I am satisfied by Neil deGrasse Tyson’s response

As you’ve probably heard, Neil deGrasse Tyson has been accused of, and is being investigated for, inappropriate behavior with women. Three women have made accusations of varying severity, which is starting to add up.

Tyson has made a response to the accusations. I think it’s a good one. It is the case that if you are a popular celebrity with many encounters with the public, you’ll slip up now and then and cross a boundary that someone finds inappropriate, and the question is whether you can recognize that, draw back, and apologize with some sympathy for your accuser. Tyson demonstrates that here.

I’m sure it’s even more difficult for an exuberant fellow like Tyson. I’m recalling one event where he and I met for the first time, and he rushed over and gave me a great big bear hug — more than that, we practically had a wrestling match then and there. He’s passionate and enthusiastic and unreserved with everyone, and looking back on it…what if I were more reluctant to accept physical contact? What if I’d been a woman? How would that encounter have been interpreted? I can see how his wholeheartedness is going to occasionally get him into trouble, but I don’t want a timid, reserved Neil deGrasse Tyson.

As for the three accounts: 1) the production assistant who resigned from her job over the excessive intimacy: he apologized profusely, and he did not touch her inappropriately, nor has she accused him of that. He says, “had I known she was uncomfortable, I would have apologized on the spot, ended the evening”, and they parted on good terms.

2) The woman whose tattoo he examined a bit too intensely:

I only just learned (nine years after) that she thought this behavior creepy. That was never my intent and I’m deeply sorry to have made her feel that way. Had I been told of her discomfort in the moment, I would have offered this same apology eagerly, and on the spot. In my mind’s eye, I’m a friendly and accessible guy, but going forward, I can surely be more sensitive to people’s personal space, even in the midst of my planetary enthusiasm.

Isn’t that what we want, that people learn from their mistakes?

3) The Ahmet Tchiya accusations of rape: Something always seemed off about that, and Tyson admits to a relationship in grad school.

I remember being intimate only a few times, all at her apartment, but the chemistry wasn’t there. So the relationship faded quickly. There was nothing otherwise odd or unusual about this friendship.

That seems reasonable. This, though, is a case where a fleeting intimacy turned weird over the years.

For me, what was most significant, was that in this new life, long after dropping out of astrophysics graduate school, she was posting videos of colored tuning forks endowed with vibrational therapeutic energy that she channels from the orbiting planets. As a scientist, I found this odd. Meanwhile, according to her blog posts, the drug and rape allegation comes from an assumption of what happened to her during a night that she cannot remember. It is as though a false memory had been implanted, which, because it never actually happened, had to be remembered as an evening she doesn’t remember. Nor does she remember waking up the next morning and going to the office. I kept a record of everything she posted, in case her stories morphed over time. So this is sad, which, for me, defies explanation.

This behavior is also not unusual or exceptional or unbelievable. Barring other evidence, we have to accept it.

I also appreciate his final sentiment.

That brings us back to the value of an independent investigation, which FOX/NatGeo (the networks on which Cosmos and StarTalk air) announced that they will conduct. I welcome this.

What? He’s not going to throw a tantrum and sue everyone in sight? How refreshing. It is also how an innocent man would respond to an accusation.

Unless the investigation uncovers something truly sordid, I’m satisfied that Tyson wants to make amends, and is simply a guy who is perhaps a bit more exuberant than most. I’d accept a hug from him anytime, although maybe he needs to learn to ask permission first.

OK, he definitely needs to learn to respect boundaries more.

Former Cold War CIA director & tool of the elites writhes in Hell today

George HW Bush is dead, and there is no hell, so the best I can hope for is that he faded away on his deathbed despairing that his legacy, what there is of it, was thrown away by his fuckwit sons.

This is why I can never be president. Barack Obama was far more charitable and generous and diplomatic in his remarks.

One thing I’m hoping for is that Trump will deliver a eulogy. I’m expecting something that compares the relative sizes of their electoral college votes and inauguration crowds.

