Blocked!

The good people at CFI have been getting spammed by the usual cranky suspects on twitter, so they have officially announced their policy for blocking people on twitter. It’s a good set of general rules, and is actually simple common sense: there are people out there who don’t recognize reasonable limits and use twitter for non-stop harassment. I personally am pretty liberal about blocking — with something like a hundred thousand followers, it’s fairly easy to get swamped with noise, and one person trying to dominate a conversation can really derail everything. As Fidalgo points out, “‘block and ignore’ is Twitter’s own advice about handling this kind of thing.”

There are six comments on the announcement so far. Would you believe every one of them is from a slymepitter whining bitterly about the policy? Yes, of course you would. When all they’ve got is “raw hectoring” and abuse to offer, of course they’re going to complain when someone declares that they won’t be listening to raw hectoring and abuse.

The death of Aaron Swartz

Many of you already know that Aaron Swartz, an online activist, committed suicide earlier this week. I didn’t know much about him, but now I’ve learned two things.

One, he was a victim of depression. I’ve never experienced this personally — at worst I can say I’ve been sad and stressed at time — but let’s be clear about something: depression is something altogether different. Swartz wrote about his depression, and got across a little bit about what it actually feels like. This is good communication.

Your face falls. Perhaps you cry. You feel worthless. You wonder whether it’s worth going on. Everything you think about seems bleak – the things you’ve done, the things you hope to do, the people around you. You want to lie in bed and keep the lights off. Depressed mood is like that, only it doesn’t come for any reason and it doesn’t go for any either. Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and you don’t feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the sadness.

At best, you tell yourself that your thinking is irrational, that it is simply a mood disorder, that you should get on with your life. But sometimes that is worse. You feel as if streaks of pain are running through your head, you thrash your body, you search for some escape but find none.

Two, I’m outraged at the criminal abuse by the justice system that exacerbated his problems. The man was hounded to death, threatened with long prison terms by MIT and JSTOR, the journal archive service.

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

You might be wondering what awful crime he committed that justified arresting him and confronting him with a 50 year prison sentence: he downloaded scientific research articles and then made them available to others (Wait…apparently, he didn’t even share them, but just downloaded them via MIT’s protocols). Uh-oh. I’ve done this…just not on the scale of Swartz’s efforts. Swartz was committed to Open Access.

This is the problem: not that Swartz opened the door to scientific research, but that we’re laboring under an antiquated system of scientific information storage that privileges profit-making over open access to the results of publicly-funded research.

Science journalists accept logical fallacy, therefore journalism is compatible with stupidity

I said I was done with this guy, but his latest includes a bit that annoys me to no end. Keith Kloor interviews Daniel Sarewitz to get ammo for his claim that religion and science are compatible.

Based on your piece, I would presume that you think the two are compatible. However, some of the prominent New Atheists, such as PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne, insist that science and religion are incompatible. Why has this discussion become so binary? Why the either/or mindset exhibited by some atheists?

DS: There are lots of scientists who are also religious, so as an empirical matter science and religion are apparently not incompatible.

Gah. Dumb.

There are scientists who believe the earth is 6000 years old and that there was a global flood 4000 years ago. Therefore, science and creationism are perfectly compatible.

There are accountants who skim off profits and hide them in the books, therefore accounting is compatible with criminal larceny.

There are doctors who smoke, therefore smoking is compatible with healthy lungs.

Why has this discussion become so binary? Easy. Because some scientists have gigantic religious blindspots and want to pretend that their gullibility is part of their science.

And a complementary view from Ars Technica

When I agreed that many so-called ‘controversies’ don’t warrant a debate, I wasn’t saying that we shouldn’t cover them…just that they should be addressed appropriately, as fringe issues. The last thing we would want is media silence on, for instance, creationism! Ars Technica has a good piece on why we mustn’t be quiet about weird political positions.

Through the years I have received countless e-mails and have read hundreds of article comments imploring Ars to keep "political" stuff off the site. Such entreaties most commonly occur in relation to our scientific coverage of climate change or evolution, but also when we cover biological and anthropological matters of gender and sex. (They also come to a lesser extent when we cover the inherently political world of intellectual property, where, coincidentally, there are far fewer facts—but that’s outside the scope of this editorial.)

