Oh, boy. I checked the weather forecast, as one must in Minnesota in the winter, and take a look at our hourly prediction for the temperature. It’s going down all day long, just getting colder and colder from now until darkness, when it will also get colder. Also, 40km/hr winds all day means we’ll have blizzard conditions.
Fortunately, I have a snug house and a snug lab. The walk between the two might get a bit uncomfortable.
You share, obviously. Mary found this handsome bold fellow in the house, and saved him for me.
It’s good news, too, because I’m desperate for more males.
OK, I just did it. You can find the crude, early version at patreon.com/pzmyers, where I just threw together a couple of tiers and a little descriptive text. I’ve set them at $3 and $5 per blog post or video.
Don’t be scared off by that! I try to write a lot, every day. Often my posts are brief, primarily links to other sources. This patreon is not to support those! Specifically, patron-supported posts will be more substantial, like analysis of a scientific paper, or detailed takedowns of bad science, or explanations of a scientific concept, and I will aspire to do roughly one of those per week. I’ll also try to do one video a month, but to be honest, I’ve been failing to keep up with that goal for a while. Plan on my patreon-sponsored output to be maybe 4-5 items a month, and please, also feel free to cap your donations to what you can afford.
Most of the income, which I don’t expect to be much, will go straight towards paying off our legal debt. I might also occasionally use a fraction of it to buy some little toy for the spiders, or me, but mostly…Marc Randazza will get it.
I just got this invitation.
Hi Dr. Myer,
Our Global Islamic outreach organization, Mercy4Mankind.com
shares the message of Islam across the world and especially
on college campuses. We also make presentations on why
the Quran is a scientific miracle.However, we would very much like to hear from you on why you feel
the Quran is not a scientific miracle.We would like to arrange a panel discussion on an Atheist youtube
channel called Modern-Day debate
It’s on a site called Modern-Day debate (it’s run by a Christian, not an atheist, by the way), and I hate debate with a passion, so I’d normally just say no.
On the other hand, discussion is good, and I like discussing things with people I disagree with. So that tells me that maybe the right thing to do would be to talk with them, in a non-competitive format.
On the third hand, that is a stupid topic. There’s nothing miraculous or scientific about a holy book, so I ought not to waste my time.
On the fourth hand, is there an intelligent audience for this sort of conversation? Do people want to hear me talk with these dogmatists? Let me know in the comments.
I do have four more hands, if necessary. They’re also mix of yesses and nos.
I sent them this reply.
I dislike debates, and find them to be nothing but rhetorical games. If you’d care to send me a written summary of your best argument that “the Quran is a scientific miracle”, I’ll consider addressing it. I have a few conditions: you should define what you mean by “scientific miracle”, and I would prefer that any examples you use discuss it from the perspective of biology, since that is my area of expertise.
If they answer, I’ll make my answer here.
Adam Rutherford, lovely gentleman that he is, sent me a review copy ahead of its release date in the US, so I’ve got a head start. It’s looking good so far, although I’m so overwhelmed with work this week I might be a little slow getting through it — I’m the biology coordinator this year, and we’re managing a faculty search this week — but once I’m done, I’ll post a more thorough review.
If you’d like to pre-order it and send a message to publishers that you value this kind of quality science content in contrast to the deluge of racist dreck we usually get, click on the book cover below.
Yet again, the Republicans demonstrate their fondness for voter suppression. They’ve scheduled a Trump rally for the day of the New Hampshire primary, with the explicit goal of screwing up traffic to hinder voters.
The president relished the idea of dominating the stage in New Hampshire and stealing some of the media oxygen from the Democrats. Advisers hoped that Secret Service moves in downtown Manchester to secure the area for the president’s arrival would make it harder for Democratic candidates and their supporters to transverse the state’s largest city in the hours before the primary’s first votes are cast.
This is legal? And sweet Jesus but I’m tired of this president’s incessant bigotry rallies, which seem to alternate with his golfing weekends. When does he actually do the work we elect a president to do?
Mainly because I’ve now got a tremendous legal debt thanks to a certain Jesus-Mythicist asshole, and I’ve got to start bringing in extra revenue to pay that off, especially since we got rid of the obnoxious ads that did provide a feeble revenue stream. I’m trying to think of what I could do that some of you might pay a few bucks for. Some random ideas:
That last one would clear up everything.