I am clearly not making enough racist remarks around here

It’s the formula for success, I guess. Megyn Kelly has found the recipe. She was bombing — her shows were dying for lack of an audience.

At the time, according to news reports, Lack had already informed Kelly her poorly-rated morning show would not last; her Sunday magazine show, launched last year, had never found an audience and was canceled after only eight installments. Weeks before her blackface gaffe, Kelly was looking for an exit strategy.

An exit strategy…hmmm. What to do. I know! Let’s defend white people wearing blackface on Halloween, on a broadcast show! It’s a totally unsurprising remark from someone who previously insisted that both Santa Claus and Jesus had to be white. And it worked!

Megyn Kelly is reportedly finalizing a $30 million exit deal with NBC and parent company Comcast, Page Six reports. She was ousted from the Today show last month after she defended blackface on national television, triggering outrage from her fellow hosts and the public alike for her comments, which included “I don’t see how [blackface] is racist on Halloween.” “Everyone wants this to be over—both Megyn and NBC—and Comcast has the money to pay off Megyn,” a source told the tabloid. The deal will reportedly close next week. “NBC decided rather than fight and face a lawsuit from her, they—and more importantly Comcast with all its money—decided to draw a line under the entire debacle and pay Megyn the full amount owed in her contract to go away,” another source said. Kelly was reportedly making $23 million a year to host her low-rated program.

Wait, $23 million/year for a failing show? Getting paid $30 million to go away? Those are totally unreal numbers, especially when you consider that she has no particular talent or insight that would make her stand out among all the other people reading teleprompters on cable news.

With $30 million dollars, I would be set up for life. I would rake that money in, set up some diversified investments, and lean back and relax and enjoy my sunset years. Maybe travel more. Read lots of books. Make lots of charitable donations to causes I care about. Set up college funds for my grandchildren.

And all I have to do is make vulgar, insensitive, stupid remarks about people with a different skin color, and white people would rush to support my lifestyle? United States of America goddamn.

It looks like I’m destined to die poor. Sorry, grandchildren.

You will be mocked if you fail to conform

Abcde Redford should not be ashamed of her name, but Southwest Airlines should be ashamed of their employee’s behavior. Every child should have a name that is unique, or has a strong history, or reflects something about their family. Unfortunately, there is an annoying strain of conformity that says everyone should have a name that is familiar and belongs to a limited repertoire of common names, just because.

I was interested to learn, though, that Abcde is not totally unique.

Although Abcde is an unusual name, it’s not unheard of. In 2014, Vocativ reported that over the past three decades, 328 baby girls have been given that name, 32 of whom were born in 2009. But when the name is entered into the Social Security Administration’s database of popular baby names, it states that “Abcde is not in the top 1000 names for any year of birth beginning with 2000.”

I think it’s a very nice name. It’ll also be incredibly popular when Abcde grows up and is so pissed off at the mockery that she shatters the status quo.

The one thing you need to know to succeed in life

I loathe going to the gym. I especially loathe it when I forget my earbuds at home, and am forced to consume generic mass media while I’m stretching and sweating and pumping up those feeble strands I call muscles — modern pop music seems to be striving for all the passion of muzak, and broadcast TV…forget it.

So I’m rage-peddling on the exercise bicycle when some insipid collection of TV celebrities are delivering their favorite lines of life-advice to the loved ones in their family, and I’m hating it, and I come up with a line of my own.

If all you needed was the right aphorism, it wouldn’t take a score of years to raise a child.

See? This is why I’m not invited to those kinds of shows. Well, one reason.

Now thinking about starting up a dairy spider farm on the prairies of Minnesota

There are these weird salticid spiders that have evolved a radically different morphology — they live in ant nests, and physically mimic the ants. Look at this ant-spider. Isn’t this amazing enough?

That’s a spider? Yeah, count the legs. It’s trying so hard to fit in with tunnel-dwelling insects with three body segments, you just have to applaud the effort.

