Whole genome duplication in the house spider

Let’s talk about the evolution, development, and genomics of the common house spider. Yeah, it’s another YouTube video from yours truly.


Schwager EE, Sharma PP, and others (2017) The house spider genome reveals an ancient whole-genome duplication during arachnid evolution. BMC Biol 15(1):62. doi: 10.1186/s12915-017-0399-x.

Hilbrant M, Damen WG, McGregor AP (2012) Evolutionary crossroads in developmental biology: the spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Development 139(15):2655-62. doi: 10.1242/dev.078204.

His lawyers must hate him

All you have to do is wind him up and watch him go. Michael Shermer won’t shut up even when he’s threatening someone with lawsuits. Phil Torres received a nastygram from him, and paraphrased him in a public post.

What makes it especially amusing is that Shermer then joins in the comments, repeats his bluster at length, and goes on and on about how awful he finds Torres.

Anyone remember this ‘interview’ by Ian Murphy with Shermer? He is so predictable.

He lost me at “electoral appeal”. I just don’t get it.

Boris Johnson gets disemboweled on the pages of the New Statesman.

Boris Johnson is a singular and unorthodox politician whose electoral appeal transcends traditional party lines. He is charismatic and funny, cultured and erudite, yet blessed with the common touch. He is a wonderful wordsmith, even if he often uses words to deceive and dissemble.

Those talents served him admirably in his role as merrymaker-in-chief while he was mayor of London, but they do not remotely qualify him to govern the UK during a gathering national crisis that he did so much to engender. Nor do I accept the contention that “Boris is Boris” and should therefore be exempted from all the customary rules of personal and political conduct.

Strip away the bluster and bonhomie, and you are left with a chaotic, mendacious, philandering, egotistical, disloyal and thoroughly untrustworthy charlatan driven by ambition and self-interest. Or, as the BBC broadcaster Eddie Mair once put it, “a nasty piece of work”.

You could say the same thing about the American president, except that you don’t even have to strip away any “charismatic and funny, cultured and erudite” aspects of his character, since they aren’t there. But now I have to wonder…how do buffoons like this get elected to high office?

There’s going to be an international incident, isn’t there?

Our Prezdent is off on a grand tour of Asia, scoping out golf courses and meeting with his boss, Putin. We can get a taste of his diplomacy from comments he made last year after North Korea launched a few missiles.

Trump questioned Japan’s decision not to shoot down the missiles when he met or spoke by phone with leaders from Southeast Asian countries over recent months to discuss how to respond to the threats from North Korea, the sources said.

The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said.

He’s probably wondering right now why he wasn’t greeted by geisha girls and kabuki performers in Tokyo.

We’re all going to die, aren’t we?

So…oblivious and hypocritical Canadians exist?

It’s too bad. The majority of the citizens of the nation to my north seem so nice, and they managed to avoid our kind of political embarrassment, so it’s jarring to see some individuals who are total jerks.

Like Andrew Scheer.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for praising Gov. Gen. Julie Payette in the wake of Payette’s suggestion that “divine intervention” did not play a role in the creation of life on Earth.

It is extremely disappointing that the prime minister will not support Indigenous peoples, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Christians and other faith groups who believe there is truth in their religion, Scheer said in a statement posted to Facebook.

Respect for diversity includes respect for the diversity of religious beliefs, and Justin Trudeau has offended millions of Canadians with his comments‎.

Hang on there, Andy. You’ve just mentioned a bunch of groups, Indigenous peoples, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Christians and other faith groups who hold mutually incompatible beliefs about the nature of the universe, and who openly express their beliefs in the public square. Do you think Christians ought to shut up about Jehovah and Jesus because it might offend those who believe in Wakan Tanka? Or is the only group you’d like to silence the atheists? Or how about those millions of Canadian atheists? Should they be offended when you pray to your nonexistent deity as part of official business?

Speaking as an atheist myself, I can disagree and find some beliefs stupid and silly without being offended, and without demanding that people’s beliefs be suppressed.

Also, here’s another Bad Canadian, Jordan Peterson. He’s personally dragging down the reputation of Canada single-handedly. His latest? He is doxxing students who organize rallies to protest his speeches, and siccing his mob of happy fascists on them.

The event, “The Stifling of Free Speech on University Campuses,” would have featured prominent conservative speakers. The planned protest rally posed a potential threat if the two groups were to clash, and Ryerson University felt that it did not have proper security for the event. In one of his tweets, Peterson called the protest’s student organizers “communists (really).”

One of the students’ profiles is no longer publicly available on Facebook. The other student, Christeen Elizabeth, has chosen to keep hers available. She feels Peterson’s action should not be taken as a threat, but rather as validation. “When he doxxed me, he validated me,” she said. “He validated everything that I was saying.”

Elizabeth has received extensive hate mail and harassment via Facebook, some of which have bordered on death threats. “These are his fans,” said Elizabeth. “These are the people he’s pandering to. This is why I take issue.”

Oh. Those two students have managed to rescue the reputation of Canadians everywhere. Good on you, Christeen Elizabeth! Hang in there, silenced student!

Melbourne in February would also be nicer than Minnesota at that time

Hey, this looks like a great atheist convention!

Of the names listed, 12 I’d like to see, 7 I don’t know and might be pleasantly surprised by, and only 2 whose talks I’d skip* — that’s a pretty good ratio. The only drawbacks are that it’s all the way off in Australia, and registration is a bit pricey (~$200-$500), which might explain why there’s some concern that the number of registrants is too low right now. Hey, if you’re somewhere near Melbourne, though, you ought to consider going.

Additional plus: I saw some conversation about it, and someone was complaining bitterly that it was too feminist for his taste.


*You’re just going to have to guess who’s who.

11 minute hero

I guess Donald Trump’s twitter account was suspended for a brief 11 minutes yesterday evening — a departing employee took a moment to give us a fleeting respite from the flatulence erupting from the White House. But of course, Twitter was quick to declare this a mistake and to switch the ass-trumpet back on, because they love their popular fascists.

Twitter took responsibility for the outage. In a tweeted statement, the company said Trump’s account was “inadvertently deactivated due to human error” by one of its employees. The account was unreachable for 11 minutes.

Twitter later said the deactivation “was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day.”

That ex-employee deserves praise for doing what the Twitter management is incapable of doing.

Isn’t it about time we left Twitter en masse for a more responsible service?