Anyway, you people think about it, suggest better ideas, and I’ll try to do the same, over the next couple of days. Alternatively, you could just tell me you’re not going to ever pay for something you get for free, so I shouldn’t bother, and I’ll pursue other plans…like selling my janky ol’ plasma for the big payola.
We’ve got less than half the information we need to figure that out. Here, for instance, is how people react to a Putin portrait in a Moscow elevator.
A Russian prankster glued a massive portrait of President Vladimir Putin to the inside of a residential elevator. He then placed a camera in the elevator to record people’s reactions. pic.twitter.com/dahMN83SvX
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) February 10, 2020
Now someone needs to do a similar stunt with a Trump portrait in a New York elevator. Well, maybe New York isn’t the best choice — it’ll get shredded. A Chicago elevator?
At least I think we can safely agree that they’re both polarizing figures.
Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are being hit hard by massive clouds of locusts — would you believe a mass of insects 37 x 25 miles in area sweeping across East Africa? And that’s only one of multiple swarms.
Also troubling — this is a side-effect of climate change.
The swarms are reaching such an unusual size now because of cyclones that rained on the deserts of Oman last year, the FAO’s senior locust forecasting officer Keith Cressman tells Reuters’ Nita Bhalla.
“We know that cyclones are the originators of swarms – and in the past 10 years, there’s been an increase in the frequency of cyclones in the Indian Ocean,” Cressman tells Reuters. Eight cyclones occurred in 2019.
“Normally there’s none, or maybe one. So this is very unusual,” Cressman says. “It’s difficult to attribute to climate change directly, but if this trend of increased frequency of cyclones in Indian Ocean continues, then certainly that’s going to translate to an increase in locust swarms in the Horn of Africa.”
I used to raise Schistocerca, and they are amazingly, scarily prolific when given good conditions, which is what these cyclones are providing.
They’re going to need a lot of spiders — big spiders. Locusts are impressively large and well-armored.
She’s running, and fundraising successfully. But this is Laura Loomer.
First, she’s not the least bit bashful about her efforts to stoke hate against Muslims.
In 2017, she bragged on Twitter about being a “#ProudIslamophobe,” as she called Muslims “savages,” calling for a ban on allowing Muslims into America “EVER AGAIN.” She has called Islam a “cancer,” and worse, she wrote that there’s “no such thing as a moderate Muslim. They’re ALL the same.” Loomer dangerously wants you to believe that a Muslim American like myself is no different than a person in ISIS.
Loomer, who once worked for the right-wing group Project Veritas, seems to especially despise immigrant Muslims, tweeting in 2017, “Someone needs to create a non-Islamic version of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.” That resulted in her being banned from Uber and Lyft for violating its community standards, which prompted Loomer to tweet, “Uber will literally hire an Islamic terrorist, but they will ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns.”
In 2019, Loomer took to Instagram, where she made a video attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in vile terms, blaming all Muslims including Omar for 9/11, and adding, “Muslims should not even be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country.”
Beyond social media, in October 2018 Loomer praised and appeared with self-professed Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, who has claimed in the past that homosexuality facilitated the Holocaust and openly recited and defended the “14 word” mantra used by white supremacists. Loomer also trespassed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s property in January 2019 along with her colleague, Charlottesville Unite the Right marcher Antonio Foreman, to denounce her refusal to support Trump’s wall. While on Pelosi’s property, Loomer reportedly made racist comments about Latinos.
The article doesn’t even mention the time she handcuffed herself to a door at Twitter headquarters and peed herself. Or the time she crashed a Shakespeare play to yell about ISIS controlling CNN. She wants to declare Keith Ellison’s election invalid, because he got 50,000 votes from Muslims and another 50,000 by voter fraud.
The Florida GOP loves Loomer, which is just another sign that the entire goddamned party has been infected with a brain-eating virus, and that we’ve got to do more than topple Trump.
For those who think Trumpism ends with Trump, think again. Loomer, who is 26, and the others we saw march in Charlottesville in defense of white supremacy are part of a younger generation that will be with us long after Trump. The best and only antidote to driving Trumpism to the fringes of society where it belongs is winning big in November. Barring that, Trumpism will spread and infect our nation like a deadly cancer.