What’s more, they’ve acquired another evolutionary novelty: they secrete ‘milk’ to feed their young, and have extended parental care. The necessity of milk production was tested with the cruel experiment of painting over the epigastric furrow (the site of secretion) with White-Out, and what happened? All the spiderlings starved to death. The utter bastards. There are things you can get away with when working with invertebrates that you couldn’t do with cute fuzzies with bones. Try doing that experiment with bunnies, just be prepared for torches and pitchforks.

There’s another revelation in this figure caption.

Spider milk and its secretion site in Toxeus magnus.

(A) Ventral view of mother. (B) Milk droplets secreted after slight finger pressure on abdomen.

Did you get that? They are milking spiders. I come from a long line of Norwegian dairy farmers in Minnesota, so you can guess where my mind went from here. Can I get state and federal subsidies for my spider farm? I’ll have to look into it.

The study is primarily about the life history of this spider species, with some experimental manipulation, and it does a thorough job of that.

T. magnus offspring body length growth and food resources during development.
(A) Egg hatching. (B) Absolute milk dependence: Spiderlings do not leave the nest, and the mother releases milk droplets to the nest internal surface. (C) Spiderlings forage during the day and suck milk at night. (D) Subadults nutritionally independent but still return to nest. (E) Spiderlings reach sexual maturity, but some stay with the mother. *The mother. N = 207 offspring, Nnest = 19 surveyed nests, error bars (SEM).

It’s missing one thing, though: any analysis of the chemical make-up of spider milk. I’m going to take a wild guess that unlike mammal milk, which is rich in fats and carbohydrates, spider milk is going to be more like a protein shake — that it’s going to be in many ways similar in composition to the dissolved bug guts that spider adults live on, to simplify the transition from an independent hunting spiderling to a spiderling with an obligate dependency on parental care. Which means a) humans can probably synthesize it by homogenizing masses of fruit flies in a blender with some digestive enzymes, and filtering out the chitin, and b) there’s not going to be much of a human market for it. Alternatively, they suggest that spider milk may have evolved from the breakdown of trophic eggs — that is, eggs produced that do not develop, but provide a food source for other members of the brood. In that case, it may be a soup of phospholipoglycoproteins, similar to the vitellogenins of other arthropods, and its closest vertebrate analog would be egg yolks.

Inquiring minds want to know. They’re going to have to milk a lot of spiders to get enough to analyze, though!

Chen Z, Corlett RT, et al. (2018) Prolonged milk provisioning in a jumping spider. Science 362(6418):1052-1055. DOI: 10.1126/science.aat3692

P.S. There is a Minnesota milk song. They might have to change some of the hand gestures.

No more stonewalling, NdGT

Two more women have stepped forward to recount instances of creepy behavior by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Up until now, he has just ignored the accusations by Tchiya Amet, which I think is the right thing to if the accusation is false. But now that there are further specific complaints — and these are accounts of inappropriate boundary pushing, not assault — I think he needs to step forward, explain himself, apologize to the women, and recognize that these were wrong actions that won’t be repeated.

Silence at this point is just denial, and it will look like these behaviors will be threatening to emerge again. I hope he does the right thing.

Always ask for permission first, before playing God

That story I posted yesterday about the rogue Chinese gene editor? The Chinese government has responded swiftly and repudiated He Jiankui’s work.

Chinese Vice Minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping told state broadcaster CCTV that his ministry is strongly opposed to the efforts that reportedly produced twin girls born earlier this month. Xu called the team’s actions illegal and unacceptable and said an investigation had been ordered, but made no mention of specific actions taken.…He’s experiment “crossed the line of morality and ethics adhered to by the academic community and was shocking and unacceptable,” Xu said.

Uh-oh. He’s in trouble. I know there’s the idea that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness after the fact, but maybe that doesn’t apply when you’re tinkering with human lives.