Thoreau Thursday

The other day, when I noticed a host of gnat-like flies outside the kitchen window, it was 54 degrees F and overcast. Nothing to see here, people, move along.

Well, actually, we can see an awful lot here. The top specimen is, I assume, male, because of those moth-like feathery antennae; the better to sense you with, my dear. You can just see, between his middle and hind legs, two barbell-like projections: these are the halteres. Flies are in the order Diptera, which means two-winged. Many insects have four wings; halteres are sort of vestigial hindwing stubs; they help with aerial maneuvering, evidently, like around your ears as they hunger for your blood stream. Yeah, mosquitos are Diptera.

Also, note out much larger the female is. She frankly looks like a member of another species entirely. Is this an egg-carrying adaptation?

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“It is discouraging to talk with men who will recognize no principles. How little use is made of reason in this world!” HDT, March 4, 1852.

You may have had the experience of attempting to argue with a person who believes, say, that the tiles are showering down in New York City tunnels, or that “welfare queens” use their paltry government checks to buy champagne and other aspects of the high life that good solid working folk do not enjoy. You used all the evidence you could muster to argue, actually, no, neither of these things are happening, or, if indeed there’s evidence of one such incident, it only means there’s one example of it, not the rule at all. But not only are you not believed, the person becomes more convinced that they’re right.

Indeed, limited-information people actually double-down in their belief in their fantasies when presented with evidence that they’re wrong. Social scientists call this the “backfire effect.” (No one, after all, likes discovering that they’re chumps played for suckers.) Blindly following Trump as they blindly believed Obama was a Muslim coming to take away their guns, such willful idiots are the foot-soldiers of Trumpism’s attack on democracy. They are their own willing executioners. To note that, at most, they’re 25% of the population is an understatement of the threat they pose to us all. And besides, there’s definitely some of this conspiratorial thinking across the spectrum.

“…but it sprang back to its former stubborn and unhandsome position like a bit of whalebone.”