Everyone seems to be in need of help right now

We were incredibly lucky — we had our campus job searches at the end of fall term/beginning of spring term, and we signed on two new faculty just before the coronavirus hit the fan. If we hadn’t, we probably would have postponed the searches until next year and left a lot of good people hanging, wondering what next. I can’t imagine the stress of trying to search for a job right now in the middle of this chaos.

Abe at Oceanoxia doesn’t have to imagine it — he and his wife are both smack in the middle employment uncertainty. He does good work. If you’re in a more fortunate position, check him out and do what you can to help.

How about a little corporate corruption, hey, Boeing?

I’ve got a lot of family in the Seattle area, and the Boeing disease used to be devastating — Boeing sneezed, and families all across the region would be sent home to shiver and starve. It’s not quite as bad now, but the corporate giant is still a huge influence on the region, and when they screw up, everyone gets to suffer. And wow, but have they been screwing up, with control of the company in the hands of MBAs who really don’t know what they’re doing.

The latest catastrophe, on top of the 737 MAX disasters, is that they used prior profits to buy back stocks to artificially inflate their value, a game that was illegal before Saint Reagan wrecked the economy. That’s the kind of scheme they teach you in business school, I guess, but it means that right now they’ve got no reserves to weather the storm of airplane crashes.

This mad scramble for cash and the existential urge to “preserve cash in challenging periods” comes after this master of financial engineering – instead of aircraft engineering – blew, wasted, and incinerated $43.4 billion on buying back its own shares, from June 2013 until the financial consequences of the two 737 MAX crashes finally forced the company to end the practice. That $43.3 billion would come in really handy right now.

The sole purpose of share buybacks is to inflate the stock price because they make the company itself the biggest buyer of its own shares. But those $43 billion of share buybacks cost the company $43 billion in cash. Now those buybacks have stopped because Boeing needs every dime of cash to stay liquid and alive, and shareholders, who’d been so fond of those share buybacks, are now getting crushed by the damage those share buybacks have done to Boeing’s financial position.

I suspect airlines are facing dramatic losses of revenue as people stay home on top of that, so few companies are going to buy airplanes. Boy, aren’t those clever financial wizards running the show really great at lining their own pockets, but not so good at running an aerospace company? And yet the Republican government’s solution to economic problems is to hand these kinds of wizards even more money that they will convert into personal wealth at the expense of the company’s worth and health.

It’s called CORRUPTION

I’ve always wondered how the members of congress get so rich after a few years in office. I guess a few of them write best-selling books (or, at least, get amazing advances on books that end up in the remainder pile), but others have a sure-fire method that works every time: corruption. The pandemic is smoking out some of the profiteers.

Senator Richard Burr got all kinds of insider briefings on the coronavirus. In public, he reassured everyone that everything is under control and that the US was well prepared.

In a Feb. 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he assured the public that “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.” He wrote, “No matter the outbreak or threat, Congress and the federal government have been vigilant in identifying gaps in its readiness efforts and improving its response capabilities.”

In private, at a club for business people who paid $10,000 for the privilege of listening, he said something different.

According to the NPR report, Burr told attendees of the luncheon held at the Capitol Hill Club: “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history … It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

He warned that companies might have to curtail their employees’ travel, that schools could close and that the military might be mobilized to compensate for overwhelmed hospitals.

Then he went on a selling spree, dumping all of his stock.

Then there’s Senator Kelly Loeffler, who assured the public that this was all a Democratic plot and that Trumpie was doing a great job.

Meanwhile, she sits in an intelligence briefing about the virus, and immediately begins dumping stocks. Millions of dollars worth of stocks.

Both of these people need to be fired immediately. I won’t go so far as to suggest that they be hanged from a lamppost with a “PROFITEER” placard hung around their necks, but you know plenty of other politicians are playing this game and need to be discouraged. If hanging is out of the question, maybe we should require that the investments and businesses of all politicians be put in trust when they’re elected. That’ll clean up all the millionaires and billionaires in office.

The depth of CFI’s commitment to free speech can only be measured with an atomic force microscope

I have to share this public post by Kavin Senapathy because, by the time I got to the fourth paragraph, I’d facepalmed myself into an angry stupor and was feeling really pissed off at CFI. How can Robyn Blumner and CFI kick themselves in their own asses so hard? It ought to be anatomically impossible, but there they go.