What those petitioners do not realize is that in asking us to be silent, they require that we take a politicized stance. Intentional silence is support for the status quo, and as such, it’s inherently political. Note that I’m speaking of intentional silence or avoidance, purposely not covering a topic so as not to bring light to it. Inasmuch as our editorial mission is, in part, to cover the issues relating to science and technology that are most challenging to our culture, it is unthinkable for us not to cover these issues. To reiterate, not covering them would be just as "political" as covering them.

This is also why I ignore or mock people who complain that “The movement has been co-opted by people with an agenda” — everyone has an agenda. Demanding silence on topics you don’t like is a symptom of having an agenda.

It needs to be said

David Hone has a good piece on what constitutes an appropriate subject for debate, and how the media fails.

The truth however, is near inevitably that there is only a very small minority making a disproportionate noise about their case. There is no debate over evolution, or the dinosaurian origin of birds, or that HIV leads to AIDS, or that climate is changing, or a great many others. That there are real, accredited scientists who do not think this is the case is not in doubt (sadly). But that this represents a real schism in the scientific community, that large numbers of researchers take these positions and that it occupies a significant amount of scientific research, or that there is good evidence for that position is certainly incorrect. One or two people arguing a point (and often doing so primarily in the media) does not make a debate.

…

This for me seems like the opposite of what good journalism should be. Surely the point is to provide a representation of the true state of affairs rather than spin (even if unintentionally) the fact that there is disagreement as something that is effectively 50:50, when it’s 99.9:00.1 or less. This can be humorous from an insider’s position when one sees the media triumph a paper as ‘reigniting the debate over x’ when in truth the researchers have looked at the paper, noted an obvious flaw or that it simply rehashes old and incorrect arguments or data, and carried on. The flipside of this is where there really is a scientific debate, in which case the debate is not reignited at all, but merely still going on, it has merely come to the attention of the press and public again which is not the same thing at all.

At least I have noticed over the years a decreasing tendency for newspapers to try to couple every discovery about evolution with a quote from some creationist somewhere, so I think the situation is slowly improving.

‘Journalists’, feel some shame for your profession

So I checked the lead political story on CNN:

CNN poll: It’s a dead heat

Then I checked the lead political story on MSNBC:

NBC/WSJ poll: Very close race with one day to go

Feeling desperate, I even checked Fox News:

CLOSING TIME: In Final Hours, Are
There Still Undecideds Left to Swing?

Do you sense a theme? It’s one that we’ve suffered with for the entire election season: news media that are obsessed with the horse race rather than the issues.

Fuck the media. Only xkcd sees the truth.

And tomorrow is the race itself, with non-stop coverage of exit polls, with maps showing trends, and predictions, and declaring that one state has gone to one candidate or the other — it’s all our media live for, I think, is the ultimate orgasm of who wins, rather than the substance of the consequences of electing either of these people.

I hate them. I hate them all. I will not be watching any of those channels, I will not be visiting their websites at all tomorrow: I am going to vote and then I am going to shut out the yammering ninnies for the whole day, and I will check my newspaper for who the winner was on Wednesday. I might be nice and create an election day thread for you all here, but I will not be reading it myself.

The real election campaign is long over. We were supposed to have news that clearly discussed the differences and similarities between the two. We didn’t get that, so now we get numbers filtered out of noise.

Also, Salon’s top two articles on tomorrow’s election are all about the polls…but they also have an article by Robert Reich on Romney’s destructive policies. More of that, please. I don’t give a damn about the polls — the only one that counts is the election itself.

Arrest everyone who disagrees with me! Show trials for all!

R. Joseph Hoffman is a flaming authoritarian, about as illiberal as you can get without joining the Tea Party. He’s very, very upset at Terry Jones and that gang of blithering idiots who assembled that terrible movie slandering Muslims, provoking riots in Egypt and Libya. Oh, and also his comrades-in-arms, Jerry Coyne, Eric MacDonald, and me.

I have just one question for PZ: What are you thinking now? God save the First Amendment?

Actually, I suppose he could bothered to read what I wrote on the “work of a group of incompetent fundamentalist Christian assholes pissing on entire cultures”, but that would be too much too ask — R. Joseph Hoffman is very busy raging at the voices in his head. I don’t even know why he bothers to ask what I’m thinking, since it won’t matter what I say, what with his fantasies informing his perceptions. I mean, we went around on this before, and he interprets what I wrote as “Hoffman coddles Muslims”. Go ahead, read what I wrote; you’ll have a very tough time pulling that interpretation out of what I said.

