What do Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck, Lindsey Graham, L. Brent Bozell III, and so many others have in common?

They were all dedicated never-Trumpers who used terms like “racist”, “fascist”, “immoral”, “charlatan”, “fundamentally dishonest”, and “disgusting” in reference to Donald Trump in 2016, and who are now praising him and telling everyone to vote for him again. In addition to the named hypocrites, throw all of Evangelical Christianity in the sack, along with practically every Republican office holder. Digby doesn’t seem to be able to listen to them anymore, and neither can I.

Watching these people on TV making excuses for Trump and preening before his cult followers is more than I can take these days.

They know what they are doing. They are not rubes being brainwashed by Sean Hannity. And they know very well that Democrats are not an existential threat. With the exception of some of the evangelicals who have been lying their entire lives about who they are and what they care about, this is a calculated career decision based on cowardice.

They aren’t rubes, and we certainly can’t make the excuse that they are “economically distressed”. These are craven liars who are in on the grift.

The president of Finland has invited us to come visit!

What if we want to stay? Can we stay at his house? Will he at least invite us to dinner one night?

He says nice things about us, but I suspect he’s had about enough Americans for now.

Here’s a list of words that mean the opposite of “diplomacy”. It’s amazing how every single one of them applies to Donald Trump.

Shinya Inoué has died

Another great scientist is gone. Inoué wrote my Bible that I relied on greatly in the 80s and 90s, Video Microscopy: The Fundamentals (which now costs $129? Wow), a very thorough overview of television and closed-circuit TV, as well as microscope optics. It’s now rather dated — it’s quaint to imagine there was a time we relied on RS-170 and NTSC to do video microscopy, and the extensive discussion of tape formats and antique gadgetry isn’t of much use any more, unless you’re planning to pick up an OMDR on eBay. Once upon a time, though, it was an indispensable guide to the thicket of rapidly emerging imaging technologies.

I never met Inoué, but I’d also heard he was a great teacher, and I can believe it. The book is dense but extremely well written and thorough. I’ve still got my copy in an honored position on my bookshelf, even if I probably haven’t cracked it open in 10 or 20 years. But in its time…I even taught a course a couple of times that was built around it as a reference text. It would still be useful if I were splicing together antique devices now and then for use in the lab.

Why does it have to be a science teacher?

Matt Baish is a terrible person.

He’s “angry” about Greta Thunberg visiting his area, so he “jokes” about not having a sniper rifle. Funny. Hilarious. Except that it’s sad how going right-wing causes atrophy of one’s sense of humor.

Fortunately, he’s been placed on administrative leave, so he won’t be poisoning students’ minds. This still disturbs me:

Baish, who is listed as a science teacher on the Waterloo West High School’s website, was placed on administrative leave after responding to a Facebook post about Thunberg visiting Iowa City this week, a local ABC affiliate reported.

Thunberg’s reputation rests on her fierce support for taking action against climate change; she spoke to congress and told them to listen to the scientists. This bozo so strongly hates that message that he’d make veiled threats against her? How can he be teaching good science?

#Arachtober: The #Spider Swarm!

My colleague, Chris Atkinson, told me yesterday that he’d been seeing a lot of spiders in his compost heap. “Interesting,” I thought. Then he sent me this photo:

WHOA. Look at all those spiders.

So I stopped by this morning (how could I not?), and the photo doesn’t do it justice. It is spider paradise. It’s a spider commune. There are all kinds of bugs living in the compost, and all over above them is a dense communal spider web, packed with spiders. I’d suspected it from the first picture, but I stuck my face down there and confirmed it — Steatoda borealis, the Northern Combfoot, which I’ve occasionally found while prowling about town, but this was the Mother Lode. I got a few closeups of one of their number in their web.

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What “heritability” actually means

I often get brought up short when someone tells me that intelligence, for instance, is 80% determined by your genetics. I’m held up because that someone clearly doesn’t understand the magic word “heritability”, which every geneticist understands but every layman seems to consciously misunderstand, preferring to play games with folk etymology than actually understand the math, or the concept. So here’s a nice video that explains the background clearly, and as a bonus, show that Sam Harris doesn’t know diddly squat about the science behind the racism he endorses.