Look closely. Can you see me? I’m invisible!
Well, I would be if I were in the ocean.
Marcus Ranum ran across this, and thought it would be my kind of thing. It is!
My latest WTF moment is this article, Human chromosomes are only half DNA, which presents this little fact as if it is surprising and ground-breaking.
A chromosome is believed to be an “organized structure containing most of the DNA of a living organism.” However, new research finds that DNA makes up only half of the material inside chromosomes – far less than was previously thought.
Instead, up to 47 percent of a chromosome’s structure is actually a mysterious sheath that surrounds the genetic material, researchers from the University of Edinburgh said in a statement.
Say what? A university PR department strikes again, and an oblivious journalist scribbles it up. This is not news. This is not new. I’ve no idea how long I’ve been teaching this, but it’s been ages. Here’s Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th edition, from 2002.
The proteins that bind to the DNA to form eucaryotic chromosomes are traditionally divided into two general classes: the histones and the nonhistone chromosomal proteins. The complex of both classes of protein with the nuclear DNA of eucaryotic cells is known as chromatin. Histones are present in such enormous quantities in the cell (about 60 million molecules of each type per human cell) that their total mass in chromatin is about equal to that of the DNA.
And what’s with this “mysterious sheath” nonsense?
If you’re a reporter who’s never taken a basic cell biology class, you have no way of reasonably presenting the context around even a simple observation, so don’t even try, and never trust a university press release, because they’re typically written by people as ignorant of science as you are.
Scott Eric Kaufman,
blogger at Acephalous,
contributor at Lawyers, Guns, and Money,
has died. I’ve been reading his stuff for almost as long as I’ve been blogging, and have always appreciated his humor, his openness, his humanity. And now suddenly he’s gone.
2016 has not been a kind year.
Second favorite:
I mentioned that the police were hosing Standing Rock protesters down with water cannons, putting them at risk for hypothermia. Well, the Morton County Sheriff has come out with a classic bit of double-speak.
According to the sheriff’s department, approximately 400 people were involved in the protest. When asked in a press conference Monday about the use of water cannons, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said, “We don’t have water cannons,” explaining, “This is just a fire hose.”
“It was sprayed more as a mist, and we didn’t want to get it directly on them, but we wanted to make sure to use it as a measure to help keep everybody safe,” he said. “We’re just not going to let people and protesters in large groups come in and threaten officers. That’s not happening.”
Oh, it was just a gentle, soothing mist that wasn’t even aimed at them, and it was all to keep everybody safe.
Just like the rubber bullets and tear gas, I suppose.
And the 167 people injured…that was just for their protection.
Sunday night’s no-holds-barred offensive by police from multiple agencies against unarmed water protectors opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline on Highway 1806’s Backwater Bridge — in which at least 167 suffered injuries — sent two elders into cardiac arrest, left a 13-year-old girl injured by a rubber bullet to the head, and now, one woman will almost certainly lose her arm.
Sophia Walinsky stood among the crowd of around 400 water protectors as the police launched an all-out assault, firing ‘nonlethal’ projectiles, tear gas, mace, LRAD sound cannons, and concussion grenades — one of which reportedly exploded on her left arm, tearing through flesh and exposing bone, and leaving her facing possible amputation.
One awkwardness here: I’m not including the link to that source right now, because it includes graphic photos of the woman with her arm blown apart, which the family has requested be taken down. If the photos are removed I’ll update this with a link.
How fitting. That wretched, badly-written, psychopathically ‘conservative’ alternative campus newspaper for racist homophobes, the Morris NorthStar, was hand-delivered to my office today. They do this all the time: pile up a bunch of copies on the racks around campus, and then come by my office and personally slide one under my door or give it to me at my desk. They don’t do this for any other faculty in my building. I’m just special, I guess.
I’ve had enough. I’ve posted this sign outside my door now.
Zero tolerance for Nazi fuckwits. No more.
They’ve been coming for women, minorities, and immigrants, so you just knew they get around to college professors as enemies of the state. A group called “Turning Point USA” has created the Professor Watch List, which includes a list to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom
(doesn’t that sound lovely and vaguely familiar?), and also includes a form to turn in suspected leftists. It’s like a McCarthyite wet dream.