But what do I think of this situation? May reason save the rule of law.

Terry Jones and his compatriots are idiots, but they have a right to say hateful, awful, evil things. I’d say the same is true of the Rev. Phelps, the KKK, the Catholic Church, the Mormons, and R. Joseph Hoffman. I should have the right to say how much I despise them all, and I should also have the right to tune them out and ignore them. I’d actually rather they spoke up and made their positions clear; the threats I get in email don’t trouble me so much as the worry that the ones who’ll actually do something dangerous aren’t so stupid as to open their mouths and announce their intent.

Terry Jones is an intolerant ignoramus, but I don’t worry about him. What bothers me more are the intolerant ignoramuses who riot and murder when they’re offended; I’d rather they went out and made an incompetent propaganda film, for instance. I worry that our president might actually listen when Egypt calls for world-wide censorship, as when the White House explored the idea of having an offensive video removed from youtube (Google said no, fortunately — but they do assist in local censorship efforts).

Decide that a Terry Jones must be silenced, and who is next? I can tell you: atheists. Egypt has arrested Alber Saber for the crime of atheism.

On Wednesday, September 12th, a Muslim friend and neighbor using Saber’s computer reportedly discovered that he was the admin for the Egyptian Athiests Facebook page, which is the largest of several such groups online with over a thousand “likes”. On September 10 the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” had been posted on the site. Over the next two days crowds began to gather outside his house, threatening Saber and his mother.

On Thursday night Saber’s mother called the police, hoping for protection. When the police arrived however, rather than fending the threatening mob outside, they arrested her son.

The charge according to his lawyer and supporters, focuses on videos in which Saber discusses his own Coptic faith or lack thereof. This makes sense as to charge anyone for posting the “Innocence of Muslims” video would set an impossible precedent. Even conservative broadcasters have also shown the video, or sections of it on their shows. It is not yet clear however, which materials will be included in the case against him, which is currently in the hands of the General Prosecutor. The next hearing is expected in four days.

After talking with Saber’s friends it seems likely to me that Egypt’s Islamist leaders are hoping to create a local issue where they can be seen as the tough guys, to distract Egyptians from how the furor in the international arena, in the context of which they seem impotent.

There is no difference between what the Egyptian government has done to this man, and what R. Joseph Hoffman asks the American government to do to Terry Jones:

Arrest him without delay. Deploy the National Guard. Surround the Church.

No. That’s totalitarianism. Free speech isn’t free if you’re only allowed to speak government- and church-approved opinions. It’s surprising how many people cannot comprehend that.

(via Why Evolution Is True)

Tom Holland is censored

Channel 4 in the UK made a program called “Islam: The Untold Story”, and got so many complaints and threats that they have cancelled the screening of the show. This is a disgrace: the program is a serious, historical look at Islam, and the protesters are complaining because it takes an objective look at the evidence. We must be able to scrutinize Islam. If they’re going to hide their origins in obscurity, lies, and threats, then their beliefs should be dismissed.

I haven’t seen the program (and at this rate, I never will!), but I can make an informed guess at the content. It’s presented by Tom Holland, author of In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, an excellent and entirely sympathetic review of the history of Islam. He discusses the deep roots of Islam, formed in a culture that was shaped by its proximity to the frontier between the two great empires of the ancient world, Rome and Persia. He traces the origins of the Islamic holy book, and discovers that no, it didn’t simply appear in 7th century Arabia (although he does think there was a singular original text), but that Islamic thought coalesced long after the time of Mohammed…and he points out that there is no contemporary evidence at all of this person Mohammed — which sounds awfully familiar to those of us who are more exposed to the Jesus myth — and that there is a long history of self-deluding Islamic ‘scholarship’ that has a lot of similarity to the self-serving confabulations of Christians.

It doesn’t make negative judgments about Islam at all, unless, of course, you find reality offensive. I thought it was an excellent book to explain the complexities of Islamic history, and it made Islam more human and more interesting. It’s well worth reading.

It would also be worth watching, if Channel 4 would grow a spine. And if Channel 4 can’t manage it, I don’t know how we can ever hope to see it in the US.

Those of you living in the UK can watch it here. They block us Americans, I’m afraid.