I could have told them this experiment wouldn’t work

When I was in high school, and also part of college, I spent my summers working in a wholesale nursery as a menial laborer. It was all stoop labor — “there’s 10 acres of pots of kinnikinnick, go weed them all” — and of course once you finished it all, you’d start over again because a new crop of weeds was sprouting. So I spent long days in the sun, bent over, scraping popweeds out of containers. It’s not a job I’d wish on anyone, but it’s partly how I paid for college.

Now I’m reading that, in 1965, the US government had a brilliant idea for replacing those darned Mexicans who were doing all that farm labor: pay high school students to do it for minimum wage. Thousands of students took the offer.

He remembers the first day vividly. Work started before dawn, the better to avoid the unforgiving desert sun to come. “The wind is in your hair, and you don’t think it’s bad,” Carter says. “Then you go out in the field, and the first ray of sun comes over the horizon. The first ray. Everyone looked at each other, and said, ‘What did we do?’ The thermometer went up like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By 9 a.m., it was 110 degrees.”
Garden gloves that the farmers gave the students to help them harvest lasted only four hours, because the cantaloupe’s fine hairs made grabbing them feel like “picking up sandpaper.” They got paid minimum wage — $1.40 an hour back then — plus 5 cents for every crate filled with about 30 to 36 fruits. Breakfast was “out of the Navy,” Carter says — beans and eggs and bologna sandwiches that literally toasted in the heat, even in the shade.
The University High crew worked six days a week, with Sundays off, and they were not allowed to return home during their stint. The farmers sheltered them in “any kind of defunct housing,” according to Carter — old Army barracks, rooms made from discarded wood, and even buildings used to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I think you can guess what happened. Students quit in droves after only a few days. Others held strikes. The whole program was declared a failure, not just because the kids wouldn’t do it, but because they were pointing out the horrible working conditions and pitiful wages that were inflicted on desperate migrant workers…conditions and wages that still apply.

Clearly, the lesson is that we should hire anybody, migrant or not, and that they should be paid an hourly wage that reflects the value of their labor.

I only stuck with that kind of work because I was desperate, and even then my parents were housing and feeding me so all of the cash could go straight into my college fund.

How did this get published?

The Journal of Phylogenetics & Evolutionary Biology, despite the fancy name, must not have much in the way of standards because they published this article, Genome Size and Chromosome Number Relationship Contradicts the Principle of Darwinian Evolution from Common Ancestor. It’s bizarre. The authors have a deep misconception about evolution and they just run with it right into crazyland.

They seem to think there is some kind of progression in chromosome number — that life is supposed to go from some low chromosome number in primitive organisms, to a much larger number in ‘advanced’ organisms, and they have just discovered…chromosome numbers are scattered all over the place! Therefore evolution must be false, because humans are supposed to have the biggest number!

The human genome was located at 4/6 away from the controversial common ancestor genome and 2/6 away from the largest detected genome. Results of this study contradict the principle of Darwinian evolution from common ancestor and support the independent appearance of living organisms on earth. This will open the door for new explanations for the existence of living organisms on earth based on genome size.

Shocking, huh? It’s not as if you can find this fact in introductory genetics textbooks. Oh, wait, you can!

So these guys have some archaic notion of progressive evolution, and also have this strange idea that the number of chromosomes is indicative of complexity. I don’t know where they get that idea — you won’t find that in any of the genetics or evolutionary biology textbooks.

They’re very explicit about it, too. I don’t know how this could have gotten past a reviewer, unless they paper wasn’t reviewed at all (it wasn’t edited in any way, either — the typos and poor grammar are everywhere.)

It is certain that a genome controls the organism structure and development therefore; the genome is expected to evolve before the evolution of the organism. So, based on Darwinian evolution from common ancestor, we expect gradual change (increase) in genome size from the assumed common ancestor (smallest detected genome in this study, Buchnera sp.) to the largest detected genome (P. aethiopicus). Based on this assumption, human is expected to have the largest genome because it is the most recent and the most developed species on earth [30-32] and consequently is expected to lie at the end of genome size evolution curve. In addition, according to the Darwinian evolution from common ancestor, the gradual increase in genome size must be correlated with gradual increase or decrease in chromosome number (chromosome number evolution) as well as with organism evolution. The location of human genome among other genomes based on genome size and chromosome number (Figure 2) confirms that there is no correlation between genome size of species and their emergence on earth (genome evolution). This rolls out the idea that human genome evolved from smaller pre-existing genome. It is well documented that the genome size of an organism does not reflect its structural complexity which raised the question about what mechanisms led to these huge variations in genome size [33]. This was described as the ‘C-value enigma’ [6]. In addition, finding diploid plants with larger genome size than human genome raises a cloud of doubt about the sequence of appearance of living organisms on earth.