One problem: I’m not on the list. In fact, nobody at Morris is on the list. I fear our problem is that we’re such a little sanctuary of progressive thought that we’ve got a shortage of far right wing rats. I must make my case for being included on the list.
I know there are acolytes of Turning Point USA on campus because someone around here keeps putting up their stupid pro-capitalism posters
and their idiotic pamphlets. Did you know college professors want to challenge your beliefs and make you question the existence of God? That sounds exactly like me. Also, I scowl and roll my eyes every time I pass one of their inane BIG GOVERNMENT SUCKS
posters. That’s got to be at least a misdemeanor in the TPUSA world.
I wrote a post saying the Morris North Star, the alt-right rag, ought to be thrown off campus for its disgusting racism: clearly, I’m totally against free speech.
The Morris North Star has already threatened to sue me. They had the police pick me up and read me my Miranda rights, so we’re already well on our way to their dream police state.
My perfidy was written up on a Christian news site, and Todd Starnes put me Fox News. See? Their propaganda organs already hate me!
Look at that. I didn’t even have to get into the Cracker Incident.
I hope this omission can be corrected rapidly. If I am listed, I can also rat out virtually all of my colleagues, too, who are all raging liberals (OK, with a few exceptions). I’d like to see my university more prominently acknowledged on a right-wing enemies list.
Watch the video of alt-right — excuse me, fucking goddamn nazis praising Führer Trump and making Nazi salutes and questioning the humanity of Jews and liberals, and then try to tell me that racism isn’t what got that orange asshole elected. My wife’s father, my uncles, my grandfather fought in a brutal war to end that fascism, and now the Republican party has brought them to power here.
Hail Trump
? Christ.
All you Christians complaining that moderate Muslims do nothing about ISIS…what have you done about the KKK?
That’s easy. They’ve encouraged them to get rid of the sheets, stop burning crosses, put on nice clothes, get elected to high office, and perpetuate the same hate and discrimination and oppression under a different name: “alt right”, “white nationalism”, “conservativism”. The KKK, a Christian racist organization, has shriveled away as it took over the Republican party, a Christian racist organization.
The Church Lady now says, “Don’t you dare call their policies racist! That’s offensive!”
It’s definitely winter up here in the upper Midwest. The temperature is right around freezing, there’s at least 15cm of snow on the ground, and the roads and sidewalks are slick with hard-packed ice. And they’re using water cannons on protesters at Standing Rock.
This is not just cruel — it’s dangerous. I’m sure residents of the Dakotas are just as conscious of the risks of getting wet outside in frigid weather as we are here in the slightly more urban state of Minnesota. You just don’t do that. You can kill people in this weather.
And of course they’re using rubber bullets and tear gas, and roughing up protesters and throwing them in dog kennels.
She told me that they were arrested at a prayer ceremony lead by camp elders, and that she had been slammed to the ground by uniformed officers with shields and helmets that kept her from distinguishing whether they were law enforcement or national guard.
“It was three against one, that’s their strategy,” she said, “there’s tear gas in the air everywhere. They didn’t fire it directly at me, but it’s everywhere.”
I was told that when they were arrested, they weren’t read their rights until after they spent a day in jail.
Her description of the arrest matched my student’s description. She told me they were bussed to a facility where they were kept in dog cages with urine stains on the floor, pictures of dogs hung on the walls. Women were separated from men with chain link fencing and a tarp.
They said their phones and money were confiscated, the money seized and turned into procurement cards and calling cards, allegedly without consent. The balance was not returned upon release, she said.
The state of the jail uniforms made the women feel vulnerable, she said, and the tarp separating the women from the view of the camp’s men exacerbated that feeling. She went on to tell me they were strip-searched.
“It was just turn your head and cough, just spread your cheeks and cough, but they didn’t tell us what they were going to, so when the woman approached me with rubber gloves on, I braced for a body cavity search. It’s worse not knowing, you know?”
America! This is what we’re like before the orange fascist takes power. What’s it going to be like next year?
You can still donate to the Standing Rock Sioux, and they’re going to need it. It takes courage and dedication to confront this kind of oppression.