I have an update about how the Center for Inquiry and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry have reacted to my recent Undark essay (https://undark.org/2020/02/20/center-for-inquiry-race-pseudoscience/) in which I criticize their indifference to matters of race, racist pseudoscience, and the white supremacy among their ranks.

Wait for it …

Within days, they removed all of my Skeptical Inquirer articles and my Point of Inquiry episodes from their website.

That’s right, my writing on things like quack autism “cures,” spurious birth practices including lotus birth, the “breast is best” mantra, pesticides, alternative medicine, mom guilt, and more have been unpublished. My podcast interviews with people like Carl Zimmer, Angela Saini, Massimo Pigliucci, Paul Offit, Adam Conover, Alison Bernstein, Iida Ruishalme, Claire Klingenberg, Sarah Taber, Susan Gerbic, Jen Gunter, and more on everything from MSG to OCD to the alarming resurgence of race science have also been removed from their website in apparent retaliation.

I’m not angry about this. I am bewildered, especially because CFI CEO Robyn Blumner is a self-styled “free-speech purist.”

Still, I’m not surprised— erasure and hypocrisy are among the most tried and true tools of white supremacy. As I wrote in my essay, “The most insidious white supremacy doesn’t carry tiki torches of festering hatred. It comes from well-meaning people who nevertheless uphold power structures with whiteness at the top.”

Skeptics: To those without the power to stand up to this as loudly as you’d like to— I see you and I respect you. To those with the power to stand up to this, I encourage you to do so. I also trust that, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you know which camp you belong in.

A particularly telling part of this is that Blumner has been sending emails in which she attempts to disparage me using, of all examples, an excerpt from this post (https://www.facebook.com/kavin.senapathy/posts/10156420934416875):

“My atheist role models growing up were my parents and my uncle. Today, my non-religious role model is, above all others, me. I also have a gaggle of deeply good non-religious friends who, amazingly, found their way to a non-religious belief system without ever reading a sentence by one ridiculous man whose name rhymes with Shmichard Schmawkins or his esteemed colleagues.

Honestly, none of these celebrated mediocre old white atheists are actually necessary. They’re not enlightened. They’re washed the fuck up. Yes, many people *have* found their way out of religion due to their work. But if you think that other brilliant non-religious thinkers who meet and surpass the abilities of these dudes don’t exist, then you live under a racist rock.”

I stand behind this statement.

I’m not sure what part is so particularly offensive, Robyn. My use of the word “white” isn’t the problem— it’s the racist, colonialism-tinged drivel that spews forth from Dawkins’ bigoted mouth and social media accounts.

It’s hard to see the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer reduced to a mere shell of the former pillars of skepticism that once inspired the formation of skeptical organizations stateside and around the world. It appears that certain individuals have infected CSI with their denialism and reductionist Newtonian worldview— a worldview in which “science and reason” can be neatly compartmentalized and isolated from sociopolitical forces. It’s cringeworthy and painful to witness. As one friend and ally put it, it seems that they’re afflicted with a terminal sclerosis.

All of that said, most of the responses to the Undark essay have been overwhelmingly positive. For instance, one award-winning science writer and woman of color who was invited to speak at CSIcon 2020 has informed CFI that she can’t make it this time, but “I would be happy to consider coming to speak at another time in the future if you would consider reinstating Kavin Senapathy, and also appointing more people of color to your board at the Center for Inquiry. Indeed, I’d be happy to join the board myself!”

This person is easily among those I most respect in the entire world and would make a fantastic addition to CFI’s Board. To see her email was a balm for my heart—I don’t want to be reinstated, but I do care, and ultimately still have hope that CFI’s skeptical soul isn’t beyond reviving.

I want to profusely thank all of the individuals and organizations that have shown support to me in the wake of all of this— for one, the Board of the European Council of Skeptical Organizations has stepped up to host all of the articles that have been removed. I appreciate it so very much and plan to take them up on it shortly.