I had to look up citations #30, #31, and #32, to find out what fool made the argument that humans are the most recent and the most developed species on earth. More surprises!

30. Elhaik E, Tatarinova TV, Klyosov AA, Graur D (2014) The extremely ancient chromosome that isn’t: a forensic bioinformatic investigation of Albert Perry”s X-degenerate portion of the Y chromosome. EJHG 22: 1111-1116.

31. Elhaik E, Tatarinova TV, Klyosov AA, Graur D (2014) The extremely ancient chromosome that isn’t: a forensic bioinformatic investigation of Albert Perry”s X-degenerate portion of the Y chromosome. EJHG 22: 1111-1116.

32. Royer DL (2006) CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 70: 5665-5675.

There are some lessons to share with my science writing students.

  • The fool in question is Dan Graur, author of the book Molecular and Genome Evolution. He’s going to be so surprised!
  • That’s a good trick to pad your citations, listing the exact same article twice. I guess that makes your point doubly powerful.
  • I’ve read those first two (one) paper(s). They make no such argument. I didn’t know you could just sprinkle your paper with irrelevant citations with no connection to your claims.
  • Speaking of which, the third (second) paper is about climate change, not human evolution.

I don’t think the Journal of Phylogenetics & Evolutionary Biology is going to be on my routine reading list.

Big Bang Theory is ending at last?

That is good news: it’s a crap show, and the few times I saw it, it was agonizingly unfunny and relied on the audiences lack of understanding of what science nerds are actually like (hint: they’re mostly human, with just a few odd obsessions).

It’s been on twelve years, though? OK, somebody enjoyed it somewhere. I won’t be celebrating its demise, then, because I got all the celebrations out of my system when I saw it 11½ years ago and decided I wouldn’t be watching that garbage ever again. Therefore, the end of their run won’t affect my life in the slightest.

The well-deserved destruction of Silent Sam

Police stand guard after the confederate statue known as Silent Sam was toppled by protesters on campus at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Monday, Aug. 20, 2018. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Silent Sam was a Confederate war memorial at the University of North Carolina, that was dedicated to the Southern students who went to war for the Confederacy. It got toppled. There are many who are trying to argue the usual crap — it’s erasing history! Good people on both sides! The war was about state’s rights, not slavery! — you know, all the usual noise. So let’s unerase some history and go back to the statue’s unveiling in 1913, and the speech by Julian Carr. Carr was a white supremacist who supported the KKK, made his money with tobacco manufacturing, thought lynchings were a praiseworthy event, and was just generally a terrible human being.

His speech is interminable and overwrought, with much praise for the noble and heroic sons of the South who gave their life, and the dutiful and devout beautiful Southern women who supported them. There are poems in it, and classical allusions. I shall skip over those to the parts that are most discordant today.

The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South – When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States – Praise God.

Look at him, practicing Identity Politics! I guess the Civil War was actually about propping up the superiority of his narrow branch of white people. But then he gets personal.

I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.

<jaw dropped>

He said that? He was proud of whipping a woman in public?

OK. Tear it down. Tear ’em all down.

NK Jemisin wins, so the haters gotta hate

NK Jemisin won another Hugo award this year — her third in a row — and she gave a powerful acceptance speech. Read the whole thing, but this was a notable piece.

But this is the year in which I get to smile at all of those naysayers—every single mediocre insecure wannabe who fixes their mouth to suggest that I do not belong on this stage, that people like me cannot possibly have earned such an honor, that when they win it it’s meritocracy but when we win it it’s “identity politics” — I get to smile at those people, and lift a massive, shining, rocket-shaped middle finger in their direction.

Exactly right. The most fervent practitioners of identity politics are the old white guys who feel their entitlements are being challenged.

Here’s another excerpt:

I have gritted my teeth while an established professional writer went on a ten-minute tirade at me—as a proxy for basically all black people—for mentioning underrepresentation in the sciences.

I’m not sure who that was, but I know there’s no shortage of racists ranting about “identity politics”, so the field is wide open on that one. I thought immediately of Vox Day, though, who called her an educated, but ignorant half-savage and has long been whining about all the SJWs in science fiction.

So I had to go look and see how Vox Day was taking this repudiation of his position and the ongoing defeat of his slate of “puppies”. Not well, I’m afraid. He’s plumbing deep wells of dishonesty now. You see, that a group of people he detests are winning all the rewards and recognition means the he thinks he has won — after all, giving an award to a half-savage means the Hugos have now self-destructed and there’s nothing left but a great big crater. And even better, he thinks he has nuked the Hugos for the past three years now.

