Oh, god, not that

Some of the philosophy students at my university have asked me to participate in a debate, on my campus, with a fellow named Perry Hendricks. I am like putty in my students’ hands, so I tentatively agreed, with the caveat that I’d like to see what proposition would be debated. The students have come back with their “specific” question. It is…

Does God exist?

I was in the middle of a meeting when that email flew across my view, so it was extremely difficult not to groan aloud and facepalm myself. Just too bleh.

My answer is no, of course, and I assume his will be yes. Are we done already?

The meat of any discussion has to be how that question will be answered, and I don’t see any hint of what approach will be taken, or what the epistemology of any answer will be — it’s just way too broad. I know how I’d approach the question, but I suspect we could easily end up talking past each other.

So now what? Do I say the topic is either ridiculously broad or too subjective and say forget it or go back and revise it, or do I just bull my way through the pathetic question, leaving no survivors?

I’m asking you, the readers, what you think I should do. You know what I think of debates, the only thing that persuades me to do this one is that it’s the students and it’s local.

Dread Monday

Every year, my institution has a special set of meetings: the tenured faculty gather together and review our aspiring younger faculty. It’s our one evening of absolute power, in which we have three possible outcomes: 1) OK, we’ll let them linger on another year, 2) we promote them to a tenured position, so they can join us in this exercise next year, or 3) you’re fired, you’ve got one year to clear out your office. I hate it. We take it seriously, which means we have to read all these big tenure & promotion files the week before, and sometimes these meetings go on for hours. And there are two evenings of these meetings!

The first meeting is tonight, the second is tomorrow. At least it’ll be over soon…and I’m sure the faculty we’ll be reviewing will be even more relieved.

On top of that, I’m grading exams. They’re mostly done, except for the grand essay question that I told them would require a couple of pages of discussion, to be graded for grammar and quality. That I will get done today, or die.

I still teach classes and have spiders to take care of! To make it even more fun, I’m getting my COVID vaccination tomorrow. Whee.

Under capitalism, the worst thing you can do to someone is destroy their money

Imagine a million dollars dropping into your lap, all yours free and clear. It’s a nice fantasy. It would soothe a lot of my anxieties for the future, although honestly I don’t see it happening very often. It’s the kind of delusion that drives lottery ticket sales, though.

Now imagine the reverse: suddenly, you’re handed a million dollar debt. That’s a real nightmare, but it’s also a much more common occurrence. One serious health scare, for instance, and your savings are wiped out and you’ve got hospitals dunning you for huge amounts of cash for the rest of your life.

Sorry for the too-real horror moment, everyone, but now imagine a different scenario: the worst people in the world get hit with massive debt — not you, you’re safe, just a few people who deserve the most awful misery. That’s different, there’s a bit of schadenfreude mixed in with a little sympathy for the rat, and a general satisfaction that justice came through for once…but also a weird feeling that they’re going to find a way to worm out of it.

Behold, Alex Jones.

Courts in Connecticut and Texas have already ruled that Jones intentionally defamed relatives of school children killed in the mass shooting, and they have ordered Jones to pay $1.5 billion in damages.

Lopez ruled that more than $1.1 billion of those verdicts, awarded for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, cannot be wiped away in bankruptcy. But he ruled that other parts of the verdicts, including $324 million in attorneys’ fees that were awarded as punitive damages in the Connecticut case, could possibly be discharged.

Negative $1.1 billion. That’s a sum that might weigh on one’s mind. Alex Jones deserves it.

Also, Kim Davis. Remember her?

A former Kentucky official facing a $100,000 judgment for refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple could have to pay an additional $260,000 to attorneys who represented the men.

Attorneys who represented a couple in successfully suing Davis for damages have requested a total of $260,084 to cover their fees and expenses.

If a judge approves the request, Davis would owe more than $360,000 as a result of the court case.

It’s only a third of a million dollars, so it’s a bit less extreme than Jones’ case, but it’s still got to burn that her sanctimony has probably erased any savings she might have.

Keep ’em coming. I like to see conspiracy theorists and judgmental Christian bigots getting their comeuppance.

The Halloween Incident of 1993

This is a poor choice of a Halloween costume

Every year around this time, my university beats itself up over something that happened 30 years ago. It’s a well-deserved thrashing, and I hope they keep it up for many years to come. Here’s what happened (taken from the University Register, 10/13/2023).