To those still doing the hard work to try and change CFI, both from the inside and outside, you have all of my support. And to those still doing the hard work outside of CFI, you also have all of my support. Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s something I could do to help; I’m extremely accessible.

We have work to do.

As I wrote, “Tackling these issues of race, diversity, and inclusion is hard, but worthwhile. And if legacy organizations like CFI refuse to confront these issues — both outwardly and within their own ranks — it’s reassuring to know that there’s a growing global community of skeptics who have shown willingness to heed the call. For the sake of the longevity of the skeptic’s movement, it is crucial that they — that we — succeed.”

I’ll sign off with a nod to *all* of the people who take a skeptical approach to their work on the front lines during this pandemic. I’m fairly certain that most who do skepticism well— that is, those who seek the bald-faced truth and strive to abide by it— call themselves things like “teacher,” “nurse,” “journalist,” “scientist,” “student,” “parent,” “Target cashier,” “delivery driver,” “friend,” and much more, and only some of them identify as skeptics. I truly believe that those who claim the badge of “skeptic” must tip our hats to all of the badasses out there who view science not just as a method, but as an integral part of the way they carry themselves in the world.

Oh, well. At least I bailed out of CFI and the skeptic movement 7 years ago. I haven’t regretted it since, it’s become a major shit-show.

That’s a bit too on the nose

I’m reading about the news from Italy, and here’s a dramatic scene for you: a line of army trucks hauling away coffins from Bergamo, where the crematoria are overwhelmed by the number of dead they have to deal with. It’s like a scene out of a disaster movie.

Then the mail was delivered here. Look what I got!

The local funeral home wants me to do some “advance planning”. Sorry, guys, bad timing. My plan right now is to have my corpse thrown into a military truck, driven to some remote spot, and flung into a mass grave and covered over by a bulldozer. Won’t cost me a thing!

All plans fail

But usually not this spectacularly. I’m teaching two courses this term, and had to throw out the syllabus and juggle everything around, so I’m going to be feeding them lectures on YouTube, adjusting the grading, etc., and have just now finished posting summaries to the students online.

Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development:

Genetics:

Those two videos lay out pretty much the same thing. The major difference is that genetics has a lab, and no, you can’t come in and do experiments. Even I have been told I can’t! So instead, I’m pulling up old data from previous years, and I’m presenting that to them as an exercise in analysis and summarizing an experiment.

This is no fun, but at least I’m getting a grip on how to carry on.

There’s a reason I don’t pharyngulate polls anymore

The cranks have gotten smarter. How could I possibly wreck this poll from Lou Dobbs?

On the one hand, Dobbs has “cleverly” made it impossible to participate in the poll without approving of Trump.

On the other hand, it’s ridiculous, and they’ve totally given up on the idea of using a poll to gather honest information, and they’ve reduced it to meaningless noise from the claque, which is what I was trying to show with bombing polls anyway.

So I win, I guess?

Bengal zebrafish

I miss working in a lab with a wall of fish tanks, the water gurgling, the little fishies darting about. It was rather soothing. Spiders have their charms, but they don’t dart, or flash, or move in swirling schools, they mainly just lurk. My lab is much quieter and dryer now.

I switched to spiders because I wanted an animal to study in their natural habitat, looking for interactions with other species. As it turns out, there was an alternative: I could have moved to the Bengal region of India, which is a magical place where the experimental animals frolic in great numbers in shallow ponds, and where I could be wading knee deep in warm waters while Danio rerio nibbles at my toes, like the Jutfelt lab is doing.

I was mesmerized by this video this morning, just lying in bed watching the lovely schools of zebrafish zipping around.


Wild zebrafish in India Jutfelt Lab from Fredrik Jutfelt on Vimeo.

Spiders don’t frolic, either. They do murder small arthropods, though, in a vicious and personal way, which might better fit my mood nowadays.

Socially Distant Hullabaloo!

I’m going to try again — a few friends and I will be trying to stream on YouTube tonight, at 7pm Central. Last time, I somehow botched the YouTube connection, but this time it might work. If it doesn’t, I’ll shut it down and restart and hope it all finally comes together.

Anyway, we’re just going to talk, drink, swear, weep, all the things I’m doing in private, only in public.

Hey, I actually got everything to work this time!