give me a little voucher promising to send an ambulance in 3 weeks, if the stay-at-home orders have ended? (That’s about when Minnesota’s orders are scheduled to expire, although they may be extended further, if circumstances warrant.) Are grieving mothers with a dead fetus just supposed to “hold it” for a while? Are pregnant women with acute pyelonephritis or preeclampsia just supposed to take an aspirin and wait? Are the women who are not ready or capable of dealing with a child expected to hope that their desires change and their circumstances improve at some indefinite time in the future? During a pandemic and economic collapse?

Perhaps the fuckwits behind this lawsuit are hoping that women at the boundary of legal elective abortion are delayed long enough that they can compel them not to abort.

Of course, the clinic that is suing is providing bogus rationalizations.

In the lawsuit, AALFA Family Clinic cites concerns over the shortage of protective equipment during the COVID-19 outbreak as the primary concern. The pro-life group argues that forcing the clinics to use medication rather than surgery would conserve protective gear needed in the pandemic. They argue abortion clinics should be included under Governor Walz’s ban on elective procedures.

But these aren’t elective procedures! There’s a ticking clock at work here.

This is the relevant comment on AALFA Family Clinic.

This lawsuit is based on fantasy, not fact and has been filed by individuals who promote information and services that are medically inaccurate, deceptive and harmful.

That about sums it up. This lawsuit ought to be quickly thrown out…although my experience with lawsuits suggests it will instead drag on.

Bring me…a shrubbery!

I made my usual rounds of the house, seeking spiders, today. In particular, I have my eyes on this:

It’s some kind of twiggy bush growing near my house — I have no idea what it is, my resident plant-identifier is off in Colorado, neglecting my needs — but what you can’t see in this, as in all the shrubberies around my house, is that there are delicate lines of silk connecting all the branches. It’s true, I look in my yard with all the newly budded plants around it, and all I see are frames for holding spider silk. I stared at that for about a half hour, possibly making the neighbors wonder if I was already going mental, tracing each branch and every strand of silk, hoping to find the perpetrator.

I did not.

I will be checking regularly throughout this spring, and I’m certain that at some point I will catch them in the act. It’s just a matter of time, and they will be mine.

I did find other spiders on the wall, though. The usual zebra jumpers and asiatic wall jumping spiders…

…but also this mysterious young lady. Curious. She looks a bit like Attulus, but so dark. I see a lot of variation in color, though, so I don’t know.

Then, I struck gold. I found the first Parasteatoda specimen I’ve seen outdoors since last year. She even killed a mosquito for me!

I want you to know, though, that in order take her picture, I had to get down on my knees in the dirt. Then I had to get even lower and lie on my side to get the right angle. I think it’s going to be laundry day.

As usual, the spider photos are tucked away on Instagram, iNaturalist, and Patreon if you want to see them.

The game of “could be worse!”

Here’s an entertaining pastime for when you are getting cabin fever: find people on the internet who are worse off than you. It’s easy! So easy, it’s easy to tell yourself things aren’t so bad.

An example: Julia Whitcomb has been trapped at sea for a month in this little windowless cabin.

Cruise companies are allowed to disembark and repatriate people still trapped on ships around the U.S. by private transportation as long as their executives sign an agreement with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that holds the companies accountable for the process. They are refusing to do so.

In conversations with the CDC, cruise company officials have complained that arranging private transportation for disembarking crew is “too expensive,” according to a spokesperson for the agency.

The standoff is preventing about 100,000 crew members and some passengers from leaving cruise ships lingering in and around U.S. waters, including dozens of U.S. citizens. Crew members still stuck on board say they feel like an afterthought after watching their companies move mountains to repatriate passengers on charter flights and other private transportation after the industry was shut down on March 13. Only a handful of ships still have passengers on them, including Carnival Corporation’s Coral Princess, floating off of South Florida.

Remember this, next time you see an ad for a cruise in some exotic, beautiful place. There is a range of possibilities here. You could have a wonderful time, putting on pounds at the buffet, drinking lots of sickly sweet alcoholic drinks on the deck with strange people. Or you could spend the whole time vomiting in your cramped cabin as norovirus sweeps through your ship. Or you could get quarantined and end up wandering the seas like the Flying Dutchman, no end in sight, as the cruise line stonewalls on signing paperwork that would set you free.

It’s like gambling! If you’re one of the people who likes to gamble, you should sign up for a cruise!

In the game of “could be better”, the government refuses to bail out all these foreign-registered vessels, the cruise lines all collapse in bankruptcy, and the ships are all sunk to provide artificial reefs for wildlife. But first they let all their hostages off. Maybe the owners could be locked up in first-class cabins before the scuttling?

This is not a photo of a spider

I wouldn’t do that to you. This is a single line of webbing on a metal signpost.

I wandered around on a walk this afternoon, and while I didn’t find any spiders, I’ve started noticing that everything everywhere is held together with delicate tracings of silk, fueling my new hypothesis that what’s really holding the planet together is the work of spiders.

I haven’t yet found any spider associated with this particular strand of silk, although there were many similar lines — therefore, since it’s invisible and holds all of earth together, it must be Jesus. I’ll keep looking and see if I can get a photo of Him. (Note: more likely to be a Her, and not a vertebrate at all, which leads to some provocative corollaries to my hypothesis.)