Members of the wrestling team, dressed in white robes, burned a cross in a field outside of town, as a mock Ku Klux Klan meeting. Members claimed it was a “harmless Halloween prank among friends,” but the community did not see it that way. There was outrage at all ends for the insensitive, reckless, and above all, racist act.

Also relevant:

Several members of the wrestling team drove two black teammates to an off-campus location, where other wrestlers pretended to be white supremacists by putting pillowcases over their heads. One of the black wrestlers ran away and called 911 for help.

I think it’s good to remember this stain on our reputation. I also have to highlight the incredible not-pology of the assistant wrestling coach, Frank Pelegri, who assisted in this travesty.

I have failed to be sensitive to the feelings of those persons outside of the prank who perceive a Halloween prank amongst friends as an act of racism.

That deserves to be enshrined in the ranks of world-class bad apologies. It was an act of racism, through and through.

Pelegri resigned after the incident, so at least there’s that.

The neuroendocrinologists strike back

I keep seeing these naive pop culture simplifications of sex and gender — it’s all about gametes, or Y chromosomes, or hormone titers. It’s all about finding the one magic criterion that defines the unambiguous binary that certain people want. It’s the opposite of good science. You should be looking at the evidence to see that sex is messy and complicated and defies reduction to the state of a single variable.

It’s a relief, then, to look at the actual scientific literature and see that scientists working in the field all pretty much agree — it’s not a simple binary. So here’s an article by real, genuine, qualified neuroendocrinologists declaring that they’re fed up with the notion of a simple binary. It’s titled Deconstructing sex: Strategies for undoing binary thinking in neuroendocrinology and behavior by Massa, Aghi, and Hill. It’s also behind a paywall, goddamn it, but at least I have access. Here’s the introduction, which is pretty strong.

Neuroendocrinologists have long known that “sex” is a specious category. Much of our research relies on identifying mechanisms that produce differences in brain morphologies and behaviors, including how factors like hormones, chromosomes, and life experiences differences across “the sexes.” This work makes evident that “sex” is not a biologically coherent concept (Karkazis, 2019; Roughgarden, 2013) but is instead a constructed category reliant on several biological criteria that do not always align (Ainsworth, 2015). However, research across the biomedical sciences regularly treats “sex” as a single, internally consistent variable. And even while recognizing that “sex” is multifaceted and dynamic, even neuroendocrinologists often collapse the multiplicity (Karkazis, 2019) by selecting a single trait to sort research subjects and specimens into sex categories – a practice that obscures relevant physiologies and precludes the possibility of more specific (and more accurate) analyses.

While its shortcomings are well-established, “sex” remains deeply entrenched in our field. Scientists seeking to adopt more nuanced frameworks must contend with the limitations of existing resources, methods, and practices, much of which rely on binary (or otherwise simplistic) sex categorization. To encourage support for this paradigm shift, we first delineate how reliance on gross “sex” categories damages scientific knowledge and leads to harm of marginalized communities. We then examine how current policies may exacerbate these problems before providing reflective questions to help scientists critically examine the use of “sex” across the scientific enterprise. These questions, supported by a litany of neuroendocrine research, encourage researchers to conceptualize and study sexed physiologies as multiple, interacting, and variable. Furthermore, as an extension of discussions held during the SBN 2022 Symposium on Hormones and Trans Health, our guidance challenges researchers to break free of gendered preconceptions and conduct research which centers the impact, direct or indirect, on marginalized groups. We believe this critical reflection and scientific reorientation is vital to improve our science, widen the applicability of our findings, and deter the (mis)use of our research against marginalized groups.

This is what I’ve been saying all along, so obviously I agree with it. The authors go on to point out that sex is a multi-dimension category, not a simple variable.

“Sex” is a constructed category, not a biological variable – and our science should reflect that. Deconstructing “sex” and moving away from reductive approaches requires immediate local changes to experimental design and methodology as well as a deeper understanding of social influences on and of the scientific enterprise (purple and green, respectively, in Fig. 1). What follows are guiding questions we offer to facilitate this much-needed shift. We hope that thinking through these questions will impact how science is conducted – whether that means using specific relevant physiologies to determine sex category; moving to a multivariate, interacting, and continuous conceptualization of sexed variables; or moving past sex categories all together – and lead to a more comprehensive, accurate, and responsible scientific enterprise.