It’s a thriving crater populated with new and interesting writers, but he’s not going to read any of them anyway.

But what most appalled me is that he quotes the full text of Jemisin’s speech…but removes all of the punctuation and paragraphs, and then sneers mockingly at it. The comments are full of people thinking that Jemisin is illiterate because of that intentional dishonesty, and whining about how women can’t write.

That’s the kind of poison I’d expect of a hack like Vox Day, but what really disappoints me is that he quotes Robert Silverberg.

But in her graceless and vulgar acceptance speech last night, she insisted that she had not won because of ‘identity politics,’ and proceeded to disprove her own point by rehearsing the grievances of her people and describing her latest Hugo as a middle finger aimed at all those who had created those grievances.

He says “her people” and “identity politics”, not noting his own hypocrisy, and bashes her for vulgarity.

You might want to read these reviews of Silverberg’s own book, Up the Line.

Robert Silverberg wrote this libidinous, vulgar carnival ride in 1969 and it was nominated for the Hugo Award. This represents my 25th Silverberg work reviewed and I have come to accept that his lasciviousness makes late era Heinlein look like a boy scout. There is just going to be sex in a Silverberg work, lots of it, and this one has all the sensitivity of a bawdy limerick, reminiscent of Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love and All You Zombies – readers of those books will instantly know what I’m talking about.

Robert Silverberg was clearly a big fan of sex back in the late 1960s, and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. But in Up the Line, he absolutely revels in it. He doesn’t miss a chance for his (all male) characters to fornicate with women at every possible opportunity both in the future and the past, in dozens of exotic time periods in Byzantium, Constantinople, Rome, etc. The act may be as old as time, but that doesn’t stop Time Courier Judd Elliot from trying to bed his great-great-great grandmother Pulcharia with a lusty enthusiasm and complete disregard for all social taboos that have existed for millenia. Sure, it’s generally a serious no-no in society to screw your ancestors, but when she is as saucy a sex-kitten as Pulcharia, well who can blame Judd? At least that is the irreverent tone this book tries to achieve, billing its main character as the “Tom Jones of Time Travel”.

So when did 83-year-old Silverberg become a hypocritical prissy prude? I’ve read lots of Silverberg, and it’s absurd for him to look at Jemisin’s speech and complain about “graceless and vulgar”. He’s written much more vulgar stuff — and what’s really got him upset is that a black woman was bold and critical.

Beware the trap of imagining that you are a logical, rational human being

This is my sabbatical year, so I’m not going to be getting those fawning adoring messages

from any students this year. I am so accustomed to being held in reverence, as a kind of saint, like this:

“I only now [received] your beautiful and exquisite message… I thank you for your infinite understanding and sensitivities which are always beyond measure.”

Those are the words of Nimrod Reitman, in an email to his Ph.D. advisor, Avital Ronell, a professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University. As many now know, Ronell was found by NYU to have sexually harassed Reitman.

Oh, wait. I never get those. It could be that I’ve never written a “beautiful and exquisite message” — I tend to be brief in email — or it could be that Ronell built a cult-like relationship with her professional dependents. That’s an ugly outcome, and part of a deplorable pattern. Your students are not your acolytes, and that sort of behavior should be discouraged, a point the author of the article makes strongly. But then, unfortunately, he goes on to write this:

Many commentators on social media express have expressed familiarity with the kind of dynamic at play in the Ronell case. Yet I did notice that many of these commentators were not in academic philosophy.

I suspect that the culture of argument in academic philosophy helps counter tendencies towards sycophancy. We show respect to each other by posing the best challenges we can to each other’s ideas. Putting tough objections to philosophical heroes is something we are trained to (love to) do.

Well, gosh, good thing the mode of thinking in my discipline makes that behavior unlikely. We are above all that, so it’s unlikely to be a problem for us.

I’ve heard that kind of argument so many times before, and it’s a sign that someone in that discipline is about to fail spectacularly. “We’re skeptics, we rigorously criticize bad ideas so that’ll never happen to us” or “We’re scientists, science is objective and impartial so abusers can’t thrive in our ranks,” and then whoops, boom, pratfall.

I’ll go so far as to say that having the attitude that the culture in your little domain of thought makes you immune to the foibles of those other poor thinkers over there is exactly the kind of arrogance that makes you susceptible to failure. It’s a fallacy to think that rationalism makes one resistant to bad ideas — we’re all human here, which means we’re all going to fuck up. Rationalizing away your fuck-ups just means you’ll repeat them, and make them increasingly worse.

At least, that’s what I’ve learned from many decades of involvement in groups with a tendency to praise their own rationality. It’s not a promising development.