I have to say, though, that I’m not a fan of those kinds of meaningless diagrams. I’ll let it slide out of appreciation for the context.

Ken Ham sees racist pigeons!

Ken Ham is outraged that the liberal media and woke scientists are inserting racism into ecology. He cites an article titled How L.A.’s bird population is shaped by historic redlining and racist loan practices. He thinks this is imposing racism on birds.

When you think of bird habitats, racism might not be the term that comes to mind! But recently the Los Angeles Times ran an article on how the bird population in LA is “shaped by historic redlining and racist loan practices.” Why?

Well, because more birds, and a greater diversity of birds, are found in areas with more trees and shrubbery. Those areas tend to be wealthier, both now and historically. Fewer birds are found in areas made of mainly concrete and buildings. And those areas tend to be more impoverished.

Birds preferring greener habitats are, of course, not surprising to anyone who knows even a little bit about birds. But those who look at the world only through the lens of so-called race will see racism everywhere—even observing “remarkably segregated” birds! Such ideas are permeating our culture.

Uh, yeah. Animal populations will be shaped by environmental factors. One of the environmental factors observable in cities is the effect of poverty and the availability of greenery. Something that has historically shaped the distribution of greenspace is racism. There is a pretty clear chain of cause and effect and correlation here.

I mean, Ham explained it clearly and succinctly. Does he not understand it? Does he think the scientists went off with an a priori assumption that racism did it, and then cherry picked observations to justify their conclusion? That’s how creationists do science, after all.

But don’t worry, he has a solution to all this racist thinking. The problem, as he sees it, is that people don’t hear enough of the Western canon of classical music.

An assertion that probably just gave you whiplash…but that’s what he wants to fix. Play Bach in the streets, and chase those racist birds away, I guess.

Yes, this kind of thinking can now be found everywhere—from bird studies like this to which classical music is selected for students to learn to play. I was recently speaking with a piano and voice teacher who has a passion for high-quality music education. He shared that progressivism has completely overwhelmed the fine arts, including music, to the point where the standard canon of Western classical music (think Bach, Beethoven, Handel, etc.) is being ignored in favor of only minority or underprivileged group music (so music isn’t selected based on merit or even historic value but on intersectionality).

I don’t believe him.

I do believe that music curricula might be including more diverse selections than the traditional repertoire, but come on, do you really think students never hear Für Elise or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik any more? That music instructors don’t care about the musical merit of a piece? Absurd.

But really, this was just a clumsy and feeble attempt to plug his friend’s “new” musical program that will teach music through the lens of a biblical worldview. I’m used to creationist non-sequiturs and bad reasoning, but this one extreme, even for Answers in Genesis.

That’s what I could do in my retirement!

Earlier this Fall, I was crippled for a while by excruciating inflammation of my ankles. I am happy to report that this has completely cleared up, and I’m pretty good below the knees. Unfortunately, I then suffered from aching elbow joints — they swelled up nastily, but that’s gone down now, and instead I’ve got skin peeling away at my elbows, now that they’ve shrunk down again. So a couple of days ago, my right knee decided to freak out on me, and walking has become painful once more. I hobble about with a stylish cane nowadays.

I can safely say that my left leg is one body part that is holding up, so far. I’ve been getting a few complaints about it having to do most of the work of shuffling me around, but I keep telling it it needs to wait its turn. It can only betray me once my right knee has recovered.

Anyway, it’s getting harder to lecture dynamically — I don’t like to hide in a corner and just tell students what to think. I’ve been trying to think of alternative jobs I could do while relatively immobile in a single room, and I think I’ve got one.

OnlyFans.

AMissouri teacher has been suspended after school administrators learned she’s an OnlyFans star.

Brianna Coppage, 28, taught English classes at St. Clair High School until she was placed on leave Wednesday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Coppage began posting on OnlyFans over the summer as a way to boost her annual income, she said.

The Post-Dispatch reported that her teaching job brought in about $42,000 last year. She told the outlet that she made up to $10,000 extra per month through OnlyFans.

Whoa. That’s $120,000/year, about 50% more than I make as a lowly college professor. I could just roll around on silken sheets, keeping the stress off my failing joints, and get a substantial raise.

I can think of no flaws in this plan.